The 'greatest female athlete' you've never heard of

She's one of the most decorated and groundbreaking athletes to ever attend an Alabama college, but chances are you've never heard of Alice Coachman Davis.

Davis, who was from Albany, Georgia, but attended Tuskegee Preparatory School at the age of 16 and then college at Tuskegee Institute, was the first African-American female to win an Olympic gold medal.

She belongs in the pantheon of race-barrier breakers that includes Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson, but it's likely you thought that Wilma Rudolph, who brought home three gold medals from the 1960 Olympics in Rome, was the first black woman to do so.

But it was Davis, who competed then as Alice Coachman, who was the first. She died in 2014 at 91, without the household name status she deserved.

World War II was likely to blame for an incredible career overshadowed. She'd won 10 high-jump national championships in a row after becoming a track star at Tuskegee, plus national championships in the 50-meter dash, the 100-meter dash and with the 400-meter relay team at Tuskegee.

When she was in her prime, however, the Olympic Games in 1940 and 1944 were canceled due to the war.

She won the high-jump gold in the London games in 1948, breaking U.S. and Olympic records, the only American woman to win a medal in track and field. King George the VI draped the medal around her neck, though the mayor of her hometown in Georgia still refused to shake her hand.

Those Olympic Games were her last competitive event.

"Had she competed in those canceled Olympics, we probably would be talking about her as the No. 1 female athlete of all time," said sportswriter Eric Williams in an article for the Black Athlete Sports Network.

Because of the proliferation of television in 1960 and the momentum of the Civil Rights movement, many mistakenly wrote that Rudolph was the first black female athlete to win the gold.

Davis, who was a teacher and coach in 1960 after Rudolph excelled in Rome, actually had to prove to her students she was telling the truth about her own accomplishments.

"Her students said, 'You said you were the first one,' " historian Jennifer Lansbury told National Public Radio in a 2014 obituary on Davis. "It wasn't until she brought her medal in the next day and showed it to them that they believed she was the first."

Though the world may not remember Alice Coachman Davis as the groundbreaker she was, she herself knew her own place in history.

"I made a difference among the blacks, being one of the leaders," she told The New York Times in a 1996 interview. "If I had gone to the games and failed, there wouldn't be anyone to follow in my footsteps."

Haskins writes about points of pride statewide. Email your suggestions to shaskins@al.com, or tweet them to @Shelly_Haskins using #AlabamaProud

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