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100 years ago, a Black long jumper made history at another Paris Olympics
The pain mounted in DeHart Hubbard’s foot as he prepared for his final jump of the 1924 Paris Olympics.
The 20-year-old was a track star from Cincinnati and one of four Black athletes representing the United States at the Games. He had clipped the takeoff board earlier in the long jump competition, causing a bruise on his heel that would linger for the next year. But July 8, 1924, before a crowd at Stade Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes, France, Hubbard had many reasons for pushing through the pain.
“I seemed to see all America gazing upon me expecting me to win, all of my race looking at me to make good and all of my family praying for my victory,” Hubbard later recounted in a 1927 book. “I made myself forget that sore heel and threw every ounce of energy that I could dig up into that last jump.”
Hubbard sprinted down the runway, launched himself off the board and landed in the history books: With a jump of 7.445 meters (24 feet 5 inches), he became the first Black athlete to win an individual gold medal. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Hubbard’s trailblazing yet unsung achievement, as well as the Olympics’ return to the city where he reached his glory.
Hubbard arrived in Paris amid a standout career as a sprinter, hurdler and jumper at the University of Michigan, where he was the only Black athlete on the track team and one of the few Black students on campus. At the time, the school’s football coach, Fielding Yost, refused to allow Black players on his team, while the basketball team wouldn’t integrate for another three decades.
Hubbard tended to downplay any issues with racism and segregation he experienced at Michigan. “I was so busy with my track … that I just didn’t have the time or the inclination to worry about these other matters,” he said in a 1970 interview.
Instead, Hubbard set out to showcase what Black people could achieve. Just before his recruitment to the U.S. Olympic team, Hubbard starred for Michigan at the Big Ten championships, winning the 100-yard dash in 9.8 seconds and adding another title in the long jump. To accommodate Hubbard’s distances, the school had to extend the size of its long jump pit.
“The term ‘Black excellence’ comes to mind in terms of his presentation,” said Hubbard’s great-granddaughter Shani Harris, who helps lead the DeHart Hubbard Legacy Group. “... He wasn’t a person who talked about struggle. He wasn’t a person who said: ‘Oh, things are really hard. We’re oppressed.’ … He was the person who said, ‘We’re excellent, and I am an example of that excellence.’”
Hubbard carried a similar mentality into his first Olympic experience. Before he and other athletes boarded a ship from Hoboken, N.J., to Paris, Hubbard spelled out his ambitions in a letter to his mother. “I’m going to do my best to be the FIRST COLORED OLYMPIC CHAMPION,” he wrote. He included two underlines of emphasis beneath the word “COLORED.”
Hubbard fulfilled his goal by battling through injury to win the long jump on his final attempt. Two Black men stood on the medal podium that day; Hubbard’s compatriot and rival Ned Gourdin jumped 7.275 meters (23 feet 10.6 inches) to win silver.
“We felt we had a responsibility not only for the Black people of America, as their unofficial representative, but also toward the kids who might … want to compete in track and field and other sports later on,” Hubbard said in the 1970 interview. “We thought that the way we conducted ourselves [at the Olympics] would have an influence.”
Among those whom Hubbard seemed to influence was Jesse Owens. As a child, Owens watched Hubbard perform at an exhibition meet. After he won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens maintained a relationship with Hubbard, delivering remarks at a 1970 dinner in his honor.
After his achievement at the 1924 Olympics, Hubbard continued to excel on the track. He returned to Michigan and tied two sprinting world records in 1925: the indoor 60-yard dash (6.2 seconds) and the outdoor 100-yard dash (9.6 seconds). At the 1925 NCAA championships, he set a new world record in the long jump with a leap of 7.89 meters (25 feet 10.75 inches).
Hubbard went on to compete once more at the Olympics in Amsterdam in 1928 before returning to Cincinnati and starting a Negro Leagues baseball team, the Cincinnati Tigers.
Otherwise, he retreated from the spotlight. He worked in Cincinnati for 15 years as a recreation director, then relocated to Cleveland to serve in the Federal Housing Authority, where he helped people of color obtain mortgages and access housing. In the 1950s, Hubbard, an avid bowler, was president of the National Bowling Association.
His own family knew little of his celebrity.
Suresha Hill remembered Hubbard not as a gold medalist but as a grandparent - someone who would come to her house in Cleveland with a dozen doughnuts and a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream, prepare homemade waffles and pancakes and take her and her brother to baseball and football games.
“He never mentioned any of his accomplishments,” Hill said. There was something floating around about his gold medal, but we really were relating to him like our grandfather.”
Hill learned of Hubbard’s achievements after his death in 1976, when she inherited a family scrapbook filled with old newspaper clippings. Today, Hubbard’s family is working to preserve his legacy and increase awareness of what he accomplished.
“Here’s this man who was really one of the greatest athletes in the world, and he’s been largely forgotten,” Harris said. “You’d be hard pressed to find people who know him off the top of their head. We want to acknowledge what he did … [as] an example of this Black excellence that goes further back than we often consider.”
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