Tennessee State University Digital Scholarship @ Tennessee State University

Tennessee State University Olympians Tennessee State University Olympic History

6-2020

Barbara Jones Slater

Julia Huskey Tennessee State University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Huskey, Julia, "Barbara Jones Slater" (2020). Tennessee State University Olympians. 10. https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/tsu-olympians/10

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Tennessee State University Olympic History at Digital Scholarship @ Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tennessee State University Olympians by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship @ Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Barbara Jones (Slater)

Barbara Jones (Slater) (born March 26, 1937 in Chicago), a Tigerbelle from 1957 to 1961 and a 1961 graduate of Tennessee State, was a member of the 1952 and 1960 Olympic-champion 4 x 100 meter relay teams, both of which set world records. She remains the youngest Olympic track gold medalist ever, at age fifteen, and she was a frequent member of the American 4 x 100 meter relay team that dominated 1950s competition. She was also part of three of TSU’s Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) national-championship winning teams1. (In the years prior to highly- organized intercollegiate sports, the AAU championship was the most important national-level competition for women.) In addition to her victories as a member of the national and TSU teams, Jones had a number of individual victories in the 100 meters/100 yards: the AAU national championship in 1953, 1954, and 19572, the Pan American Games in 1955, and the USA-USSR dual meet in 19583 and 1959, when the meet “rivaled the Olympic Games in international and domestic importance”4. She was ranked third in the world in the 100 meters in both 1958 and 19595. She also excelled at other sprint distances, such as the 50 yard event, which she won at the 1958 AAU Outdoor Championships,6 and the 60 meters, where she earned a silver medal at the 1959 Pan American Games7. Prior to transferring to TSU from Marquette University in 1957 (which she did after her athletic scholarship at Marquette was reallocated to another sport8), Jones competed in track at Madden Park in Chicago and, after 1951, for the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO).9 The Chicago CYO was one of the few places where African-Americans, and girls, could access top-notch athletic facilities and coaching. “CYO was mixed, so, you know, I didn’t know anything about segregation,” Jones said.10 She won two AAU outdoor team titles with the Chicago CYO11. Later, she joined several other former members of the Chicago CYO to form the Chicago Comets track club12. Jones was injured during the 1956 Olympic Trials and could not complete the meet13, but she was somewhat controversially named an alternate to the team14. At a competition for the fourth member of the 4 x 100 m relay team in October of that year, however, she was defeated by Rebecca Ayers and thus she did not travel to Melbourne for the Olympics15. Although fellow Tigerbelle Wilma Rudolph was the most successful sprinter of the late 1950s, TSU coach Ed Temple gave some credit to Jones: "[Rudolph]’s had tremendous competition, the three fastest girls in the country. Take Jones. She ran a world record 10.3 hundred yards at Randall's Island in 1958, although it wasn't official because she ran it against a girl with a handicap. She didn't have no handicap, but she ran with someone out in front. … Every time trial we had was like a track meet. Rudolph ran the hundred meters in 11.1 in a time trial because of that competition. Without it she wouldn't have won no three gold medals,"16 Temple told Sports Illustrated in 1960. At the 1960 Olympic trials, Jones was named to the Olympic relay team after she placed second to Rudolph in the 100 meters17. It was an all-Tigerbelle team that won the Olympic gold medal in Rome that year. Jones retired from competition a few months later. After completing her BS in health and physical education at TSU, Jones earned a master’s degree in physical education at Georgia State University. She was a teacher for several decades before she retired in 2009. She was honored with a President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition Lifetime Achievement Award in 201018.

1 United States Track & Field, USATF Outdoor champions https://www.flipsnack.com/USATF/usatf-outdoor-champions/full-view.html: 192-193.

2 Ibid: 123. 3 Tex Maule, “An explosion that spluttered,” Sports Illustrated August 4 1958. https://vault.si.com/vault/1958/08/04/an-explosion-that-spluttered Accessed May 26 2020.

4 Joseph M. Turrini, “’It was communism versus the free world’: the USA-USSR dual track meet series and the development of track and field in the United States, 1958-1985,” Journal of sport history 28 (2001): 428.

5 Maule, Sports Illustrated Vol. 11 Issue 4 (July 27 1959): 14.

6 Michael Strauss, “Mrs. Brown breaks two track records,” New York Times, July 6 1958.

7 “Hurdle mark set in Pan-Am,” Nashville Tennessean August 10 1959.

8 Jaylon Thompson, “U.S. Olympian recounts her life as the youngest gold medalist,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, June 4 2016. https://www.ajc.com/sports/olympian-recounts-her-life-the- youngest-gold-medalist/wyQOaNEq8nwm8xWCW80dXK/ Accessed 26 May 2020. 9 William H. Stoneman, “Chicago girls in Helsinki: Teen-agers find ‘track’ to stardom.” Chicago Daily News, July 21 1952.

10 Timothy B. Neary, Crossing Parish Boundaries: Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914-1954 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016): 120. Scribd ebook.

11 United States Track & Field, USATF Outdoor champions https://www.flipsnack.com/USATF/usatf-outdoor-champions/full-view.html: 192-193.

12 “Chicago girls win AAU test,”Chicago Daily News Feb 5 1955.

13 Mary Snow, “Can the Soviet girls be stopped?” Sports Illustrated Vol. 5, issue 9 (August 27, 1956): 6.

14 “New squawks heard over women’s track,” Seattle Daily Times, August 27, 1956.

15 “Urbana girl on Olympic relay team,” Register Mail (Galesburg, Illinois), Oct 23 1956.

16 Barbara Hellman, “Like nothing else in Tennessee,” Sports Illustrated Vol. 13 Issue 20 (November 11, 1960): 50.

17 “AAU summaries,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, July 10, 1960.

18 President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, “2010 lifetime achievement awardees,” PCSFN Lifetime Achievement Award https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/programs-and-awards/council-awards/pcsfn-lifetime-achievement- award/index.html Accessed May 26, 2020.