Olympics: A Tribute to Great Black Athletes

Subject: Olympics: A Tribute to Great Black Athletes Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:32 pm

Jesse Owens’s standout performance at the 1936 Berlin Oympics earned him an impressive four gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 4x100-meter relay and long jump. His remarkable four victories undercut Adolf Hitler’s intention to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan superiority.
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After overcoming polio, scarlet fever and double pneumonia as a child, Wilma Rudolph became one of the greatest sprinters in the world. At the age of 16, she won a bronze medal in the 4x100-meter relay in the 1956 Olympics. Here, at the 1960 Rome Games, Rudolph accepts her gold medal in the 100-meter race.
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This iconic image of sprinters Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos, left, at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, Mexico, remains a striking symbol of the indisputable strength of African-Americans. Smith won the gold medal for the 200-meter race, while Carlos took home the bronze, but both were suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee and ordered to leave Mexico for giving a black-power salute while receiving awards.
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Nine-time gold medal winner Carl Lewis missed his chance to compete in the 1980 Moscow Games because then President Jimmy Carter boycotted the Summer Games. But in 1984, Lewis wowed the U.S. by winning four gold medals in the 100-meter race, 200-meter run, 4x100-meter race and long jump—a feat that drew comparisons to the late great Jesse Owens. He later earned two more gold medals for the long jump in 1988 at the Seoul Games and another pair of gold medals in the 1992 Barcelona Games for the 4x100-meter run and the long jump. Lewis snagged his final gold victory in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the long jump.
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Track and field star Evelyn Ashford is one of the most successful, and more humble, athletes of the 1980’s. The five-time medal winner (four gold, one silver) accomplished a unique feat in women’s athletics by winning three consecutive Olympic relay titles. Here, at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Ashford crosses the finish line to win the gold medal for the 100-meter race, with a time of 10.97.
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Although Edwin Moses’s alma mater, Morehouse College, didn’t have a track team, the scholar who holds a B.S. in physics and an M.B.A., trained diligently at public schools in Atlanta. In 1976, Moses, who hopes to be remembered as “the man no one could beat,” became an Olympic champion, winning gold for the 400-meter hurdles and setting a world record. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Moses competed and took home the bronze. Just before his retirement, Moses switched to bobsledding. In 1994, he was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame; and in 1997 he became president of the International Amateur Athletic Foundation.
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The late Florence Griffith-Joyner’s six-inch fingernails and flamboyant style may have received almost as much attention from the press as her lightning speed, but Flo-Jo’s records for 100- and 200-meter runs from the 1988 Seoul Games have yet to be broken.
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Heptathlon world record holder and American record holder in long jump, Jackie Joyner-Kersee earned a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics in the heptathlon. In 1988, she long-jumped her way to a gold medal and earned a bronze at the 1992 Games. At 38, the track and field star retired and launched the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation, which encourages underprivileged youth in her East St. Louis, Missouri, hometown to play sports.
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Affectionately dubbed the “Dream Team,” hoopsters Earvin “Magic” Johnson, left, Scottie Pippen, Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley led the U.S. team to gold victory in Barcelona during the 1992 Olympics.
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When it came to burning rubber, sprinter Michael Johnson, better known as “the man with the golden shoes,” always left his opponents in a trail of dust. The two-time world champion won two gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games in the 200-meter and 400-meter runs, making him the first man to claim victory in both races in the same Games. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, the Dallas native set another precedent when he won the 400-meter run again, making him the only man to win the event in two consecutive Olympics.
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In 1992, Dominique “Awesome Dawesome” Dawes became the first African-American gymnast to ever qualify for the Olympic Games, which helped her and her teammates score a bronze medal. Four years later, the U.S. gymnastics team made history with a gold victory, and at those same Games she became the first African-American woman to win a bronze medal in the floor competition. A University of Maryland, College Park graduate, Dawes appeared on the Wheaties cereal box, and she was also featured in a music video for Prince’s “Betcha by Golly Wow” and the Broadway musical “Grease.” And she’s a former president of the Woman’s Sports Foundation.
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Lisa Leslie is all smiles after she and the U.S. women’s basketball team took home gold medals at the Athens Games in 2004. The ladies beat Australia 74-63 in the women’s finals.
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Draped in the American flag, sprinter Marion Jones beams after winning the gold medal in the 100-meter run at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia. But the former track star is hardly smiling now, having been stripped of her five Olympic medals and currently serving time for lying under oath following her admission of using performance-enhancing drugs.
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