On this day in Alabama history: Olympic star died

July 14, 2014

Olympic Hall of Fame member Alice Coachman died on July 14, 2014, in her hometown of Albany, Georgia. She moved to Tuskegee at the age of 16, where she began a lifetime of track and field success. She won 10 consecutive national high jump championships, and 25 indoor and outdoor 50- and 100-meter national championships. She was a mainstay on Tuskegee Institute’s team that won 11 AAU titles between 1937 and 1948. The Olympics were canceled in 1940 and 1944, but despite being past her prime, Coachman set an Olympic record in the high jump during the 1948 London Olympics, marking the first gold medal for any black woman. She taught and coached for the next 35 years and was a torchbearer for the Atlanta Games in 1996. She was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1997.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Alice Coachman was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal and the first African American woman to medal in an Olympic track and field event. She began her track and field career at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Macon County. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Sports Hall of Fame)

Tuskegee Institute alumnus Alice Coachman breaks the women’s high jump record in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London with a leap of 5 feet, 6 1/8 inches. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

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