On November 9, 1923, American athlete Alice Marie Coachman Davis was born. She was the fifth child of 10 born to Fred and Evelyn Coachman. Because of her skin color, Coachman could not use athletic training facilities or participate in organized sports. She practiced her jump using improvised equipment and ran barefoot along the dirt roads around her house. She trained with everything she had. At the age of 16, Coachman accepted a scholarship offer and joined the Tuskegee Preparatory School in 1939. Before attending Tuskegee Preparatory School, Coachman broke the university and national high jump records when competing in the Amateur Athletic Union’s (AAU) Women’s National Championships. Coachman was unable to compete in the Olympic Games in 1940 or 1944 because of World War II.
Coachman’s first chance to compete internationally came in 1948 when the Olympics were in London. She cleared the 16-year-old record by ¾ of an inch to qualify for the US Olympic team with a high jump of 5 feet 4 inches. During the high jump finals, she shattered the world record and became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the high jump. On her first attempt, Coachman set the record at 1.68 meters, or 5 feet and 6 ⅛ inches. Coachman had become a celebrity by the time she returned to the United States following the Olympics.
Not long after she met with the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and President Harry Truman. At 24, her athletic career came to an end. She spent the remainder of her life in the Job Corps and education. Despite Coachman’s passing on July 14, 2014, the majority of the US women’s Olympic track and field team has been made up of black women in the years following her display of Olympic ability.
