DeHart Hubbard knew of the curse that awaited him.
Hubbard was a student at the University of Michigan and is considered one of the best long jumpers in the world. Heading into the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he was America’s best hope for gold in the long jump and was favored to become the first black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal.
Hubbard began to write.
Dear Mother: Finally I’m ready to leave for Europe. It’s taken years of hard work to get this far, but I’m getting closer to my ultimate goal.
He had to hurry. The boat was about to leave for France. He turned the page and his words ran and jumped across the page, leaving no doubt whatsoever.
I will do my best to become the FIRST COLORED OLYMPIC CHAMPION.
He underlined the last four words, but made sure to underline “COLORED” twice. His impending victory would be for his people.
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Hubbard discovered his innate talent at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Word got out about the child with feathers for legs. Under the tutelage of Hunter Johnson, a pioneering black trainer in Pittsburgh, Hubbard tried to make the 1920 Olympic team. He was 16 and eager, but “trained too hard” and his body broke down. At home he started thinking about breaking the long jump world record. It became an obsession.
University of Michigan head coach Steve Farrell was widely respected. He had been a circus performer and professional runner in the 1890s and understood the demands of competing at the elite level. When Hubbard arrived in Michigan in 1921, Farrell promptly banned him from other sports and allowed him to concentrate only on jumping events. Hubbard started jumping past 7.5 meters and flirted with the world record, which stood at 2.5 meters3⁄4in (7.69 m) in 1921, and he qualified for the Paris Games in the long jump and triple jump.
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On June 16, 1924, the SS America set sail from Hoboken, New Jersey, with more than 350 athletes, coaches, trainers and officials on board. Foghorns blared and fireboats sprayed water high into the air as sunlight glinted in the mist. The dark fuselage read AMERICAN OLYMPIC TEAMS in huge white letters, easily visible from a distance. The steamship glided past the Statue of Liberty on its way to Cherbourg, France.
During the long journey – the coaches thought it was too long – Hubbard and his fellow athletes jostled for space to train. Swimmers rocked in the small canvas pool, water lapping over the sides. Runners navigated tight turns on the deck. Javelins and shots ended up in the ocean. When they arrived on June 25, teammate William Neufeld recalled that the young male athletes couldn’t wait for the “beautiful French girls” who would “greet us with flowers” and a “kiss on every cheek,” but it was raining and instead they were welcomed by a “bunch of bearded men”.
After reaching Paris, Hubbard and most of the squad ended up in a castle in Rocquencourt, near Versailles. It belonged to the fifth Prince Murat, whose ancestor had married Napoleon’s sister. Majestic chestnut and yew trees hugged winding paths. Sphinx sculptures guarded the beautiful rose gardens. It was amazing – and the team hated it.
They lived in shoddy barracks, eleven in total, made of thin cardboard. The army beds were hard, the food ‘indifferent’. Hawkers roamed the grounds, trying to sell jewelry to athletes during their workouts. To reach the Olympic stadium in Colombes, they were forced to ride through Paris’ heavy traffic jams on ‘hard-tire buses’, bumping and rattling along rough cobbled roads covered in dust. The journey took an hour, sometimes longer, and was miserable.
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During training in the Olympic Stadium Some runners complained about the soft court surface and the “cupping” that occurred because their feet sank too much. During the long jump, Hubbard noticed something strange. The starting board was backwards. The worn, curved edge faced the pit and the sharp edge now faced the athletes.
Observers watched as Hubbard worked out his steps and practiced at height, not distance. One reporter wrote that he was “the center of attention for a number of French enthusiasts.” Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks, a noted track enthusiast, was also in attendance.
They were impressed with Hubbard’s lightning-fast start and chiseled calves. The US team’s head track coach, Lawson Robertson, said he had “the grit and grit of the nervous champion” and was “the perfect athlete”. Another noted that Hubbard flew so quietly around the track, “you couldn’t hear him. Pit, pit, pit, pit, pit. No thumping noise, just quick, silent steps.”
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The night before the long jump competition, Hubbard was staying at the Olympic Village in Colombes, working on a photo puzzle to relax when two men burst into the hall with shocking news. While participating in the pentathlon, fellow countryman Robert LeGendre had just broken the world record for the long jump with a jump of 7.76 meters.
Hubbard was stunned. The world record was his obsession and everyone knew it. He later wrote that he “tried to appear unconcerned, but succeeded poorly.” Coach Robertson was not fooled and said, “his color turned white.” LeGendre had dealt Hubbard a psychological blow. Sleep was impossible and therefore he was ‘not in the best condition the next day’.
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Tuesday, July 8 was a beautiful afternoon. Hardly any wind. Low Fahrenheit from the 70’s. The stands were full of American fans cheering on their boys. More than 30 long jumpers from 21 countries gathered on the field.
For his first jump, Hubbard didn’t simply want to qualify for the final, he wanted to erase LeGendre, who only competed in the pentathlon in Paris, from his mind. He stood at the beginning of the runway wearing thin sprinter spikes with “sponge rubber in the heel” instead of jump boots that he said were too big and stiff.
But he didn’t know there was a problem. The soft cinder surface had developed a small depression, perhaps a “quarter inch or half an inch” in front of the starting board. As the crowd watched, he stormed off the track, the record in sight. His right heel popped against the exposed hard edge of the board at full speed.
The jump was a mistake and he could barely walk. He thought of “the curse that always haunted the Negroes at the Olympic Games.” Over the years, so many before him came close to glory before suffering an injury. At the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, American long jumper Sol Butler was favored, but he suffered a strained leg muscle and had to be stretchered from the field. Now Hubbard was “afraid it would happen to me.”
His second jump was a disaster. He fell backwards upon landing “for the first time in my career, losing more than a foot.” He could no longer attempt to qualify for the final and was carried inside. The pain kept getting worse. As the trainers worked on and wrapped his injured heel, he discovered that he had somehow advanced to the finals in fourth place.
Before the final, Hubbard ‘hobbled’ across the field with crutches. Robertson was about to cut him from the team, but he “begged for a chance…I didn’t have the heart to keep him out.” Since Hubbard could not put pressure on his heel, he had to jump using only his toes.
Before his final jump Hubbard had in mind “My whole race was looking at me to make it right” and he let his emotions build in a strong tailwind. He shot down the cinder track, kicked the air and landed perfectly. He ran a distance of 7.47 m (24ft 6 in) – nowhere near LeGendre or his own standard, but good enough to win (John Taylor, another black American athlete, had run at the 1908 Olympics won team gold in the medley relay).
Robertson was shocked by Hubbard’s victory and felt that it was not possible to jump that far without taking off the heel: “I thought there had been a mistake in the distance… I went to the judges and asked them if the jump was good. ”
As the band played The Star-Spangled Banner and the American flag rose on the pole, Hubbard realized that this was “the first time an American of color had put one up. I didn’t break the record, but I was pretty happy that night.
He spent the rest of the Olympics on crutches and retired from the triple jump. The injury lingered for another year.
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At home in Cincinnati, a local reporter met with Hubbard’s wife, Marion, and their infant daughter. She expressed her happiness, but asked for “some tolerance, some kindness, some justice” for black people instead of “parades, marching bands and parties.”
After the Olympics, Hubbard entered his athletic prime. He equaled several world records in sprint events. At his last meet for the University of Michigan in 1925, he finally achieved his ultimate goal with a new world record in the long jump by jumping 25 feet.7/8inside (7.89 m). It was the tenth time Hubbard jumped more than 25 feet. No other athlete had done it more than once.
In 1927 he became the first man to jump 26 feet, but the AAU controversially refused to certify this because the competition referee estimated that the sand was perhaps an inch too low. That jump would not be surpassed until Jesse Owens jumped to a height of 8.13 meters in 1935.
A few months later, Hubbard seriously injured his ankle during a volleyball match, ending his chances of repeating at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. He would never have another shot at an Olympic medal.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Hubbard worked for the Cincinnati Recreation Department and also founded the Cincinnati Tigers Negro baseball team and played in other sports. Harlem Globetrotters visionary Abe Saperstein once said “If DeHart had gone into basketball, he would have been one of the top five of his era. If he had started playing baseball, he would have been one of the top five.” Hubbard later joined the Federal Housing Administration in Cleveland and worked with Jesse Owens and other former elite black athletes. They often talked about the old days of gold medals and laurel wreaths.