A HISTORIC ACHIEVEMENT.

Byline: Paul Newberry Associated Press 

Alice Coachman sometimes feels like a forgotten footnote in history.

``Many times I've been to places where I'll tell them I was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal and they'll look at me like I'm crazy,'' she said, a tinge of astonishment in her voice. ``They'll say, `You won it? No, you didn't win it. It was that other girl who won it.' ''

That ``other girl'' is Wilma Rudolph, who captured three gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

``If you go any place, they'll tell that Wilma Rudolph was the first black woman to win a gold medal,'' Coachman said. ``That's not true.''

Rudolph won her medals 12 years after Coachman made history at the London Games, finishing first in the high jump with a leap of 5 feet, 6-1/4 inches. It was the culmination of an amazing story that deserves to be told again, especially since hardly anyone seems to know it.

Coachman grew up in Albany, Ga., a product of the segregated South where African-Americans and whites sipped water from separate fountains, ate in different restaurants and lived in separate parts of town. She also encountered the social inequities of being a female in the world of athletics, forced to sneak away from after-school chores to run, jump rope and play basketball with the boys.

``In my time, most of the girls didn't worry about participating in sports,'' she said. ``They had to be ladylike. All the people would say, `There goes Alice, that crazy fool, playing with them boys.' But I didn't care.''

Coachman left home as a teen-ager to learn a trade at the Tuskegee Institute, a historically African-American school in neighboring Alabama with a powerful track-and-field program. There, she broke the high school and college high-jump records - without wearing shoes - at the age of 16.

``It felt good,'' she said, chuckling at the thought of her barefoot style.

After trying out a pair of tennis shoes, she finally obtained a pair of regulation track spikes. Properly shod, she won the national amateur high-jump competition every year from 1939 to 1948, a record for consecutive victories. At some meets, she was so much better than the competition she could jump and win without even taking off her warmup suit.

Unfortunately, Coachman lost two chances at the Olympics when she was at the pinnacle of her career. She would have been a contender for gold in both 1940 and '44, but World War II made it impossible to stage the Games.

``In 1944, I was really ready,'' Coachman said. ``I had won the 50-yard dash in the national AAU six consecutive years and the 200 two years straight. I was right at my peak in 1944. I could have won at least two gold medals there, I know I could.''

By 1948, the war was over and Coachman had left Tuskegee after completing her courses in tailoring and dressmaking. She was back home in Albany, where Jim Crow laws prevented her from training on the city's white track but didn't diminish her desire to win gold.

``I had to run up and down those dirt roads, and I used to go out in this field where there was a lot of grass but it didn't have a track or anything,'' she said.

Despite the austere training arrangements, Coachman earned a spot on the Olympic team and departed for London, where the athletes were housed together on a college campus. For the first time in her life, she lived with whites, united by their talent, not divided by their color.

``It was a beautiful thing to be around that camp,'' she said, ``all these people from different countries doing their thing, singing and dancing.''

Even though her back was aching, she cleared 5-6-1/4 on her first jump to win the gold medal - and earn a permanent spot in history.

Coachman returned to a hero's welcome in Albany. There was a parade to the city auditorium, where the mayor led a segregated ceremony - African-Americans on one side of the building, whites on the other - in her honor. Local merchants presented her with gift certificates, and Coachman still has a necklace and bracelet she picked out at the jewelry store.

Afterward, she earned a degree in education from Albany State College and settled into a career teaching health and physical education. Segregation meant overcrowded classrooms and a scarcity of up-to-date equipment, but she made do. Tougher to deal with were the questions from her children, like the time her young daughter tried to take a sip of water from a white fountain.

``She asked me why she couldn't drink from the same fountain as whites,'' Coachman said. ``She told me, `All water comes from the same place, doesn't it?' ''

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Photo

Photo: Alice Coachman was the first African-American womanto win an Olympic gold medal.

Associated Press