Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Alice Coachman Was the First Black Woman to Win an Olympic Gold Medal

Did you know that the first Black woman from any country to win an Olympic gold medal was an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and a champion at a historically Black university in Alabama? Her name was Alice Coachman, and in 1948 she leaped into history.

Alice Coachman was born on November 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia. As a girl in the segregated South, she was denied access to proper training facilities, so she practiced by running on dirt roads and jumping over ropes and sticks she rigged up herself. Her talent could not be contained. She earned a place at Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, the historically Black institution in Alabama, where she became one of the most dominant athletes in the country.

Competing under coach Cleve Abbott, Coachman was unstoppable. As Encyclopedia of Alabama records, she won ten straight national high jump championships between 1939 and 1948, along with dozens of sprint titles, powering Tuskegee’s track squad to national dominance. She graduated from Tuskegee in 1946 and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Albany State College, another historically Black school, in 1949.

Her defining moment came at the 1948 London Olympic Games. According to the National Women’s History Museum, Coachman cleared 5 feet 6⅛ inches on her first attempt in the high jump, setting an Olympic record and becoming the first Black woman from any nation to win an Olympic gold medal. She was also the only American woman to win a gold medal at those Games.

Coachman’s influence reached beyond the track. In 1952, she became the first Black female athlete to endorse an international consumer brand when she signed with Coca-Cola. She was later inducted into nine halls of fame, including the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, and in 1994 she founded the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation to support young athletes.

The Divine Nine honored her legacy as well. In 1998, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. bestowed honorary membership upon her, placing her among a distinguished group of honorary members that includes Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Maya Angelou. As Alpha Kappa Alpha noted upon her passing, its international president remembered her as a “treasured athletic pioneer who paved the way” for the Black women Olympians who came after her.

Alice Coachman died on July 14, 2014, at the age of 90. From the dirt roads of Georgia to the winner’s podium in London, she opened the door for every Black woman who has since chased Olympic gold.