Alice Coachman

Track-and-field athlete

• Born: November 9, 1923
• Birthplace: Albany, Georgia
• Died: July 14, 2014
• Place of death: Albany, Georgia

Coachman was the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal, inspiring both African American and female athletes. A high jumper and sprinter, she demonstrated an athleticism that proved neither race nor gender impedes athletes’ ability to attain record-setting speed and distance in track and field.

Early Life

Alice Marie Coachman was born on November 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia, to Fred Coachman and Evelyn Jackson Coachman. She was one of ten children. Alice Coachman’s father, who had served in World War I, earned income by plastering. Coachman’s maternal relatives included Cherokees, and she briefly resided on the farm of her paternal grandfather, Peter Jackson. Her family moved to Albany, Georgia, living in several residences after the nearby Flint River flooded their home on Cotton Avenue in 1925. Coachman attended the segregated Monroe Street Elementary and picked cotton, gathered pecans, harvested peaches, and shook dirt from peanuts to earn income during school breaks.

Coachman delighted in movement as a child, constantly running, skipping, and jumping over improvised hurdles with siblings and friends. She relished winning races and leaping higher than her brothers and neighborhood boys, vowing to run faster and to clear taller obstacles whenever someone dared her. In addition to being swift, Coachman was graceful, aspiring to become a dancer. Coachman’s parents discouraged her athleticism, warning her that sports were unfeminine. Her father physically punished Coachman, hoping that would deter her from racing.

Running and jumping shoeless because track shoes cost too much, Coachman trained with the Madison High School track team, coached by Harry Lash, in 1938. The next year, she traveled with the team to Tuskegee, Alabama, to compete in the Tuskegee Relays. Coachman’s high-jump victory exceeded previous school records in that event. Her achievement captured the attention of many people, including Tuskegee Institute track coach Cleveland Abbott and women’s track coach Christine Petty, who recruited Coachman in Albany.

Life’s Work

Coachman competed with the Tuskegee track team at the 1939 summer US National Track and Field Competition in Waterbury, Connecticut. She won that meet’s high jump, a victory she repeated yearly through 1948. Coachman attended school in Albany for another scholastic year before beginning high school classes at Tuskegee in 1940. Tuskegee’s coaches developed Coachman’s innate athletic abilities. Coachman was aware of the ways in which segregation affected Tuskegee’s track team because of difficulties in securing fuel, food, and accommodations to attend meets.

After Coachman graduated from Tuskegee Institute’s high school in 1943, she started courses at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), concentrating on dressmaking. She worked on campus, cleaning athletic facilities and sewing uniforms, to pay tuition.

Coachman consistently won sprints at meets, competing in 20-meter races and anchoring Tuskegee’s 400-meter relay team. Her victories at the 1945 national meet in the 50- and 100-meter races and high jump won Coachman the trophy for the highest point total by an athlete. Coachman achieved wins in those three events again at the 1946 national competition. She also played on Tuskegee’s women’s basketball team, was designated an All-American, and won three conference titles.

In August 1946, Coachman completed Tuskegee’s trade curricula and enrolled at Albany State College (now Albany State University), joining that school’s track team, which was coached by Chris Roulhac. Preparing for the 1948 Olympic Games in London, Coachman and Roulhac trained at Tuskegee prior to the trials, where Coachman secured a place on the US women’s track team. She sailed on the SS America, which docked at Southampton, England, on July 21, 1948. In Wembley Stadium, Coachman leaped a little more than 5 feet, 6 inches, almost higher than her own height, to become the gold medalist, the first African American woman to achieve that status. She set a new Olympic record for the high jump that year, and it was not broken for another eight years.

Upon her return to Georgia, Coachman was honored as she traveled south from Atlanta to Albany. She resumed her studies to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in August 1949. Coca-Cola selected Coachman to promote its product during the 1950s. After retiring from athletics, she became an elementary and high school teacher. In 1951, she married N. F. Davis, with whom she had a daughter and a son. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she married Frank Davis in 1991. Residing in Tuskegee, she assisted Nellie Gordon Roulhac, her coach’s wife, in writing Jumping over the Moon: A Biography of Alice Coachman Davis (1993) and established the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation in 1994.

Coachman died on July 14, 2014, in Albany, Georgia, at the age of ninety. She was survived by her two children from her first marriage, Richmond and Evelyn, one grandchild, and two great-grandchildren.

Significance

At a time of entrenched racial segregation and discrimination, Coachman contributed to the civil rights movement with her outstanding athletic achievements, which caused people of all races to recognize her abilities and to consider accepting new roles for African Americans. Her athleticism affected how people perceived women competing in sports. Coachman’s successes inspired and enabled more female and African American athletes, both in immediate and later generations, to pursue their sporting goals and to challenge attitudes and restrictions based on gender and race. Coachman’s pioneering status as the first black female gold medalist and her remarkable athleticism resulted in her being inducted in the US Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.

Bibliography

"Alice Coachman (Davis)." USATF.org. USA Track & Field, n.d. Web. 17 July 2014.

Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women’s Sports. New York: Free, 1994. Print.

Coachman, Alice. Interview. "First African-American Woman to Win Gold Looks Back." Today.com. NBCNews.com, 7 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 July 2014.

Colker, David. "Alice Coachman Dies; First African American Woman to Win Olympic Gold." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 16 July 2014. Web. 17 July 2014.

Davis, Michael D. Black American Women in Olympic Track and Field: A Complete Illustrated Reference. Jefferson: McFarland, 1992. Print.

Goldstein, Richard. "Alice Coachman, 90, Dies; First Black Woman to Win Olympic Gold." New York Times. New York Times, 14 July 2014. Web. 17 July 2014.

Lansbury, Jennifer H. “’The Tuskegee Flash’ and ’The Slender Harlem Stroker’: Black Women Athletes on the Margin.” Journal of Sport History 28.3 (2001): 233–52. Print.

Liberti, Rita. “Fostering Community Consciousness: The Role of Women’s Basketball at Black Colleges and Universities, 1900–1950.” Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality on and off the Field. Ed. Charles K. Ross. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004. Print.