Profiles Index

Carl Lewis
The winner of nine track and field Olympic gold medals and considered one of the greatest athlete’s of all time, Carl Lewis’ amazing career spanned from the 1980s through mid 1990s.

Debi Thomas
Olympic medallist and figure skater Debi Thomas achieved what no other African American had ever done. She was the first African American to win the national and the world championships as well as the first African American to win a medal in the Winter Olympic Games.

John Baxter Taylor
At the age of 26, John Baxter Taylor was considered one of the best quarter-mile racers in the world. Not surprisingly, he went on to win a gold medal in the 1908 Olympics and became the first African American gold medalist. However, just months after winning, Taylor suddenly died, cutting short a potentially long career as an athlete.

George Poage
Today, Olympic medalists Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens are familiar names. Before Lewis and Owens, however, there was the lesser known Olympic athlete George Poage, who was the first black to win a medal in the Olympics.

Jesse Owens
Frail and often sickly as a child, who would have guessed that Jesse Owens would go on to achieve the status of an Olympic medalist. With Hitler in power, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany was marred by Aryan racism. Despite the pressure to perform, Owens went on to win four gold medals and set a new world record.