Boxing, track and new frontiers - African American athletes - Blacks in Sports: 1947-1992: The Legacy

Ebony, August, 1992 by Karima A. Haynes

SINCE the Jackie Robinson breakthrough in 1947, Blacks have made modest gains in individual sports such as golf, tennis and figure skating, and have continued their pre-Jackie Robinson dominance in boxing and track and field.

Ironically, the Jackie Robinson breakthrough coincided with the end of what some experts consider the Golden Age of Blacks in boxing, an age that highlighted the exploits of boxing legends like Joe Louis and Henry Armstrong. Two years after Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Louis retired from the ring after holding the heavyweight title for a record 11 years and eight months. He was succeeded by a number of talented champions, including Ezzard Charles and Floyd Patterson, who in 1956 became the youngest heavyweight champion at age 21.

But Louis' real successor was Sugar Ray Robinson, the welterweight/middleweight who has been called "pound for pound the greatest boxer of all time. " Robinson defeated Jake LaMotta five of six times in one of the greatest series in boxing history.

In the 1950s, television drastically changed the sport, making it possible for boxers to earn more money than Louis ever dreamed of. Muhammad Ali symbolized this New Golden Age. On March 8, 1971, Ali and Joe Frazier drew boxing's first multimillion-dollar gate-$19,250,000. Ali, an Olympic champion who became a Moslem, brought a new, and more militant, political posture to the ring.

In the 1970s, Sugar Ray Robinson was reborn in Sugar Ray Leonard who demolished opponents like Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns, Wilfredo Benitez and Roberto Duran. Mike Tyson's raw power captivated boxing aficionados and fans in the 1980s when be knocked out opponent after opponent in the opening seconds of the first round. KO'ed by legal problems, he left a weakened heavyweight division with Evander Holyfield holding the title.

During the Ali and Tyson eras, a handful of Blacks broke through the money barrier by becoming managers, agents and promoters. Boxing impresario Don King, for example, has negotiated multimillion-dollar paydays for fights held in ritzy casinos and broadcast over lucrative pay-per-view cable systems.

In track and field, as in boxing, Blacks have continued their pre-Jackie Robinson dominance by capturing world and Olympic titles. Sprinter Carl Lewis matched Jesse Owens' four-gold-medal record set at the 1936 Olympic Games with wins in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, 400-meter relay and long jump at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Hurdler Edwin Moses mined Olympic gold in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympic Games. long jumper Bob Beamon set a world and Olympic record with a leap of 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Mike Powell jumped 29 feet, 4 1/2 inches at the 1991 World Track and Field Championships in Tokyo to break the 23-year-old record.

Perhaps the most significant gains have come in women's track and field. One year after the Robinson debut, high jumper Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She passed the torch to sprinter Wilma Rudolph who was the first American woman to min three gold medals in one Games at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. The following year she won the prestigious James E. Sullivan Memorial trophy, the highest award in amateur athletics.

Sisters-in-law Florence Griffith Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee were major forces in the 1980s. Joyner surpassed Rudolph's record by garnering three gold medals in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash and 400-meter relay and a silver medal in the 1600-meter relay at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul to become the first woman since 1948 to min four medals in track and field in a single Olympiad. Joyner-Kersee, "the world's greatest woman athlete," won two Olympic gold medals at Seoul in the long jump and the heptathlon, a punishing two-day event that tests an athlete's strength and stamina.

Perhaps the greatest breakthrough in individual sports occurred in the 1950s when a Harlem teenager named Althea Gibson overcame odds--and racism--to become the first Black national and international tennis champion.

Gibson broke through in 1956 by becoming the first Black--male or female--to win a Grand Slam tennis title, the French Open. The next year she won Wimbledon, tennis' most prestigious tournament, and repeated as champion in 1958. In 1957 and 1958, she won back-to-back U. S. Lawn Tennis Association National Championships titles at Forest Hills, N.Y., where she had been discriminated against earlier in her career.

Gibson's triumphs opened the door for Arthur Ashe who began his tennis career as a youngster in Richmond, Va., and won numerous tournaments while a student at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1968, he became the first Black and the first player to man the U.S. Open in 1968. (The name of the tournament was changed from the USLTA National Championships to the U.S. Open in 1968 after the association allowed amateurs to compete with professionals.)

Ashe's winning streak continued in July 1975 when he annihilated Jimmy Connors in the final match to become the first Black man to win Wimbledon. In his sensational career, Ashe won USLTA National singles titles in 1961, 1963, 1%7 and the Australian Open singles and doubles competition in 1970 and 1977, respectively. He was also a member of the Davis Cup team 11 times between 1963 and 1978 and served as its captain (a non-playing position) from 1981 to 1984. After suffering a heart attack, Ashe retired from the game, but left a legacy for players like Zina Garrison, one of today's top women players.