Wilma Rudolph

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Wilma Rudolph, 1961. (credit: AP)

(born June 23, 1940, St. Bethlehem, Tenn., U.S.died Nov. 12, 1994, Brentwood, Tenn.) U.S. sprinter. She was a sickly child who wore an orthopedic shoe until she was 11. She matured into an excellent basketball player and sprinter in high school and at Tennessee State University. At the 1960 Olympics in Rome she won the 100-m and 200-m dashes and was a member of the winning 4 100-m relay team. She became the first American woman to win three track-and-field gold medals in a single Olympics.

For more information on Wilma Glodean Rudolph, visit Britannica.com.

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Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994) became the first American woman runner to win three gold medals in the Olympic games.

Wilma Rudolph made history in the 1960 Summer Olympic games in Rome, Italy, when she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in the track and field competition. (At those same Olympic games, Rafer Johnson, winner of a silver medal at the 1956 Olympics and a gold medal at the 1959 Pan American Games for the decathlon, won a gold medal for the same event and was the first African American to carry the American flag during the opening ceremony.) Rudolph's brilliant accomplishments were all the more remarkable because she came from modest circumstances and endured a childhood of sickness and disability. Prior to her death on November 12, 1994, Rudolph was still busy coaching underprivileged children and encouraging minority interest in amateur athletics. "It's a good feeling to know that you have touched the lives of so many young people," the mother of four told the Chicago Tribune. "I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself."

Rudolph's confidence may have flagged at times in her childhood, when it seemed she might spend a lifetime in leg braces or even a wheelchair. Through the efforts of her devoted family - and then her own steely determination to strengthen herself - she rose from disability to Olympic glory. Her victories in Rome in 1960 helped to set the stage for a life dedicated to the principles and practices that helped her to succeed. "Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle," she told the Chicago Tribune. "The triumph can't be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams."

Almost every circumstance was stacked against Rudolph from the day she was born on June 23, 1940. Her family was very large. Ed Rudolph had eleven children by a first marriage. His second marriage yielded eight more, of which Wilma was the fifth. At birth she weighed only four and one-half pounds. Her mother, Blanche, a domestic, feared for Wilma's survival from the outset. The family lived in tiny St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, a farming community about 45 miles southeast of Nashville.

Shortly after Wilma was born, the Rudolphs moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee, where they lived in town. Her father worked as a porter on railroad cars, and her mother cleaned house six days a week. Older siblings helped care for the sickly baby who had come into the world prematurely.

At the age of four, Wilma contracted polio. The disease weakened her and made her vulnerable to pneumonia and scarlet fever. She survived the illnesses, but she lost the use of her left leg. Specialists in Nashville recommended a routine of massage for the limb, and Mrs. Rudolph learned it and taught it to some of the older children. Thus, Wilma's legs were massaged a number of times each day, helping her to regain strength. Medical history aside, she was a normal child. "When I was about 5, I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get my [leg] braces off," she told the Chicago Tribune."And you see, when you come from a large wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals, especially when you don't want your parents knowing them. I would take off my braces, then station my brothers and sisters all through the house and they would tell me if my parents were coming and then I'd hurry and put the braces back on."

Once a week - on her day off - Blanche Rudolph would drive her daughter 45 miles to Nashville for physical therapy. The long drive provided Wilma with chances to daydream about her future, but the outlook was grim. "I would visualize myself in this gigantic white house on the hill and being married and having children," she said in the Chicago Tribune. "But as I began to understand life, those dreams vanished very quickly."

Staged a Comeback from Physical Disability

After five years of treatment, Wilma one day stunned her doctors when she removed her leg braces and walked by herself. She had been practicing - with the help of those siblings - for quite some time. Soon she was able to walk even better with the help of a supportive shoe. This she wore until she was eleven. After that, she not only left braces and orthopedic shoes behind, she confounded every prediction that she would be a disabled adult. Soon she was joining her brothers and sisters in basketball games in the Rudolph backyard and running street races against other children her age. "By the time I was 12," she told the Chicago Tribune, "I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything."

Rudolph desperately wanted to play high school basketball, but she simply could not convince the coach to put her on the team. When she finally worked up the nerve to ask him for a tryout, he agreed to coach her privately for ten minutes each morning. Still she was cut in her freshman year. She finally earned a position on the roster at Burt High School in Clarksville because the coach wanted her older sister to play. Her father agreed to allow the sibling onto the team only if Wilma could be on it too.

Rudolph soon blossomed into a fine basketball player. As a sophomore she scored 803 points in 25 games, a new state record for a player on a girls' basketball team. She also started running in track meets and found that her greatest strengths lay in the sprint. She was only fourteen when she attracted the attention of Ed Temple, the women's track coach at Tennessee State University. Temple told her she had the potential to become a great runner, and during the summer recesses from high school she trained with him and the students at Tennessee State.

The Olympic Games were a far-off dream to a young black woman in Tennessee. She was a teenager before she even learned what the Olympics were. Rudolph caught on fast, though. In four seasons of high school track meets, she never lost a race. At the tender age of sixteen, she qualified for the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and came home with a bronze medal. Rudolph told the Chicago Tribune: "I remember going back to my high school this particular day with the bronze medal and all the kids that I disliked so much or I thought I disliked … put up this big huge banner: 'Welcome Home Wilma.' And I forgave them right then and there…. They passed my bronze medal around so that everybody could touch, feel and see what an Olympic medal is like. When I got it back, there were handprints all over it. I took it and I started shining it up. I discovered that bronze doesn't shine. So, I decided I'm going to try this one more time. I'm going to go for the gold."

Rudolph entered Tennessee State University in the fall of 1957, with a major in elementary education. All of her spare time was consumed by running, however. The pace took its toll, and she found herself too ill to run through most of the 1958 season. She rebounded in 1959, only to pull a muscle at a crucial meet between the United States and the Soviet Union in Philadelphia. Ed Temple, who would prove to be a life-long friend, supervised her recovery and by 1960 Rudolph was ready to go to Rome.

Rudolph was not the first black woman to receive an Olympic gold medal: that distinction goes to Alice Coachman-Davis, who took first place in the high jump at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, England. A dozen years later at the 1960 Olympics, Rudolph won all three of her gold medals in very dramatic fashion. In both the 100-meter dash and the 200-meter dash, she finished at least three yards in front of her closest competitor. She tied the world record in the 100-meter and set a new Olympic record in the 200. Rudolph also brought her 400-meter relay team from behind to win the gold. The French called her "La Gazelle." Without question, Rudolph's achievements at the 1960 Olympic Games remain a stand-out performance in the history of Olympic competition.

The Price of Fame

Wilma Rudolph became an instant celebrity in Europe and America. Crowds gathered wherever she was scheduled to run. She was given ticker tape parades, an official invitation to the White House by president John F. Kennedy, and a dizzying round of dinners, awards, and television appearances. Rudolph remembered in Ebony magazine that the royal treatment she received was rather shallow - she was treated like a star, but not given the money to live like one. Today, beautiful young women athletes can count on endorsements for commercial products and hefty fees for personal appearances. That was not so in Rudolph's era, especially for a black athlete. She told Ebony: "You become world famous and you sit with kings and queens, and then your first job is just a job. You can't go back to living the way you did before because you've been taken out of one setting and shown the other. That becomes a struggle and makes you struggle."

Rudolph made one decision that she stuck to firmly: she refused to participate in the 1964 Olympic games. She felt that she might not be able to duplicate her achievement of 1960, and she did not want to appear to be fading. She retired from amateur athletics in 1963, finished her college work, and became a school teacher and athletic coach. She also became a mother, raising four children on her own after divorcing two husbands.

Talent Didn't Go to Waste

For more than two decades, Wilma Rudolph sought to impart the lessons she learned about amateur athletics to other young men and women. She was the author of an autobiography, Wilma, that was published in 1977 - and the subject of a television movie based on the book. She lectured in every part of America and even served in 1991 as an ambassador to the European celebration of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Rudolph helped to open and run inner city sports clinics and served as a consultant to university track teams. She also founded her own organization, the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, dedicated to promoting amateur athletics.

"I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back," Rudolph told Ebony. "I've always been positive no matter what happened." Rudolph added that she has always believed in herself and her abilities, and that the phrase "I can't" never applied to her.

Rudolph was a member of the United States Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. She traveled frequently and was well known for her motivational speeches to youngsters. "I love working with kids. It's the motherly instinct in me," she told Newsday. And in an interview with Ebony, Rudolph claimed that her moment of Olympic glory "sort of sent my way all the other positive things and feelings that I've had. That one accomplishment - what happened in 1960 - nobody can take from me. It was something I worked for. It wasn't something somebody handed to me."

Asked what she felt was her greatest achievement, Rudolph looked past 1960 to all the work she had done since. "My thoughts about my life, my great moment, if I left the Earth today, would be knowing that I have tried to give something to young people," she commented in the Chicago Tribune. "Hopefully, for the first time, I'm beginning to see that young black women in America are making a large contribution in sports. The impression is that together we can make a first. And that makes me very happy."

On November 12, 1994, Wilma Rudolph died at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee of a malignant brain tumor. She is survived by two sons, two daughters, six sisters, and two brothers.

Further Reading

Rust, Edna, and Art Rust Jr., Art Rust's Illustrated History of the Black Athlete, Doubleday, 1985.

Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1989.

Ebony, February 1984; January 1992.

Jet, February 2, 1987.

Newsday, October 14, 1990.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), August 18, 1991.

Time, September 19, 1960.

Upscale, October/November 1992.

USA Today, July 17, 1996.

Detroit Free Press, November 13, 1994.

olympic athlete; track and field coach

Personal Information

Born Wilma Glodean Rudolph, June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, TN; daughter of Ed (a railroad porter) and Blanche (a domestic) Rudolph; married William Ward (a runner), 1961 (divorced); married Robert Eldridge (divorced); children: four.
Education: Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University (now Tennessee State University), B.A., c. 1963.

Career

Amateur athlete, 1956-63; competed in track and field events at the Summer Olympic Games, 1956 and 1960; teacher, track coach, and consultant to civic and university athletic programs, 1963--. Founder of Wilma Rudolph Foundation, a nonprofit organization for amateur athletics in Indianapolis, IN. Has made numerous lecture tours and good-will appearances. Author of autobiography Wilma, 1977.

Life's Work

Wilma Rudolph made history in the 1960 Summer Olympic games in Rome, Italy, when she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in the track and field competition. Rudolph's brilliant accomplishments were all the more remarkable because she came from modest circumstances and endured a childhood of sickness and disability. The sprightly Rudolph is still busy today coaching underprivileged children and encouraging minority interest in amateur athletics. "It's a good feeling to know that you have touched the lives of so many young people," the mother of four told the Chicago Tribune. "I tell them that the most important aspect is to be yourself and have confidence in yourself."

Rudolph's confidence may have flagged at times in her childhood, when it seemed she might spend a lifetime in leg braces or even a wheelchair. Through the efforts of her devoted family--and then her own steely determination to strengthen herself--she rose from disability to Olympic glory. Her victories in Rome in 1960 helped to set the stage for a life dedicated to the principles and practices that helped her to succeed. "Believe me, the reward is not so great without the struggle," she told the Chicago Tribune. "The triumph can't be had without the struggle. And I know what struggle is. I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women have a chance to reach their dreams."

Almost every circumstance was stacked against Rudolph from the day she was born. Her family was very large indeed. Ed Rudolph had eleven children by a first marriage. His second marriage yielded eight more, of which Wilma was the fifth. At birth she weighed only four and one-half pounds. Her mother, Blanche, a domestic, feared for Wilma's survival from the outset. The family lived in tiny St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, a farming community about 45 miles southeast of Nashville.

Shortly after Wilma was born, the Rudolphs moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee, where they lived in town. Her father worked as a porter on railroad cars, and her mother cleaned house six days a week. Older siblings helped care for the sickly baby who had come into the world prematurely.

At the age of four, Wilma contracted polio. The disease weakened her and made her vulnerable to pneumonia and scarlet fever. She survived the illnesses, but she lost the use of her left leg. Specialists in Nashville recommended a routine of massage for the limb, and Mrs. Rudolph learned it and taught it to some of the older children. Thus, Wilma's legs were massaged a number of times each day, helping her to regain strength. Medical history aside, she was a normal child. "When I was about 5, I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to get my [leg] braces off," she told the Chicago Tribune. "And you see, when you come from a large wonderful family, there's always a way to achieve your goals, especially when you don't want your parents knowing them. I would take off my braces, then station my brothers and sisters all through the house and they would tell me if my parents were coming and then I'd hurry and put the braces back on."

Once a week--on her day off--Blanche Rudolph would drive her daughter 45 miles to Nashville for physical therapy. The long drive provided Wilma with chances to daydream about her future, but the outlook was grim. "I would visualize myself in this gigantic white house on the hill and being married and having children," she said in the Chicago Tribune. "But as I began to understand life, those dreams vanished very quickly."

After five years of treatment, Wilma one day stunned her doctors when she removed her leg braces and walked by herself. She had been practicing--with the help of her siblings--for quite some time. Soon she was able to walk even better with the help of a supportive shoe. This she wore until she was eleven. After that, she not only left braces and orthopedic shoes behind, she confounded every prediction that she would be a disabled adult. Soon she was joining her brothers and sisters in basketball games in the Rudolph backyard and running street races against other children her age. "By the time I was 12," she told the Chicago Tribune, "I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything."

Rudolph desperately wanted to play high school basketball, but she simply could not convince the coach to put her on the team. When she finally worked up the nerve to ask him for a tryout, he agreed to coach her privately for ten minutes each morning. Still she was cut in her freshman year. She finally earned a position on the roster at Burt High School in Clarksville because the coach wanted her older sister to play. Her father agreed to allow the sibling onto the team only if Wilma could be on it too.

Rudolph soon blossomed into fine basketball player. As a sophomore she scored 803 points in 25 games, a new state record for a player on a girls' basketball team. She also started running in track meets and found that her greatest strengths lay in the sprint. She was only fourteen when she attracted the attention of Ed Temple, the women's track coach at Tennessee State University. Temple told her she had the potential to become a great runner, and during the summer recesses from high school she trained with him and the students at Tennessee State.

The Olympic Games were a far-off dream to a young black woman in Tennessee. She was a teenager before she even learned what the Olympics were. Rudolph caught on fast, though. In four seasons of high school track meets, she never lost a race. At the tender age of sixteen, she qualified for the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and came home with a bronze medal. Rudolph told the Chicago Tribune: "I remember going back to my high school this particular day with the bronze medal and all the kids that I disliked so much or I thought I disliked ... put up this big huge banner: 'Welcome Home Wilma.' And I forgave them right then and there.... They passed my bronze medal around so that everybody could touch, feel and see what an Olympic medal is like. When I got it back, there were handprints all over it. I took it and I started shining it up. I discovered that bronze doesn't shine. So, I decided I'm going to try this one more time. I'm going to go for the gold."

Rudolph entered Tennessee State University in the fall of 1957, with a major in elementary education. All of her spare time was consumed by running, however. The pace took its toll, and she found herself too ill to run through most of the 1958 season. She rebounded in 1959, only to pull a muscle at a crucial meet between the United States and the Soviet Union in Philadelphia. Ed Temple supervised her recovery--the two are still friends today--and by 1960 Rudolph was ready to go to Rome.

Rudolph was not the first black woman to receive an Olympic gold medal: that distinction goes to Alice Coachman-Davis, who took first place in the high jump at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, England. A dozen years later at the 1960 Olympics, Rudolph won all three of her gold medals in very dramatic fashion. In both the 100-meter dash and the 200-meter dash, she finished at least three yards in front of her closest competitor. She tied the world record in the 100-meter and set a new Olympic record in the 200. Rudolph also brought her 400-meter relay team from behind to win the gold. The French called her "La Gazelle." Without question, Rudolph's achievements at the 1960 Olympic Games remain a stand-out performance in the history of Olympic competition.

Wilma Rudolph became an instant celebrity in Europe and America. Mobs gathered wherever she was scheduled to run. She was given ticker tape parades, an official invitation to the White House by president John F. Kennedy, and a dizzying round of dinners, awards, and television appearances. Rudolph remembered in Ebony magazine that the royal treatment she received was rather shallow--she was treated like a star, but not given the money to live like one. Today, beautiful young women athletes can count on endorsements for commercial products and hefty fees for personal appearances. That was not so in Rudolph's era, especially for a black athlete. She told Ebony: "You become world famous and you sit with kings and queens, and then your first job is just a job. You can't go back to living the way you did before because you've been taken out of one setting and shown the other. That becomes a struggle and makes you struggle."

Rudolph made one decision that she stuck to firmly: she refused to participate in the 1964 Olympic games. She felt that she might not be able to duplicate her achievement of 1960, and she did not want to appear to be fading. She retired from amateur athletics in 1963, finished her college work, and became a school teacher and athletic coach. She also became a mother, raising four children on her own after divorcing two husbands.

For more than two decades, Wilma Rudolph has sought to impart the lessons she learned about amateur athletics to other young men and women. She is the author of an autobiography, Wilma, that was published in 1977--and the subject of a television movie based on the book. She has lectured in every part of America and even served in 1991 as an ambassador to the European celebration of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Rudolph has helped to open and run inner city sports clinics and has served as a consultant to university track teams. She also founded her own organization, the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, dedicated to promoting amateur athletics.

"I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back," Rudolph told Ebony. "I've always been positive no matter what happened." Rudolph added that she has always believed in herself and her abilities, and that the phrase "I can't" never applied to her.

Rudolph is a member of the United States Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. Today she lives in Indianapolis but still travels frequently and is well known for her motivational speeches to youngsters. "I love working with kids. It's the motherly instinct in me," she told Newsday. And in an interview with Ebony, Rudolph claimed that her moment of Olympic glory "sort of sent my way all the other positive things and feelings that I've had. That one accomplishment--what happened in 1960--nobody can take from me. It was something I worked for. It wasn't something somebody handed to me."

Asked what she feels is her greatest achievement, Rudolph looked past 1960 to all the work she has done since. "My thoughts about my life, my great moment, if I left the Earth today, would be knowing that I have tried to give something to young people," she commented in the Chicago Tribune. "Hopefully, for the first time, I'm beginning to see that young black women in America are making a large contribution in sports. The impression is that together we can make a first. And that makes me very happy."

Awards

Bronze medal, 1956 Olympics; gold medals in 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and 400-meter relay, all during 1960 Olympics; James E. Sullivan Memorial Trophy, 1961; member of U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and National Track and Field Hall of Fame.

Further Reading

Books

• Rust, Edna, and Art Rust Jr., Art Rust's Illustrated History of the Black Athlete, Doubleday, 1985.

• Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1989.
• Ebony, February 1984; January 1992.
• Jet, February 2, 1987.
• Newsday, October 14, 1990.
• Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), August 18, 1991.
• Time, September 19, 1960.
• Upscale, October/November 1992.

— Mark Kram

Bibliography

See her autobiography, Wilma (1978).

Quotes:

"It doesn't matter what you're trying to accomplish. It's all a matter of discipline. I was determined to discover what life held for me beyond the inner-city streets."

"I'm in my prime. There's no goal too far, no mountain too high."

"My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces."

Olympic medalist
Medal record
Women's athletics
Gold	1960 Rome	100 m
Gold	1960 Rome	200 m
Gold	1960 Rome	4 x 100 m relay
Bronze	1956 Melbourne	4 x 100 m relay

Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American athlete. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960.

In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games.^[1] A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. She is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali, Rudolph became an international star due to the first international television coverage of the Olympics that year.^[2]

The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado," the fastest woman on earth.^[3] The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Negra ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").^[4][5] She is one of the most famous Tennessee State University Tigerbelles, the name of the TSU women's track and field program.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Awards and honors 3 Career and family 4 Death 4.1 Legacy 5 Resources 6 References 7 External links

Biography

Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 lbs., the 20th of 22 siblings, and caught infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) as a very young child. She recovered, but wore a brace on her left leg and foot which had become twisted as a result. By the time she was twelve years old, she had also survived scarlet fever, whooping cough, chickenpox, and measles. Her family drove her regularly from Clarksville, Tennessee, to Nashville, Tennessee for treatments to straighten her twisted leg. She also had to have a leg brace on for three years (6 to 9).

Wilma Rudolph at the finish line during 50 yard dash at track meet in Madison Square Garden, 1961

In 1952, 12-year-old Rudolph finally achieved her dream of shedding her handicap and becoming like other children. Her older sister was on a basketball team, and Wilma vowed to follow in her footsteps. While in high school, Rudolph was on the basketball team when she was spotted by Tennessee State track and field coach Edward S. Temple. Being discovered by Temple was a major break for a young athlete. The day he saw the tenth grader for the first time, he knew he had found a natural athlete. Rudolph had already gained some track experience on Burt High School's track team two years before, mostly as a way to keep busy between basketball seasons.^[6]

While attending Burt High School, Rudolph became a basketball star setting state records for scoring and leading her team to the state championship. By the time she was 16, she earned a berth on the U.S. Olympic track and field team and came home from the 1956 Melbourne Games with an Olympic bronze medal in the 4 x 100 m relay.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome she won three Olympic titles: the 100 m, 200 m and the 4 x 100 m relay. As the temperature climbed toward 110 degrees, 80,000 spectators jammed the Stadio Olimpico. Rudolph ran the 100-meter dash in an impressive 11 seconds flat. However the time was not credited as a world record, because it was wind-aided. She also won the 200-meter dash in 23.2 seconds, a new Olympic record. After these wins, she was being hailed throughout the world as "the fastest woman in history". Finally, on September 11, 1960, she combined with Tennessee State teammates Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams and Barbara Jones to win the 400-meter relay in 44.5 seconds, setting a world record. Rudolph had a special, personal reason to hope for victory—to pay tribute to Jesse Owens, the celebrated American athlete who had been her inspiration, also the star of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, Germany.^[7]

Rudolph retired from track competition in 1962 at age 22 after winning two races at a U.S.–Soviet meet.

In 1963, Wilma married her high school sweetheart, Robert Eldridge, with whom she had four children: Yolanda (1958), Djuanna (1964), Robert Jr. (1965), and Xurry (1971). They later divorced.

Awards and honors

Rudolph was United Press Athlete of the Year 1960 and Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year for 1960 and 1961. Also in 1961, the year of her father's death, Rudolph won the James E. Sullivan Award, an award for the top amateur athlete in the United States, and visited President John F. Kennedy.^[8]

She was voted into the National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1973^[9] and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974.^[10]

She was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983, honored with the National Sports Award in 1993, and inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.^[11]

In 1994, the portion of U. S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee between the Interstate 24 exit 4 in Clarksville to the Red River (Lynnwood-Tarpley) bridge near the Kraft Street intersection was renamed to honor Wilma Rudolph.

Career and family

In 1963, Rudolph was granted a full scholarship to Tennessee State University where she received her bachelor's degree in elementary education. After her athletic career, Rudolph worked as a teacher at Cobb Elementary School, coaching track at Burt High School, and became a sports commentator on national television.

She married her high school sweetheart Robert Eldridge in 1963, and had four children: Yolanda (b. 1958), Djuanna (b. 1964), Robert Jr. (b. 1965) and Xurry (b. 1971). Rudolph and Eldridge later divorced.

Death

In July 1994, shortly after her mother’s death, Rudolph was diagnosed with brain cancer. On November 12, 1994, at age 54, she died of cancer in her home in Nashville. At the time of her death, she had four children, eight grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.^[12] Thousands of mourners filled Tennessee State University's Kean Hall on November 17, 1994, for the memorial service in her honor. Others attended the funeral at Clarksville's First Baptist Church. Across Tennessee, the state flag flew at half-mast.

Nine months after Rudolph's death, Tennessee State University, on August 11, 1995, dedicated its new six-story dormitory the "Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center." A black marble marker was placed on her grave in Clarksville's Foster Memorial Garden Cemetery by the Wilma Rudolph Memorial Commission on November 21, 1995. In 1997, Governor Don Sundquist proclaimed that June 23 be known as "Wilma Rudolph Day" in Tennessee.^[13]

Legacy

In 1994, Wilma Rudolph Boulevard was the name given to the portion of U.S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee.

The Woman's Sports Foundation Wilma Rudolph Courage Award is presented to a female athlete who exhibits extraordinary courage in her athletic performance, demonstrates the ability to overcome adversity, makes significant contributions to sports and serves as an inspiration and role model to those who face challenges, overcomes them and strives for success at all levels. This award was first given in 1996 to Jackie Joyner-Kersee.^[14]

A life-size bronze statue of Rudolph stands at the southern end of the Cumberland River Walk at the base of the Pedestrian Overpass, College Street and Riverside Drive, in Clarksville.^[15]

In 2000 Sports Illustrated magazine ranked Rudolph as number one in its listing of the top fifty greatest sports figures in twentieth-century Tennessee.^[16]

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Berlin in 1994, Berlin American High School (BAHS) was turned over to the people of Berlin and became the "Gesamtschule Am Hegewinkel." The school was renamed the "Wilma Rudolph Oberschule" in her honor in the summer 2000.^[17]

On July 14, 2004, the United States Postal Service issued a 23 cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in recognition of her accomplishments.

In 1977 a docudrama titled Wilma or The Story of Wilma Rudolph was produced by Bud Greenspan.

Resources

• Biracee, Tom. Wilma Rudolph, Holloway House Publishing Company; (June 1990) – ISBN 0-87067-565-6
• Braun, Eric. Wilma Rudolph, Capstone Press, (2005) – ISBN 0-7368-4234-9
• Coffey, Wayne R. Wilma Rudolph, Blackbirch Press, (1993) – ISBN 1-56711-004-5
• Conrad, David. Stick to It!: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, Compass Point Books (August 2002) – ISBN 0-7565-0384-1
• Harper, Jo. Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Runner (Childhood of Famous Americans), Aladdin (January 6, 2004) – ISBN 0-606-29739-1
• Krull, Kathleen. Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman, Harcourt * Children's Books; Library Binding edition (April 1, 1996) – ISBN 0-15-201267-2
• Maraniss, David. Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World, Simon & Schuster, (2008) – ISBN 1-4165-3408-3
• Ruth, Amy. Wilma Rudolph, Lerner Publications (February 2000) – ISBN 0-8225-4976-X
• Schraff, Anne E. Wilma Rudolph: The Greatest Woman Sprinter in History, Enslow Publishers, (2004) – ISBN 0-7660-2291-9
• Sherrow, Victoria. Wilma Rudolph (On My Own Biographies), Carolrhoda Books (April 2000) – ISBN 1-57505-246-6
• Smith, Maureen Margaret. Wilma Rudolph: A Biography, Greenwood Press, (2006) – ISBN 0-313-33307-6
• Streissguth, Tom. Wilma Rudolph, Turnaround Publisher, (2007) – ISBN 0-8225-6693-1

References

1. ^ Rome, 1960, Games of the XVII Olympiad Photo Gallery of Wilma Rudolph^{[dead link]}
2. ^ Ruth, Amy, “Wilma”, 2000, Lerner: New York ISBN 0-4056-2239-7, p. 34, 61.
3. ^ Biracree, Tom. Wilma Rudolph: Champion Athlete, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, (1988)
4. ^ Biracree, Tom. p. 82
5. ^ Time Magazine, The Fastest Female, Monday, September 19, 1960
6. ^ Biracree, Tom. p. 47
7. ^ Biracree, Tom. p. 16
8. ^ "Wilma Rudolph biography". Women in History. http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/rudo-wil.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-11. 
9. ^ National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame
10. ^ National Track and Field Hall of Fame
11. ^ Women's Hall of Fame
12. ^ Smith, Maureen Margaret. Wilma Rudolph: A Biography, Greenwood Press, (2006)
13. ^ "Wilma Rudolph's Biography". http://www.wilmarudolph.net/. Retrieved 2009-02-20. 
14. ^ Wilma Rudolph Courage Award
15. ^ Wilma Rudolph Statue
16. ^ Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994) and the TSU Tigerbelles
17. ^ be.schule.de

External links

• Biography from "Women in History"
• Whitehouse Kids, Wilma Rudolph
• Sports Heros, Wilma Rudolph
• Wilma Rudolph Joins DePauw Staff
• Wilma Rudolph's story on the website of the 2008 Summer Olympics

v t e Olympic Champions in Women's 100 m 1928: Betty Robinson (USA) 1932: Stanisława Walasiewicz (POL) 1936: Helen Stephens (USA) 1948: Fanny Blankers-Koen (NED) 1952: Marjorie Jackson (AUS) 1956: Betty Cuthbert (AUS) 1960: Wilma Rudolph (USA) 1964: Wyomia Tyus (USA) 1968: Wyomia Tyus (USA) 1972: Renate Stecher (GDR) 1976: Annegret Richter (FRG) 1980: Lyudmila Kondratyeva (URS) 1984: Evelyn Ashford (USA) 1988: Florence Griffith-Joyner (USA) 1992: Gail Devers (USA) 1996: Gail Devers (USA) 2000: Vacant 2004: Yulia Nestsiarenka (BLR) 2008: Shelly-Ann Fraser (JAM)

v t e Olympic Champions in Women's 200 m 1948: Fanny Blankers-Koen (NED) 1952: Marjorie Jackson (AUS) 1956: Betty Cuthbert (AUS) 1960: Wilma Rudolph (USA) 1964: Edith McGuire (USA) 1968: Irena Szewińska (POL) 1972: Renate Stecher (GDR) 1976: Bärbel Eckert (GDR) 1980: Bärbel Eckert (GDR) 1984: Valerie Brisco-Hooks (USA) 1988: Florence Griffith-Joyner (USA) 1992: Gwen Torrence (USA) 1996: Marie-José Pérec (FRA) 2000: Pauline Davis-Thompson (BAH) 2004: Veronica Campbell (JAM) 2008: Veronica Campbell-Brown (JAM)

v t e Olympic Champions in Women's 4×100 m relay 1928: Canada (Rosenfeld, Smith, Bell, Cook) 1932: United States (Carew, Furtsch, Rogers, von Bremen) 1936: United States (Bland, Rogers, Robinson, Stephens) 1948: Netherlands (Stad-de Jong, Witziers-Timmer, van der Kade-Koudijs, Blankers-Koen) 1952: United States (Faggs, Jones, Moreau, Hardy) 1956: Australia (Strickland de la Hunty, Croker, Mellor, Cuthbert) 1960: United States (Hudson, Williams, Jones, Rudolph) 1964: Poland (Ciepły, Szewińska, Górecka, Kłobukowska) 1968: United States (Ferrell, Bailes, Netter, Tyus) 1972: West Germany (Krause, Mickler, Richter, Rosendahl) 1976: East Germany (Göhr, Stecher, Bodendorf, Wöckel) 1980: East Germany (Müller, Wöckel, Auerswald, Göhr) 1984: United States (Brown, Bolden, Cheeseborough, Ashford) 1988: United States (Brown, Echols, Griffith-Joyner, Ashford) 1992: United States (Ashford, Jones, Guidry, Torrence, Finn) 1996: United States (Devers, Miller, Gaines, Torrence, Guidry) 2000: Bahamas (Fynes, Sturrup, Davis-Thompson, Ferguson, Lewis) 2004: Jamaica (Lawrence, Simpson, Bailey, Campbell, McDonald) 2008: Russia (Polyakova, Fedoriva, Gushchina, Chermoshanskaya)

v t e James E. Sullivan Award winners 1930: Jones 1931: Berlinger 1932: Bausch 1933: Cunningham 1934: Bonthron 1935: Little 1936: Morris 1937: Budge 1938: Lash 1939: Burk 1940: Rice 1941: MacMitchell 1942: Warmerdam 1943: Dodds 1944: Curtis 1945: Blanchard 1946: Tucker 1947: Kelly, Jr. 1948: Mathias 1949: Button 1950: Wilt 1951: Richards 1952: Ashenfelter 1953: Lee 1954: Whitfield 1955: Dillard 1956: McCormick 1957: Morrow 1958: Davis 1959: O'Brien 1960: R. Johnson 1961: Rudolph 1962: Beatty 1963: Pennel 1964: Schollander 1965: Bradley 1966: Ryun 1967: Matson 1968: Meyer 1969: Toomey 1970: Kinsella 1971: Spitz 1972: Shorter 1973: Walton 1974: Wohlhuter 1975: Shaw 1976: Jenner 1977: Naber 1978: Caulkins 1979: Thomas 1980: Heiden 1981: Lewis 1982: Decker 1983: Moses 1984: Louganis 1985: Benoit 1986: Joyner-Kersee 1987: Abbott 1988: Griffith-Joyner 1989: Evans 1990: Smith 1991: Powell 1992: Blair 1993: Ward 1994: Jansen 1995: Baumgartner 1996: M. Johnson 1997: Manning 1998: Holdsclaw 1999: C. Miller & K. Miller 2000: Gardner 2001: Kwan 2002: Hughes 2003: Phelps 2004: Hamm 2005: Redick 2006: Long 2007: Tebow 2008: S. Johnson 2009: Palmeiro-Winters 2010: Lysacek 2011: Rodriguez

Persondata
Name	Rudolph, Wilma
Alternative names
Short description	Athletics (sport) competitor
Date of birth	June 23, 1940
Place of birth
Date of death	November 12, 1994
Place of death

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