On February 28, I attended the African American Civil Rights class. I was in the Hall of Fame Room 1118 in Park Center from 12:40-1:30 pm. The class was very interesting and extremely informative. Professor Susan Rayl made a PowerPoint presentation on many popular and not so popular successful African American athletes who performed out of the ordinary and during times of extreme segregation and discrimination.
To start off the presentation she began with Isaac Murphy and profound and smart Jockey. He was known for his intelligence which is extremely rare in the late 1800s for Black people. Also, he was known for having a really high success rate in competitions. Isaac averaged a 40% win rate which was completely unheard of and still has never been replicated to this day. Issac Murphy was so talented that his competitors got jealous that they decided to poison him before a competition and then claim to the judges that they thought he might be drunk. By the end of the whole ordeal, he was pronounced dead from being poisoned not drinking. Since it was late 1800 nobody batted an eye at it and his name was lost in history for a long time until recently when records were found of his jockeying career now his name is forever in graved in the Hall of Fame room for Jockeys.
The next Athlete mentioned in the presentation was Marshall Taylor. Taylor was a trailblazer in the African American professional sports culture. He was the first African American to win a world class sporting event in 1899. That same year he won 22 races including the world class cycling event in the 1 mile sprint race to beat Tom Butler for the world class title During the late 1800s it was strongly frowned upon when there was an African American athlete competing, but Taylor did well for himself and just like Issac received most credit after passing, unfortunately, due to the era he was born in.
Another person and group of athletes that was recognized during the presentation was Robert Douglas and the New York Renaissance 5. This completely shocked me When I watched this video in class, the Renaissance 5 had 2,400 victories overall and in 86 days they had 88 games and won all 88 games according to the video. I’m not sure how that is even possible, but they were breaking records left and right as the first all African American basketball team. They still hold the best record in history in the NBA today.
Lastly, the professor talked about Jesse Owens I’m pretty familiar with Jesse Owens I’ve learned a lot about him over the years. There were still some things I learned about him that I didn’t know. Jesse Owens broke 3 world records all in the same day but what I did know was he did it all in under 44 min which is absolutely ridiculous to think about. That is an average of every 11 minutes. Another thing I didn’t know was he was 21 years old when he broke the world records and made his first appearance on the international stage in the Olympics.
