Black Champions; Interview with Wilma Rudolph

fb so were you well i'd written quite fair to say that a very small southern town about four fm hours north of nashville tennessee and one of the chart and they found my mother still lives there i came from a very large family and court and here's the but there's not very many words right well and the research of town trying to find that the indians although there was really a series of childhood illnesses and they began of course with scarlet fever and done in mali and the result was who had

polio that was the last finding places until i was about nine years old this week i'm going to talk about a fun aspect of it i can think about you know the one of the sisters and brothers the head is tan addition one went with it my mother or my arm they took me to the hospital so that they in turn could learn how to give me the exercises in the side is also became a household ritual that in the household of good standing nation and that everything that i needed i think that one of the thing about those truths was afoot and now bo's wife when you were young and excited about the actors making the trip so i sort of took it in stride

from the standpoint of the onus on i think the thing that was disturbing about it more than anything else was that being teased by the kids and that probably is to do well they know i really never thought about it and let my household was so positive and not so much that doctors but being a mother she always told me that one day that walk with the braces and i had begun to believe it i believe in her early life on that was just the opposite he was a lot more protected he didn't really want to take the brakes off that often so i didn't really get to take it all but dead as always david was a good form of cheating for me because it still could take it off and then they would help me in they wouldn't slide me to fold it in half before the duchess actually knew that i was taking a very small

but don't know i never was taught that i would not walk because i was surrounded by people that were positive about it well absolutely nothing about sports and that fact i didn't even know that young girls were allowed to put his fate in the world athletics is a foreign word to me i think i discovered girls and athletics i'm ballin down thirteen years old and my sister yvonne that was two years old and i was playing basketball and my first discovery was really basketball you guys go and i really thought that that i was the greatest ask about their budget waco down to reality i was a migrant this caravan with far better than i am that i lost over a winner on the black sedan but there were very young my

juniors of high school but she was terrific and i was proudly second there's been basketball in my small high school and quite honestly there wasn't so tough and it wasn't tough because the whole aspect of acolytes his new our first why was a funding it was where i we had fun more so than anything but the discipline sawaya having the fine you continue to happen and i was actually does cover for checking on the basketball court because then now a referee of all my high school games with the world famous tepco's it with temple it is tuesday so he discovered me very young and i didn't have any experience but i took the chance i'm trying to be numbers were financed playing basketball and i think that was the incentive than needed and i went out there with a fine thing i

discovered i could be her and then as i discovered i could be her i discovered i could do those girls in my school and then from there all hours on the state your was discovered actually overdosed a blow and i discovered it was a home for me i had to vote developed a great love for something nfl for a month it was the individual aspect of that from the standpoint of of my own single performance of fun and being involved and was up to me to work to be the best and i think that i like that better than the team concept and because you know i helped there i was just learning those different concept of sport very young and i was very young when i went into tuesday night with thirteen years old when african to university and i ran with the communist taint but they ran underneath the name of tasty university clout so that actually qualified to run with you

right now from the standpoint of your average age that is that as you have to me with heisbourg so he would during the summer months so that he could take all the young girl then and our trainers them within the entire summit there and out if we were good enough he would take us to be up under an action that was the big easy get for him when this boy's this expansion track at a christian group known as any words that then he was going they thought were afghan about the wise with his accolades but i gathered that it was because the la high and i was always sixty and something an owl is the defending cameron eighteen and parents when he

first met me i'm he felt i had potential as very quick when i'm playing bass was everywhere and i could play any position that because poetry the city i love dick than not guarantee you would have thought that i was going to your eyes only one point nine miles away from home and i think every young girl there meno has the chance to go out from the camp because we couldn't resist think summer camp for the young girls in my hometown if you travel to travel with your family if you were lucky enough to make a basketball team that was the only other exposure that you had a chance to get so our cars the happiest young lady you have me i think the only disappointing thing was that i want to appear as a college student this

issue only now i was initially was a way of life it was accepted and i didn't know anything else it was wonderful to be able to be away from me you were away you whip to the powers of the grandest of the grays people you let people all over after martins he stayed and then yesterday's new york city all around the country so i'm elizabeth diversify from his temple that you could find people to talk to find people to share experiences way and always have something new chairman back to my small hometown so no i didn't think of it done one and that was a big hit education is a

question that many people have heard about the surprising though was a little more to college didn't he didn't let me know what he's doing on it of course i accepted it because those assets except all my life i may have to go to university and i didn't know how what in the back my mind always try to work toward education knowing that that aren't twenty two dozen says this that i was the phrase chats have a chance to go to school and at the

grammys as that was the ability for the scholarship and that was how i thought of it and then that was a wonderful experience with my children that i have four have to wonder to god i'm behind name our oldest daughter she never tasted it were say of course that the first don't always was on monday now the second all lays at indiana university perdue and expenses and then different from both of them but they share the concept of how and points the father was a ceo tennant that university and my youngest daughter feeling that it didn't it wasn't as important as she attended university because she's always been saying a situation so it's interesting when you compare the two firms tampon down philosophies and their expenses but i would say for me it was the grandest thing that ever happened yes yes

but the inmate is so great the programs in the south was that we had extensive programs and basketball and track them all black but they weren't really good point and we travel around the state and to see one of the stated tacey i even drought has forced to ski alabama to then relays on and jess high school game experiences on desegregation situation was great for us because without it isn't the world from everywhere you ought to produce the best that i was always enjoyed that was just the opposite manners die down witnesses state university because that related to the exposure on being in integrated situation for the first time why was it or was it was the agency's failures to see

you know not just competing with awe i think that so i've always defiant segregated aspect of to say i think i always did things that wasn't supposed to deliver the silence that is there was a note to the opposite doe eyed when the door that we're not supposed to go on i think it was always a challenge on things taste an awful lot for me after the workers were before that i would that i would not think that i was not supposed to do this because i was a black girl i would do anyway i think i was just like and then never suffer any consequences from defying orders on

the flambe and the kids for the first time an innovative a situation i often stay on track and fail as a small lizard was that whitney growing in most or that one i was not supposed to go into it on net wonderful people and i think that in the biggest problem was not thinking as they look for dissipating that was the piano they had brought them to tears in nineteen fifty six what to do with our grandparents asked by nicholas because i have not flown that far away from home but i was not find enough to stay home and i'll always wanted to gain expenses are many education expenses as i could get very

young and i think the grandest aspect wasn't making then when bp and then going to how why and then from there if not for the first time in my life landing in all black country which was that the food yeah let's what a wonderful experience and i was thinking like that you know to see that people run their own government and they tend to see all the police are bad everything was the weather it was what was a lot different i suffer the consequences because i was able to write in any kind of situation from stamp on the weather and the internet are strained and that was quite different and the language was different the people were different let's invite all of my life but i have not seen what is there with that car was so of course i stared as much as they did because they were

as foreign to me as i was to them if i was an american and while tears and want to know why the different calls of one of american blacks and then i didn't look like all the lights at that time it was known had been running for a long time and hours in the sun a lot so that means that i hit me and i wasn't used to the idea that every year either but down here you explain then the huge junior go back and they are sharing experiences and i think if i am unjustly to make it would've been the weather not the people they were always gray and they didn't know if i was a champion and not weigh fifty six and you know i couldn't walk down a street and sign autographs all time in bosnia for me and i think everybody saw it was to live in a dream world once and float for me being

the first time i of course i didn't think there'd be anything ever in my career that would top a birddog what was rewritten now controlled by one hundred meter relay route yes oh yes iran that raised me and the layout is if it happened yesterday because it was the first time that i was in the room wearing something i'd been eliminated on her way in and i was so upset because i was just getting my feet wet and has only at the tip of the iceberg and here i was thinking not gotten the world's only one world's great isn't going well when something and down i didn't win a thing i was eliminated in the second round so i was lucky enough to be wonderful fast is that the airspace day a producer that time saw as

anatomy lately and a wonderful person that i share that with that i'll always remember hennings in a fed ex and she was a she was the person that i love the most in the world athletics because when i met her agency state university she shared the olympic experience with me she had gone to the one thing she knew what it meant i she told me oh they said she saw in helsinki finland and i was excited that we were at night and said she was very tiny and i'm sixty but i wanted to choose narrow while i wanted to be just like her and she taught me an awful lot and she was on in relating with me and from the standpoint of teasing me at a very early age and me being able to go to the olympics with her and when something wasn't really a grandma with a mockery the australians won the race

because i don't know who was second and always remember first placer and kocher lowered their place because we are a state of america won a bronze medal we review oh no i was excited all those gazing when play with me as i can show when i get back all but wasn't teased me when i wore a brace i used to think my goodness now i have something to show for all accomplishment when i did that almost is an improvement in the very sorry of course after that then as quickly as i return to my school for all those years that was the motivation behind me was sixty six years ago i mean you're always flying

there's never a moment that you know cried and i think the thing that most of the five away was my coach was the olympic host that year my coach from tennessee state university and that is history and with him being with me i never had to leave him from the moment i started with him at thirteen years old so that was my first place and i think i just didn't believe it although i believe it is are the champions of nineteen eighty five will monroe summer of thirty three girls sixty seven song one on one it's fascinating mikos a template as to state that i knew it says austerity is all worth named the united states

so jealous because it's not very often then you have a chance to have a coach with that or something there so there are some very special so he was there and i had never erase any place without him sitting in the stands and that i didn't always see him or feel his presence was the most of one aspect and walking and for a lot of people and he would always stay with me into the very moment that had to go through the tunnel to get into the stadium and he rented this was viciously attacking underneath the tunnel into the stadium i can look and say yeah and that was all i needed i mean that was the motivation that i needed and i think the first one you have to be mentally tough and the sponges have to be mentally talk all the time because it's something that is not planned you can work a lifetime and it might never happen but being mentally tough means that you want to go back

again and again and again and again to accomplish that and knowing that he was there on air force one being mentally tough on me so that means that a little bit by the time i got over to this timeline what is it that i think every sprinter then goes to this line that moment is afraid of losing that is always day but the fear that is a pit of the stomach it is more of the numbers reaction that anything else if it is not there for me that is a day that i because there's no agenda what is in there i know that one target that i'm listening there to have that king since looking for that

listing for that sound and i always had the worst are in the history of any spread ten because of my size and how the tortoise printer that ever came to the ice day and everything was all so by the time you really get it down pat i never mastered it it always matched at me and if you watch any american kids my first period of twenty five yards i was never in the race so i was always having to have a theory of what the iraqi citizens well done and i could always excel right in the end and that was the key to the success is never the store and i always now when i say that because they always taught from the standpoint of a champion my philosophy is though is there a true champion and is never able to

master but he or she's always unwilling to contain to try to master it and that is separate we were working with it was the first time in the history of the united states of america and still now the only time that for young girls from one university represent the united states in their air i had started with not the hudson this dive in the later we both we start with a template over thirteen years ago i'm bobby jones and lucinda williams i'm only do they still became an indie band we were sort of odd the neophyte sensei of that it so we had worked together for years and never ended all of the same

positions that you saw on television but push to put what every young girl to be able to pass every time and to receiving end of that day he had put together a combination we won the national championship with that same combination and we listened and i had been pressing for years for the time i always it was the first time i was lackadaisical i did take office there's a fresh air my man was not totally on what i was doing and she missed my hand the first we had a also will wobbled air and you saw slows down a couple seconds admit that i had to get out that that was a better runner from the time that i was being out in front so i enjoy the idea of being a big ticket yeah just do

that the concern was then the time because you just can't go any place without it i've never had a concern about what allocate her even if it's a half a centimeter what she can't her and you know he had the race i had that same feeling when i retire in the last race that iran it was funny high and i said that day that we have this as history you should retire it was palo alto california stanford university russia versus the united states and i have decided i i was writing well but i was the heart wasn't there anymore i mean what do you do when you win all of it today to keep yourself motivated you have to be a lonely hungry to be their state

and to stay on top that thing the most difficult thing was you get to the top and staying there that kind is the easiest option state and there is the most difficult thing that you've ever had to accomplish and this particular day and looked staff and you always think well as their star you know was that as dai that's ok she's gonna catch her in the terrine and by the time that the times as one of the event i can have and then when they passed the next time i said well by the time they get to the next person who'll be a mob albeit one step ahead and attorney got to me i saw that when behind and the massive of a promise that day as a gift if you guys the russian its history retire if you do not test the russian you have to another four years for the olympics and

tokyo to pay and i caught the russian i retired he became history it was the fastest single race that i've ever and history my career and to get a standing ovation and our own country outdoors which had never had before i think instagram this moment in my career i retired that day and i have never regretted i say the most important aspect that anything that one wants to be is that they have to be legal firth as long as they believe it and start working toward it then they can walk away with whatever happens and feel good about what of the accomplishment is i also let them know that most important aspect of being in the world athletics is being able to trade

it for a sound solid education the key is education and you build a foundation to gather you have made because you take that discipline and their determination that comes from the world's war and you apply it to the world of education and works for young people and that is what we advocated one recommendation so i won't do that i wonder if we're supporting a wonderfully is with the very large family of twenty two children and behind the twentieth of twenty two children a lot of them were because they could take to pay an additional i love all our determination came out of that for me and i didn't go quite different from most kids i grew up with the series of childhood illnesses

on the beginning for me was scarlet fever on i mean long in the end result of polio and i wore braces until i was nine years old i mean i think the more difficult moments going out was being teased and that piece and then not being accepted to play and loathing that one wants to do more now but then we have a large family like that you're protected i think i regret at missing my first two years of school because i had a homebound teacher so i was afraid to be out like the average found out i was overly protective father