Alice Coachman’s Story
The Black Press
Contrary to the white press, the black press generally
emphasized race in their press coverage. This meant that African American sports journalists overlooked
the fact that Coachman and other female track athletes were women participating
in a “man’s” sport in order to give press to her achievement
as an African American.
Black weeklies often gave the Tuskegee team and Coachman
headlines in the sports page, accompanied by team photos or individual shots
of the athletes in action. 
Even before Coachman became dominant in the sprints,
the Pittsburgh Courier captured a photograph of her clearing the
bar “with a spectacular leap” in the high jump at the 1941 AAU Women's
Nationals. And three years before Coachman bested Stella Walsh in the 100-meter,
the Baltimore Afro-American reported how the Tuskegee Tigerettes
won their sixth straight national championship, “paced by Alice Coachman,
national indoor and outdoor jumping champion, who captured two [sprinting]
titles in addition to running the anchor leg on the championship relay quartet.”
The black press did not completely ignore gender, however. African American sports journalists were aware of the status of women’s track and field. At times, their coverage worked to feminize female track and field athletes. This means that the press stories highlighted the athletes’ feminine qualities. For example, one feature story that the Baltimore Afro-American ran in 1941 discussed the Tigrettes’ plans after graduation. The article emphasized how the athletes were looking forward to becoming teachers, nurses, and good wives.
But the best example of the feminization of black women
athletes by the black press is a 1940 article entitled, “Tigerettes
Owe Success to Dr. Carver’s Peanut Oil.” In it, sports journalist
Levi Jolley reports the “scoop” of the team’s repeated
success—not
rigorous training or dedicated, talented athletes,
but the exclusive use of Dr. George Washington Carver’s peanut oil
as a rubbing linament to help prevent strained muscles. Such a story trivializes
the athletes’ ability by suggesting that they needed
a magic potion like peanut oil. But the story also creates other feminine,
even sensualized, images by using phrases such as “what was used for
rubbing the girls” and
discussing the added benefit derived because of the smoothness the oil gave
their skin.
What can we learn from Alice Coachman’s press story? First,
the white press relied predominantly on gender and the black press on race
to capture her career. This meant that while she was treated similarly to white
track and field athletes by white sports journalists, such treatment was substandard
to that accorded male track athletes. But the white press’s reliance
on race as a secondary category meant that Coachman’s talent as an athlete
rated a distant third when considering who would make it to the sports page.
It also meant that she received far more coverage by a black press that sought
to balance the fact that white papers overlooked or downplayed the contributions
of African Americans. But in trying to compensate for the status of women's
track and field during the 1940s, gender played an important second to race
even in the black press. As such, stories about marriage plans and peanut oil
became as important as those about athletic prowess.