The Athletes & Their Sports
Their Sports
(or Why Using Coachman and Gibson Make Sense)
Today, we take for granted that track and field is an accepted sport for women to compete in. But during Alice Coachman's career in the 1940s, track and field was definitely a masculine endeavor.
Women first began competing in track and field during the 1920s, and American society initially accepted them. Soon, however, P. E. leaders began criticizing female participation in the sport. Their concerns were two-fold. First, educators thought that the jarring movements required by track events put too much strain on the female body, thereby injuring women's reproductive organs. Second, experts also thought that the “masculinizing effects” of the sport would make women unfit for their feminine roles, especially motherhood.
As
a result of this thinking, many white women pulled out of track and field.
White women athletes that did remain—like Babe Didrickson and Alice Coachman’s
rival, Stella Walsh—did not
help the sport to regain acceptability because of their
working class backgrounds and “mannish” appearances. Since many
of the P. E. instructors were middle class, women’s
track and field became even further marginalized in white society.
However, track and field did not carry with it the same set of unattractive
qualitities for black women that it did for most whites. On the contrary, the
elements 
of survival and victory in the face of struggle and adversity fit
nicely into the ways in which African American women viewed themselves. As
such, many talented African American athletes emerged to fill the void created
by the exodus of white athletes.
The prowess of African American women in track and field during the 1930s and 1940s could be a double edged sword, however. Most of the athletes enjoyed personal opportunities beyond what others of their race and gender experienced, such as the excitement of competition and educational and travel opportunities. Furthermore, their achievements served as a symbol of pride for their African American community.
But the success also came at a price. White Americans often neglected them, or perhaps worse, perpetuated the negative stereotype of the black, mannish woman that was naturally suited to the role of the athlete.
While Coachman excelled in a sport that was considered unladylike and inappropriate
for women, Gibson's story was altogether different. Tennis was more associated
with “feminine” qualities and had long accepted women. Even so,
female athletes had to be careful not to play too aggressively on the court.
Otherwise, they opened themselves up to criticism for their “mannish” style
of play.
More inclusive of women than track and field, it was not, however,
more inclusive of race. Not until 1948 did the first African American play
in a major United States Lawn Tennis Assoication tournament, when Dr. Reginald
Weir played in the National Indoor Championships in New York. Moreover, the
class issues associated with tennis were perhaps more rigid than that of
track and field. Developed as a sport for the elite, tennis did not openly
welcome working class participants.
Obviously, the differences in the sports they competed in is a major reason
why Coachman and Gibson are good choices to study race and gender. But using
these two athletes also introduces the contrast of individuals raised in different
regions of the country. 
Coachman was born and educated in the Jim Crow society
of the deep south. For this Albany, Georgia, native,
“separate but equal” was an entrenched way of life. Gibson, on
the other hand, spent her formative years in Harlem. New York of the 1930s
and 1940s certainly wasn’t immune to racism. But it was different from living
in the Jim Crow south. Gibson noted the difference as she journeyed south
at the age of nineteen. Confronting the “White
in front, Colored in rear” sign
on her first bus ride in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, she remembered: “It
disgusted me, and it made me feel ashamed in a way I'd never been ashamed back
in New York.”
There is a third, equally important reason, however. It used to be that historians focused on the Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, as the beginning of the African American Civil Rights Movement. But that has changed a bit in the last ten years. Now scholars are considering the 1940s and even earlier as important, formative years in the African American struggle for civil rights. Using Alice Coachman, followed by Althea Gibson, helps us see some of the changes in American society during the important years of the 1940s and 1950s through the lens of sports.