By: Keir Simmons and Corky Siemaszko DeHart Hubbard was the first black athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event. Hubbard studied at the University of Michigan starting in 1921, and the following year he won the first of six straight AAU long jump titles. He also won the AAU triple jump in 1922 and 1923 and at the NCAA he won the 100-yard dash in 1925 and the long jump in 1923. In 1925 he set a world record of 25-10⅞ (7.89) when he took the NCAA title for a second time, and then in 1926 he confirmed his ability as a sprinter when he equalled the world re-cord of 9.6 for 100-yard dash. Although injured, DeHart Hubbard won the 1924 Olympic long jump comfortably; he was again injured in 1928 when he finished 11th. Between these two appearances he had the best mark of his career in 1927 when he jumped 26-2¼ (7.98), but the mark was not recognized as a world record, because the take-off board was one inch higher than the landing pit. In all, Hub-bard bettered 25 feet on eleven occasions and was undoubtedly the greatest jumper of the pre-Owens era. A century ago, at a small stadium just outside Paris, a college track and field star from Ohio named William DeHart Hubbard took a dramatic leap forward for him-self and for all African Americans back home in the segregated United States of America. By defeating the best long jumpers in the world at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Hubbard became the first Black athlete to win an individual gold medal at the Games. Hubbard’s nephew Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio, told NBC News his uncle recognized that he was carrying the hopes and dreams of millions of Black Americans on his muscular frame when he raced down a track toward a sand pit and leaped into history. “He wrote his mother a letter that I now have framed, and the letter simply said that he was going across the ocean to become the first Negro to win an […]

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