22.
July 1932
Evanston, Illinois
LOUISE HAD RUN IN SOME HOT RACES, BUT THE National AAU Championships in 1932 made all the challenging conditions that had come before seem mild by comparison. That morning, she stayed in the shade of the bleachers whenever she could. After she finished first in her preliminary heat of the 100-yard dash, she returned to the shade and discovered that race officials had decided the high temperatures merited blocks of ice to be brought in to keep the athletes cool. She’d never seen anything like this and was delighted, but even more exciting was who was sitting on one of the blocks of ice, fanning herself with a race program: another black woman. Since Louise had started racing several years earlier, her competitors had been almost all white women.
“Aren’t your shorts getting wet?” Louise asked, hiding her surprise by pointing at the puddle of water pooling by the woman’s feet.
“In this heat, I don’t mind,” the woman answered, running her hand along the side of the ice before placing it on her forehead and smiling. “My name’s Tidye.”
Tidye was small and her skin was the color of coffee with a good dollop of cream stirred in.
Louise introduced herself and sat on a neighboring block. “Where you from?”
“Not far, just south of here. How about you?”
“Massachusetts.”
“Never been, but I’d like to visit someday. I hear it’s pretty, lots of history. Is it hot there too?”
“It can be, but I’ve never felt anything like this,” Louise said, savoring the way her entire body relaxed as it cooled.
At that moment, a tall girl arrived, pushing her short dark hair off her sweaty beet-red forehead. “Hey, Tidye, can you make room for me? Whew, I’m dying.”
“Can’t you find your own?”
“No, they’re all claimed by other girls. Come on, scoot.”
Tidye inched over to make room for her friend and introduced her to Louise as Caroline Hale, another runner from Chicago.
“So, how did the hurdles go?” Tidye asked Caroline.
“I’ve made it into the final heat with that dreadful Babe Didrikson. She’s competing in too many events and it’s slowing everything down while we wait for her to finish one thing before she moves to the next. Every extra second in this sun is making all the girls pretty grouchy.”
“I thought we were limited to three events,” Louise said.
“We’re supposed to be and clearly all the delays prove there’s good reason for that, but apparently the rules are flexible if you have a coach who’s willing to argue loudly enough on your behalf.” Caroline grimaced.
Tidye giggled. “What? Howard’s not doing his job?”
Caroline flushed even redder than she already was from the heat. “My fiancé is my coach,” she explained to Louise. “But I wouldn’t want him to be a squeaky wheel. I want to earn my spot on the team fair and square. That Babe Didrikson’s already got the press eating out of the palm of her hand and can’t stop bragging she’s going to win all the gold medals in Los Angeles.”
“Why do you keep calling her that Babe Didrikson?” Tidye asked.
“Because I don’t like her and this heat is driving me plumb crazy. Is that a good enough reason for you?”
Both Tidye and Louise burst into laughter, and Caroline cracked them a grudging smile.
WHEN THE ANNOUNCER instructed the women in the first semifinal heat to approach their lanes, Louise’s legs felt like they’d turned into liquid. This was her group. Tidye and Mary would be running in the next one.
Since leaving Boston, she and Mary had been inseparable, but not necessarily by choice. They were sharing a room at the AAU-sponsored boardinghouse so it seemed there was never a moment in the day when the two weren’t together, yet if someone had asked if they were friends, Louise would have been hard put to know how to answer. (Fortunately no one asked.) More than anything, they were bound together by knowing each other from home, but both women were reserved by nature, and there was the discomfiting fact that they were in competition with one another. The Olympic team would only take six of the fifty-something women who were entered in the 100-meter sprint. How likely was it that both women would make it? Whenever the thought that Mary would be the one to go to Los Angeles entered Louise’s mind, she pushed it away, not able to bear thinking about it.
Everything hinged on this race.
If she finished in the top three, she was guaranteed a spot in the finals of the sprint and a place on the Olympic team.
The officials prompted the racers and the usual starting routine commenced. Louise fell to a crouch, relieved to allow her legs to buckle. She took a moment to steady herself, quiet her mind, just like Coach Quain had instructed her to do. Feel the ground under your two feet, breathe in and out deeply. In her mind’s eye, she sprang from her crouch and raced down the track with the feeling of the wind at her back, sweeping her along.
When the gun fired, Louise leapt from her start smoothly, her arms and legs moving with precision and purpose. She ran as if her life depended on it, and at that moment, it felt as if it did. The other racers fell behind, but one woman charged ahead in first place, her shoulders just a couple of inches out of reach. Louise put forth a final surge and felt like she was leaving her body, melting into the heat, taxing every cog in the machinery of her body. Just one more beat faster, that was all she needed. One more beat . . .
When she crossed the finish line, she was still in second place, but that was wonderful! Never had she been so thrilled to be in second place. She raised her arms in victory, tears blurring her vision. After years of hard work, she was going to the Olympics.
Tidye jogged out to Louise to clap her on the shoulder.
“I can’t believe it,” Louise said, almost limp with relief, but her euphoria was dampened by a rabble of voices coming from the judges’ area. There, a coach stood with one of the women who had been ejected earlier for falling before the finish of her semifinal heat. The man’s hands gripped the judges’ table and he leaned in, his face flushed and furious, yelling at the semicircle of race officials in front of him. “You must include her!”
Tidye blew out her breath. “Good grief. What’s all of that about?”
Louise shook her head in dismay, unsure what the commotion was about, but certain that it didn’t bode well for what was to come next.
WHEN IT CAME time for the finals, Mary and Tidye were also advancing from their heat and Louise fell into place beside them on the way to the track. What a relief that they had all qualified for the Olympic team and would be heading to Los Angeles! It was almost too good to be true and Louise couldn’t believe their good fortune. The purpose of this final heat was simply to determine their Olympic events: the first two finishers would race in the individual 100-meter sprint and the remaining four would constitute the 4-x-100-meter relay team.
But when they arrived at the lanes designated for their race, there were seven women, not six, awaiting the start.
Confused, Louise looked to the officials for clarification, but the man directed them to their assigned lanes without any explanation. The athlete whose coach had been yelling at the judges’ table earlier stood on the starting line with them. Louise knew she had not seen the runner race in either of the semifinal heats, but the official began his starting routine, no time for questions.