Alice Coachman’s Story
Alice Coachman’s press story is an interesting one, and it gives us insight
into both gender and race of the 1940s. She was an incredible athlete, amassing
25 national championships and an Olympic gold medal. Yet neither the white
or black press chose to portray her predominantly as an athlete. This is not
to say that the press stories about Coachman ignored her athletic accomplishments.
What this section explores, though, is how relying on the categories of gender
and race to construct the press coverage could overshadow Alice Coachman, the
athlete.
The White Press
The white press of the 1940s generally constructed their
press stories in gendered terms. This means that, for one thing, since track and field was a “man’s” sport,
coverage focused more heavily on male athletes. In other words, as a female
athlete, Coachman received little attention from the white press more so because
she was a woman than an African American. In Coachman’s nine-year career, the
limited coverage of female track and field athletes by white newspapers and
magazines is pretty startling. While the white press did cover the
women’s national AAU (American Athletic Union) championships, the articles
were generally quite short and rarely accompanied by photographs of the athletes.
Male track meets, however, routinely received 1-2 page spreads and numerous
press photos.
In fact, one of the interesting things about Coachman's
coverage in the white press is how similar it was to her white competitors. Coachman and
the Tuskegee team routinely made headlines in the white papers during the 1940s,
such as the Boston Globe’s 1945 article entitled, “Tuskegee Girl Eclipses
Stella Walsh in Title Meet.” The white press eventually came to refer
to Coachman as the “Tuskegee flash” or “Tuskegee star,” similar
to the kinds of nicknames it gave white athletes.
But it is also important to understand that Coachman competed in an America before Brown v. Board of Education made segregation unconstitutional in the 1950s or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Just because the white press emphasized gender in its reporting does not mean that they completely ignored race. The following examples illustrate how race could become a factor in white press stories.
At the 1945 AAU Women’s Nationals, Coachman became a triple winner
by taking the title in the 50-meter and 100-meter sprints, as well as the
high jump. In doing so, she beat out her rival Stell Walsh in the 100-meter
after coming close the previous two years. However, the New York Times completely
ignored Coachman's achievement. The short three-paragraph article was entitled, “Miss
Walsh Wins Easliy” and covered Stella Walsh's single victory in the
200-meter. The following year, Coachman again dominated the AAU Nationals
by retaining all three of her titles. This time, the Times gave
Coachman headlines. However, the one photgraph that accompanied the article
was of the white 80-meter hurdles champion, Nancy Cowperwaite.
As we will see, Coachman received much more press from a black press that viewed her accomplishments through the lens of race.