This Athlete Conquered Poverty, Racism, and Polio in Order to Became an Olympian

Wilma Rudolph went on to become an international sports icon after winning three gold medals in 1960

By Erin Blakemore

Six-year-old Wilma Rudolph was different from the other kids. They could walk, run, and jump, but she was hampered by a paralyzed, twisted left leg. At her elementary school in Clarksville, Tennessee, she was harassed and teased by children who could run and play in ways she had never been able to. “I used to cry,” wrote Rudolph, recalling those days, “but no more.”

Rudolph had reason not to cry. By the time she wrote those words in her 1977 biography, she was a household name. The child whose body had once made movement nearly impossible was now a woman who had torn down Olympic barriers, achieving some important firsts for both women and African Americans.

For a while during Rudolph’s childhood, it seemed unlikely that she would live, much less reach such great athletic heights. When she was born, in 1940, Rudolph weighed just 4.5 pounds, and she suffered from a long bout of childhood illnesses, including pneumonia and scarlet fever, that nearly killed her. In 1944, when she was four years old, her health took another blow when she contracted polio, a viral illness that had been ravaging the health of young children in a series of epidemics for years. Though Rudolph survived, she became paralyzed in her left leg.

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