Although Title IX was envisioned as an antidote to gender barriers in education, its most visible impact was in women’s sports. As I noted in an earlier post, pre-Title IX, most women’s sports were either non-existent or unfunded.
(I wish I knew who first spotted the potential for athletics in Title IX. I would love to hear about that a-ha moment! My bet is on the coach of a woman’s sport who was sick of trying to raise money with bake sales and car washes.)
This doesn’t mean, however, that prior to 1972 there were no women’s sports. Women competed in some individual sports, like gymnastics, golf and tennis. And track and field. Women’s competition at the famed Penn Relays began in 1962 — the 68th iteration of the meet — but the only women’s event was an invitational 100-yard dash.
Track and field were part of the Olympics as well, but women were shut out of competition when the first modern Olympics were held in 1896. But on Aug. 20, 1922, roughly 20,000 spectators gathered at a Paris stadium to watch women in events from the 60-meter dash to the 1,000-meters to the shot put. It wasn’t the traditional Olympics — women just got tired of waiting for men to let them in to the boys’ games and staged their own competition.
They made their point! In 1928, women’s track and field became part of the Olympic Games. Not surprisingly, the Olympic committee meddled with women’s bodies and clothing, stipulating that the hem of women’s shorts could be no more than four inches above the knee.* That year, at the summer Games in Amsterdam, American Betty Robinson became the first women to win a gold medal in track and field. And at the 1932 summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Babe Didrikson won two gold medals in track and field. (More on her in another post!)
In 1960, African American sprinter Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. At the Rome Olympics, she took gold in the 100- and 200-meter individual track-and-field events and in the 4 x 100-meter relay.
Yet as a child, ill health almost grounded Wilma. On June 23, 1940, she was born prematurely at 4 and a half pounds, and in childhood, she suffered severe bouts of pneumonia and scarlet fever. At the age of 5, she contracted polio, recovering but left with little strength in her left leg and foot.
Good medical care was denied to African Americans in her town of Clarksville, Tennessee, so her parents sought treatment at the historically black Meharry Medical College in Nashville. For two years, Wilma and her mother made weekly 100-mile round trips by bus for treatment. Family members massaged her leg daily, and she wore an orthopedic shoe until she was 12, when she could finally walk unassisted.
By the time Wilma was 20, she had raced her way into sports history. “Triumph can’t be had without the struggle,” she often said.**
Come to think of it, maybe there’s something to Wilma’s June 23d birth date. Thirty-two years later to the day, Title IX was signed into law.
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* Oh, how far we haven’t come! In 2021, paralympian Olivia Breen was competing at the Senior and Disability Track and Field Championships in England, when a female official scolded that her shorts were “too short and inappropriate.” During the European Beach Handball championships, the Norwegian women’s team was fined for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms. And during qualifiers for Olympic competition, the German women’s gymnastics team wore ankle-length unitards, protesting the usual bikini-cut leotards. Over the years, Serena Williams has protested dress codes in tennis, wearing a cat suit at the French Open in 2018 and a tutu at the U.S. Open the same year.
** M.B. Roberts, “Rudolph Ran and the World Went Wild,” ESPN.com. Biographical index of sports legends. https://www.espn.com/sportscentury/features/00016487.html