Monthly Archives: May 2024

How the first Black individual Olympic champion came off crutches to win gold

DeHart Hubbard was intent on making history. That he did so while injured made his achievements even more remarkable

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DeHart Hubbard knew about the jinx waiting for him.

Hubbard was a student at the University of Michigan and regarded as one of the best long jumpers in the world. Heading into the 1924 Paris Olympics, he was America’s best hope for gold in the long jump and favored to become the first Black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal.

Hubbard started writing.

Dear Mother: At last I am ready to depart for Europe. It has taken years of hard work to get this far, but I am nearing my ultimate goal.

He had to hurry. The boat was about to leave for France. He turned the page and his words ran and jumped across the page, leaving no doubt.

I’m going to do my best to be the FIRST COLORED OLYMPIC CHAMPION.

He underlined the last four words, but made sure to underline “COLORED” twice. His impending victory would be for his people.

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At Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Hubbard discovered his innate talent. Word got out about the kid with springs for legs. Under the tutelage of Hunter Johnson, a pioneering Black trainer in Pittsburgh, Hubbard tried to make the 1920 Olympic team. He was 16 and eager, but “trained too hard” and his body broke down. Back home, he started thinking about breaking the long jump world record. It became an obsession.

The University of Michigan’s head track coach, Steve Farrell, was widely respected. He had been a circus performer and professional runner during the 1890s and he understood the demands of competing at an elite level. When Hubbard arrived at Michigan in 1921, Farrell promptly barred him from other sports and had him focus only on jumping events. Hubbard started jumping past 25 feet, flirting with the world record, which stood at 25 ft 23⁄4in (7.69 m) in 1921, and he qualified for the Paris Games in the long jump and triple jump.

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On 16 June 1924, the SS America departed from Hoboken, New Jersey, with more than 350 athletes, coaches, trainers, and officials aboard. Foghorns blared and fireboats sprayed water high in the sky, the sunlight glinting in the mist. On the dark hull, AMERICAN OLYMPIC TEAMS was painted in enormous white letters, easily visible from a distance. The steamship glided past the Statue of Liberty on the way to Cherbourg, France.

During the long voyage – the coaches thought too long – Hubbard and his fellow athletes jostled for space to train. Swimmers swayed in the tiny canvas pool, water slopping over the sides. Runners navigated tight curves on the deck. Javelins and shots ended up in the ocean. When they arrived on 25 June, fellow track teammate William Neufeld remembered the young male athletes couldn’t wait for the “beautiful French girls” who would “greet us with flowers” and a “kiss on each cheek,” but it was raining and they were welcomed by a “bunch of bearded men” instead.

After reaching Paris, Hubbard and most of the squad ended up at a chateau in Rocquencourt, near Versailles. It belonged to the fifth Prince Murat, whose ancestor had married Napoleon’s sister. Majestic chestnut and yew trees hugged winding paths. Sphinx sculptures guarded the gorgeous rose gardens. It was wonderful – and the team hated it.

They lived in slapdash barracks, 11 in all, made out of flimsy pressboard. The army cots were hard, the food “indifferent.” Peddlers roamed the grounds, trying to sell jewellery to athletes in the middle of workouts. In order to reach the Olympic stadium in Colombes, they were forced to ride “busses with hard tires” into thick Paris congestion, banging and rattling over rough cobblestone roads while covered in dust. The journey took a hour, sometimes longer, and was miserable.

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During training at the Olympic stadium, some runners complained about the soft track surface and the “cupping” that was created by their feet sinking down too much. At the long jump pit, Hubbard noticed something odd. The takeoff board was backwards. The worn, curved edge was facing the pit and the crisp edge was now pointed at the athletes.

Observers watched Hubbard work through his paces, practicing height, not distance. One reporter wrote he was “the centre of attraction for a number of French enthusiasts.” Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks, a noted track nut, was on hand as well.

They were impressed by Hubbard’s blazing quick start and chiseled calves. The US team’s head track coach, Lawson Robertson, said he had “that zip and pep of the nervous champion” and was “the perfect athlete.” Another remarked that Hubbard flew over the track so quietly, “you couldn’t hear him. Pit, pit, pit, pit, pit. Not a thumping sound, but quick, quiet steps.”

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The night before the long jump competition, Hubbard was staying at the Olympic Village in Colombes, working on a picture puzzle to relax when two men burst into the hall with shocking news. While competing in the pentathlon, fellow American Robert LeGendre had just broken the long jump world record with a leap of 25ft 6in (7.76m).

Hubbard was stunned. The world record was his obsession and everyone knew it. He later wrote that he “tried to appear unconcerned, but made a poor job of it.” Coach Robertson wasn’t fooled and said “his color turned white.” LeGendre had dealt Hubbard a psychological blow. Sleep was impossible and he wasn’t “in the best of shape the next day as a result.”

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Tuesday 8 July was a beautiful afternoon. Hardly any wind. Low 70s fahrenheit. The stands were full of American fans cheering their boys. On the field, more than 30 long jumpers gathered, representing 21 countries.

For his first jump, Hubbard didn’t want to simply qualify for the finals, he wanted to erase LeGendre, who only competed in the pentathlon in Paris, from his mind. He stood at the start of the runway, wearing thin sprinter spikes with “sponge rubber in the heel” instead of jumping shoes that he felt were too bulky and stiff.

But he didn’t know there was a problem. The soft cinder surface had developed a small hollow, perhaps a “quarter of an inch or half inch” in front of the takeoff board. With the crowd watching, he charged down the track, the record in sight. His right heel slammed against the exposed hard edge of the board at full speed.

The jump was a foul and he could barely walk. He thought “of the jinx that had always trailed Negroes in the Olympics.” Over the years so many before him had come close to glory before suffering an injury. In the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, fellow American long jumper Sol Butler was favored but suffered a pulled leg muscle and had to be carried off the field. Now Hubbard “was fearful it was about to happen to me.”

His second jump was a disaster. He fell backwards upon landing “for the first time in my career, losing more than a foot.” He couldn’t make any more attempts to qualify for the final and was carried inside. The pain was becoming worse. While the trainers worked on his injured heel and wrapped it, he discovered he had somehow squeaked through to the finals in fourth place.

Before the final, Hubbard was “hobbling around” the field with crutches. Robertson was on the verge of taking him off the team, but he “begged for a chance … I didn’t have the heart to keep him out.” Since Hubbard couldn’t put pressure on his heel, he would have to jump using only his toes.

For his final jump, Hubbard envisioned “all my race looking at me to make good” and he let his emotions build into a powerful tailwind. He shot down the cinder runway, kicked through the air and landed perfectly. He cleared 24ft 6in (7.47m) – nowhere close to LeGendre or his own standard, but good enough to win (John Taylor, another Black American athlete, had won team gold at the 1908 Olympics in the medley relay).

Robertson was shocked by Hubbard’s victory and felt it wasn’t possible to jump so far without pushing off the heel: “I thought that some mistake was made in the distance … I went up to the judges and asked them if the jump was right.”

As the band played The Star-Spangled Banner and the American flag rose up the pole, Hubbard realized it was “the first time a colored American had put one there. I didn’t break the record, but I was pretty happy that night.”

He spent the rest of the Olympics on crutches and withdrew from the triple jump. The injury lingered for another year.

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Back home in Cincinnati, a local reporter met with Hubbard’s wife Marion and their infant daughter. She expressed her happiness but asked for “some tolerance, some kindliness, some justice” for Black people instead of “parades and brass bands and feasts.”

After the Olympics, Hubbard entered his athletic prime. He tied multiple world records in sprint events. In his last meet for the University of Michigan in 1925, he finally achieved his ultimate goal with a new world record in the long jump by jumping 25ft 107/8in (7.89m). It marked the 10th time Hubbard had jumped over 25ft. No other athlete had done it more than once.

In 1927, he became the first man to jump over 26ft, but the AAU controversially refused to certify it because the meet referee estimated the sand was perhaps an inch too low. That jump wouldn’t be surpassed until Jesse Owens leapt out to 26ft 8in (8.13m) in 1935.

Some months later, Hubbard severely injured his ankle in a volleyball match, which ended his chances of repeating at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. He would never have another chance at an Olympic medal.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Hubbard worked for the Cincinnati recreation department and also founded the Cincinnati Tigers Negro baseball team and starred in other sports. Harlem Globetrotters visionary Abe Saperstein once said “If DeHart had gone into basketball, he would have been one of the five best of his time. If he had gone into baseball, he would have been one of the five best.” Hubbard later joined the Federal Housing Administration in Cleveland and worked with Jesse Owens and other former elite Black athletes. They often talked about the old days of gold medals and laurel wreaths.

 

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(Originally published by The Guardian and edited by Tom Lutz.)

Coney Island Was Once Full of Dueling, Backstabbing Theme Parks

Come one, come all to the controversial, ugly beginnings of what was once called ‘Sodom by the Sea.’

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Coney Island was once a glittering star of the early 1900s. It was the Progressive Era, amusement parks were becoming enormously popular across America, and New York City’s version of roller coasters and carnival games seemed like the epitome of wholesome fun. But the beachy entertainment land was quite different than it is today. Coney Island mainly consisted of three theme parks: Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and Dreamland. And from 1904 to 1911, all were locked into a perpetual dance of stealing acts, copying rides from each other, and some dirty competition.

This fleeting moment in time was captured by a little-known Brooklyn artist named John Mark. His rare 1906 “bird’s eye view” map was full of spectacular details at the three competing parks. Together, they helped turn around the reputation at Coney Island—which was once considered tawdry and called “Sodom by the Sea”—bringing clean fun to families.

“Coney Island was a laboratory for the invention and testing of social, commercial, and technological ideas,” says art historian Robin Jaffee Frank, who authored the book and curated the exhibition Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland. “Coney Island revolutionized the way people played.”

It all started with Steeplechase Park, which first opened in 1897. Founder George Tilyou was a popular figure in the area, and people knew his “Funny Place” was full of laughter. Guests rode his Ferris wheel and galloped around his celebrated Steeplechase horse ride. Amusing and frugal diversions were everywhere. Tilyou’s haunting cartoon visage, full of teeth and horned hair, became an icon still used today, known as “Funny Face.”

Tilyou often toured the country looking for ideas. At the 1901 Buffalo Pan-American Expo, he saw future Luna Park founders Fred Thompson and Skip Dundy and their popular “A Trip to the Moon” attraction. Designed by Thompson, guests boarded a futuristic Victorian spaceship and bumped their way to the colorful moon, where they walked among strange lunar creatures.

Tilyou was smitten. He lured them to Steeplechase in 1902 with promises of a significant share of profits—but it came with a risk. “Tilyou recognized that by securing ‘A Trip to the Moon’ for Steeplechase, he was inducing a future competitor to enter the field,” says historian Michael Immerso, author of Coney Island: The People’s Playground. The duo also brought their popular “Giant See-Saw” ride, which lifted people hundreds of feet in the air while seated in a rotating wheel at each end.

Much to Tilyou’s regret, Thompson and Dundy immediately started making plans for Luna. Prior to moving to the new park, they clashed over the seesaw. Tilyou wanted it. Thompson and Dundy wanted it—or money. Back and forth they went, like the seesaw. Dundy finally proposed an absurd bet. Tilyou could flip a nickel, and if he won, he could have it for free. If he lost, he would pay Thompson and Dundy $12,500 to keep it. Tilyou flipped and paid nothing.

Luna Park therefore opened in 1903 and made an immediate impression on the public. Luminous lights swirled around the park, punctuated by the brilliant Electric Tower easily seen across the island (which eventually became a peninsula using landfill). A boisterous spirit and fantastical architectural elements transported people. There were miniature trains and elephants. “A Trip to the Moon” kept the guests coming. Luna made Steeplechase look outdated by comparison.

“Luna Park served as a template for every amusement park that followed,” says Immerso. “Thompson was an exceptional choreographer. Every component of the park, visually and by sensory means, played a part in creating a singular and enchanting environment.” The partners were a perfect fit for each other. Thompson’s boyish spirit created the attractions, and Dundy was the financial whiz. But their partnership almost didn’t happen.

In fact, the two had already become well-acquainted with ride stealing, as that’s how the unlikely duo partnered up.

Leading up to the Buffalo expo—where Tilyou first saw them—Dundy had been impressed by an attraction that Thompson created for another fair. Dundy wasted no time and quickly scampered to Buffalo to shamelessly propose Thompson’s popular “Darkness and Dawn” as his own idea. Once Thompson realized his unpatented ride had been stolen, he tried to strike back with his own version. It became ugly. Fellow showmen started placing bets on who would get the coveted concession spot. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Dundy knew a thing or two about the manipulation of sub-surface wires, and when the concession was awarded, he won in a walk.”

Rather than swear endless vengeance, Thompson couldn’t help but be impressed by Dundy’s audacious display. He had seen nothing like it before, so he magnanimously told Dundy about his gestating “A Trip to the Moon” idea and said they should work on it together instead, which they did. Although the Buffalo fair was a financial flop, their innovative experience was one of a few to make money, and it became a key part of Luna’s revenues for many years.

The parks were not beyond putting humans and animal suffering on display. During the construction of Luna, Thompson and Dundy acquired an elephant named Topsy but soon tired of her behavior and expense. For promotional purposes, they controversially electrocuted her in front of media members and a “moving picture” camera. The lurid newsreel still survives.

Villages of Indigenous peoples were a popular fixture at fairs across the country, put on display for European descendants to stare at. In 1905, Thompson and Dundy took note of a particular group of Indigenous people from the Philippines, which promoters called “Igorrotes,” but who were actually Bontoc people. The owners wanted the same act. Signed contract in hand, the “Igorrotes” became a star attraction at Luna. The owners and press spread the idea that spectators could watch them feasting on dogs in what was typically a staged act forced upon them. It was an “Imperialist fantasy on display,” which “enforced a racial interpretation of hierarchy, expansion, and exclusion,” according to the Coney Island Museum.

Yet Luna was considered an exemplary theme park of the time. Seeing its success, a man named William Reynolds saw dollar signs and wanted in. The slippery, former state senator was also a real estate magnate (who was later indicted for hiding his ownership in condemned property and stealing city funds). In 1904, he opened a competing theme park called Dreamland. It was a glowing white city by the sea that cost millions and targeted the genteel set. He wasn’t a born showman, so he ripped off as many attractions as he could and made them more grandiose.

Dreamland’s enormous electric tower was covered in 100,000 twinkling lights. They copied Luna’s Shoot the Chutes water flume ride, but added an extra track and planted the towers in the ocean. Luna had a disaster show called Fire and Flame, so Dreamland had their own version called Fighting Flames, which was more elaborate. The groundbreaking infant incubator display at Luna was replicated. Reynolds laughed at the meager ballrooms found at Steeplechase and Luna. His huge ballroom sat on his pier above the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite Dreamland’s opulence, Luna remained more popular. So Reynolds told his general manager to do whatever was necessary to drum up business. Operating in secrecy, Dreamland promised the Filipino community at Luna better working conditions and more money, and convinced them to leave the former park for the newer one. Thompson and Dundy were furious but tried to save face by absurdly claiming they closed the exhibit because they didn’t want to exploit the Bontoc people.

In 1907, the year after Mark’s map was created, Steeplechase was destroyed by fire, but Tilyou soon reopened. That same year, Dundy unexpectedly died and Thompson started a slow descent into bankruptcy. Dreamland was burnt to a crisp in 1911, and Reynolds never rebuilt. The golden era was over.

The theme parks of Coney Island continued to evolve over the next few decades, with Deno’s Wonder Wheel built in 1920 and the Cyclone roller coaster opening in 1927. Though the original Luna Park closed during World War II, an unrelated Luna Park opened in a different location on Coney Island in 2010, where it’s in operation today. Few remnants of the original three parks survive, but replicas of Tilyou’s iconic “Funny Face” can still be seen here and there. Both the Coney Island History Project and the Coney Island Museum have artifacts from previous eras on display.

As for the map, it is only known to have appeared in two small classified ads in a local newspaper. In one, the artist offered his Coney Island “Souvenir bird’s eye view” map for a dime and suggested people could “Mail It to Your Friends.” The other asked for the “greatest seller” to peddle his maps for “100 per cent. profit.” Afterwards, the artist faded from view and the map became lost to time, yet remains on record as a snapshot of Coney Island’s foundational, backstabbing theme parks.

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(Originally published by Atlas Obscura and edited by Danielle Hallock.)

How secrecy and betrayal led to the creation of Mickey Mouse

After Walt Disney’s friends betrayed him, he scrambled to stave off bankruptcy with a mouse cartoon that’s now in the public domain.

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In May 1928, at a movie theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, the crowd was treated to an unannounced preview of a new silent cartoon from a local studio. The viewers had no idea they were witnessing the birth of a global phenomenon.

The single reel started to roll, and the screen flickered. The organist began to play. A dark screen appeared with the title “Plane Crazy” in white letters. The audience met a black mouse as he attempted to become an aviator.

A young man named Walt Disney nervously watched their reaction.

This preview, on May 15 (or possibly a bit earlier, according to Disney historian J.B. Kaufman), marked the beginning of Mickey Mouse — and the end of a frantic two months of betrayal and secrecy while Walt struggled to save his company.

 

‘Everybody was conspiring’

In 1927, the Walt Disney Studio was surrounded by scrub and scraggly hills in a quiet area about four miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Walt was the relentless creative force, and his brother Roy was the widely respected finance whiz. Walt’s close friend, Ub Iwerks, was his lead animator. They had a long history stretching back to Kansas City, Mo., where they first learned the business together.

“Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” — Disney’s new series created for Universal Studios — was becoming a hit across the country. Oswald was controlled by Disney’s longtime distributor in New York, Charles Mintz, with whom Walt had a prickly relationship. Walt didn’t know Mintz had betrayed him, with the help of his good friends.

In mid-1927, Mintz’s brother-in-law, George Winkler, who managed his operations in Los Angeles, started lingering longer at the Disney studio. He was arranging clandestine meetings with Walt’s animators and planning to launch a rival studio to assume production of Oswald.

Mintz and Winkler targeted Hugh Harman, a young Disney animator who had worked with Walt back in Kansas City but had grown tired of his overbearing pressure. Harman jumped at the opportunity to take Oswald away from Walt. Unbeknownst to all of them, Harman also had his own secret shop and was developing a new character.

As the year came to an end, more animators were recruited to join Harman, and they were close to officially signing with Mintz to keep creating Oswald cartoons. One animator said it was an era when “everybody was conspiring against the other one.”

In February 1928, Walt and his wife, Lillian, took a “second honeymoon” via train to New York, where he was scheduled to meet with Mintz to negotiate a new annual distribution contract for Oswald. Walt wanted to increase his fee from $2,250 to $2,500 per cartoon. But weeks of negotiations went nowhere — and he learned he was on the verge of losing much of his studio to Mintz.

Thinking quickly, Walt asked Roy via an urgent telegram to sign their animators to binding contracts, but most refused. Walt knew it meant “only one thing — they are hooked up with Charlie.” After several futile attempts to bypass Mintz or interest another studio in New York, Walt admitted defeat. Oswald was gone, along with most of his animators.

 

A frantic scramble

Back home in Los Angeles, Walt and Roy still had to work with the defecting animators to complete the last remaining Oswald cartoons by May. Money was running out, and they had nothing lined up to replace Oswald.

But Walt still had Iwerks. Together, they started developing a secret new animal character. Mice were a familiar sight in cartoons of the period, including the Disney shorts. Walt’s initial mouse concept was too wiry, and Iwerks changed it to a more pleasing round shape.

At first, they named it Mortimer Mouse, but Lillian vetoed the name, so they chose Mickey Mouse instead. Walt infused him with a bit of Charlie Chaplin, while Iwerks added the charm of the silent film star Douglas Fairbanks. Borrowing from a previous Oswald short, “The Ocean Hop,” they quickly created a rudimentary plot based around aviator hero Charles Lindbergh.

At the studio, Iwerks hid from the other animators — either in a locked room, according to Iwerks; or behind a black curtain, according to Harman — and animated the entire cartoon nearly by himself in mere weeks. Iwerks was already known for his speed and skill, but for “Plane Crazy,” he drew an incredible 700 frames a day, which he claimed broke a record held by a prolific New York animator. The average animator was lucky to get a couple hundred on a good day.

Starting in mid-April, Walt and Roy snuck Iwerks’s drawings to Walt’s nearby house, which had become a shadow studio. In the garage below the living room, Lillian — who had formerly worked as an inker for the studio — enlisted Roy’s wife and two or three other women to ink and paint Iwerks’s work.

“We worked night and day” to keep up, Lillian remembered, and “had a major budget crisis one night when I tripped on the garage stairs and ruined my last pair of silk stockings.” The women kept inking and painting at the kitchen table and “ate stews and pot roasts, which luckily were cheap,” Lillian said. Roy helped wherever he was needed, and Walt crept back to the studio at night and had the finished cels photographed.

The completed “Plane Crazy” short showed an unrefined Mickey harassing Minnie before ultimately crashing his plane. It concluded with an innovative shot that showed the view from the cockpit of Mickey’s airplane as it spiraled to the ground.

In a 1973 interview, Wilfred Jackson, a longtime Disney animator and director who was hired by Walt during the “Plane Crazy” production, said the shot “took days and days and days.” According to Jackson, they put a painting of the ground on a bed, then put shims under the bed “and raised it up a fraction of an inch, and shot another frame, and turned it just a little bit” and repeated, causing the painting to move closer to the camera as it rotated.

When they saw the finished scene, “we almost wore the film out,” Jackson said, “admiring what we had done.” It was a reminder of the talent still on display at Walt Disney Studio.

At the premiere of “Plane Crazy,” the “reception was good, though not overwhelming,” wrote Bob Thomas in “Walt Disney: An American Original.” After creating a second Mickey cartoon, “Gallopin’ Gaucho,” Walt simply couldn’t get anyone interested in distributing them.

With bankruptcy looming, Walt headed back to New York in the fall to try something else: adding sound to Mickey’s third cartoon, “Steamboat Willie.” After “Steamboat Willie” swept the country, Walt converted his first two Mickey cartoons into sound versions in 1929.

Along with “Steamboat Willie,” the silent versions of “Plane Crazy” and “Gallopin’ Gaucho” entered the public domain this year, meaning they can be shared by anyone on any platform and all audiences can now see the cartoon that first captivated viewers 96 years ago this month. The sound versions will join the public domain next year.

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(Originally published by The Washington Post and edited by Aaron Wiener.)