In order to appreciate your present, you have to acknowledge the past. Despite the critics and skeptics, there have been a number of athletes who have come out of HBCUs. We’ve shown you that many of them made it to the NFL, but there are others excelling in a number of sports. As it stands Howard University is the only HBCU with a swimming team. HBCU students are also standout athletes in track.
When you talk about the history of track and field at HBCUs, you must mention the name of Coach Ed Temple.
Coach Temple spent his 44 year career coaching at Tennessee State University. Before the Title IX era and financial aid existed to support his program, he managed to produce Olympian athletes. Coach Temple is responsible for training the first repeat winner in the 100 meter race back to back, Wyomia Tyus. He is responsible for coaching the incomparable Wilma Rudolph. Temple coached the TSU Tigerbelles to 34 national championships. He trained 40 women, 23 won olympic gold medals, 13 of which were gold. He served as the head coach the U.S. Olympics Women’s Track and Field team in 1960 and 1964. Out of the 40 women he trained 39 went on to get a bachelor’s degree, 28 earned a masters degree and eight earned a PhD.
Even though those accomplishments are enough to prove his long lasting legacy, there is more.
During my time as a student at Tennessee State University I stayed in what we called “Rudolph” but is formally known as the Wilma Rudolph Residence Center. There is something about having to say the name of a champion in describing your place of residence that empowers you. Her resilience and dominance spread beyond the field and into the classroom. The man behind the fire in her eyes and desire for greatness was Coach Temple. So when I think of who she was to me and other women on my campus, I think of the man who is behind every single success story the Tigerbelles produced during his tenure. I imagine how difficult it must’ve been battling racism and the doubts of not only people that don’t look like you but those on other campuses that do. There will always be some team that considered them to be second class citizens because of their choice to be great at an HBCU.
I never had the honor of meeting Coach Temple. I never had the opportunity to tell him that despite the fact that I have not one athletic bone in my body, I know what it means to race. I know what it means to pick up a torch and carry it in areas where people doubt me and criticize me. I know what it is like to carry the burden of a torch to blaze a way for those who come after me. Coach Temple, you taught me how to race as though my mother with a GED education depended on it. That race led me beyond TSU to graduate school and then law school. That race led me to the National African American Museum of History and Culture.
When I managed to race up those stairs during the museum tour, I saw the Tigerbelles uniform and the exhibit featuring Coach Temple’s work in the lives of those women and especially the life of Wilma Rudolph. As I stood proudly trying not to touch the glass, I hoped for just an ounce of the black girl magic you brewed inside of them. For some reason, I think I was able to get some. So thank you coach for making the world take notice. HBCUs have something to say!
Coach Temple passed away on September 22nd. The museum opened officially to the public September 24th. Life has a way of coming full circle, and for Coach Temple, he laid his final torch to rest on display for the world to see.
