People : African American Women's Olympic Firsts

The first two African American females to qualify for the Olympics were Louise Stokes and Tydie Pickett. Louise Stokes and Tydie Pickett were trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama after Tuskegee organized one of the nation's first female track and field teams in 1929 and campaigned for the inclusion of its black athletes in the Olympic Games, starting with the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1932. Although, Stokes and Pickett qualified by defeating other members of their team, U.S. Olympic officials replaced Stokes and Pickett at the last minute with white team members they had previously defeated. Again, in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, U.S. Olympic officials replaced Stokes and Pickett at the last minute with white team members they had defeated in qualifying races. U.S. politics, Jim Crow laws and racist policies played as significant a role as foreign influences in both the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1936, some observer...