In August 1948, on her very first attempt, Alice Coachman cleared 5 feet 6⅛ inches. With that one jump — an Olympic record — she became the first Black woman from any country in history to win an Olympic gold medal.
Alice Coachman was born on November 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia. She came up in the segregated South, in a world that had built almost nothing for a Black girl who could fly. What it could not do was stop her from flying anyway. By the time she reached London in 1948, she was already a champion many times over — and she was about to make a kind of history nobody had ever made before.
At the London 1948 Olympics, Coachman won the high jump with 5 ft 6⅛ in (1.68 m) — an Olympic record, cleared on her first attempt. First attempt. No misses to build the drama, no second or third try. She walked up, ran in, and cleared the bar that made history, the first time she asked her body to do it.
First ever — and the only one
That jump made her the first Black woman from any country to win an Olympic gold medal. Not the first American, not the first in her event — the first, from anywhere on Earth. Every Black woman who has stood on top of an Olympic podium since 1948 has stood in a doorway Alice Coachman opened in London.
And there is a second fact that sharpens the first: she was the only American woman to win gold at those Games. The entire United States women’s team, across every sport at the London Olympics, produced exactly one champion — a Black woman from Albany, Georgia, in the high jump. King George VI presented her medal himself.
Ten years at the top
London was not a lucky day. Coachman won 10 consecutive U.S. national high-jump titles, from 1939 to 1948 — a full decade in which no American high jumper could take her crown. And U.S. Track & Field counts 25 national titles across her events in total. Ten straight years in one event, 25 national titles overall: that is not a moment. That is an era, and it belonged to her.
Put the whole picture together. A girl from segregated Georgia wins her national title ten years running, crosses an ocean, clears an Olympic record on her first attempt, receives her gold medal from a king, and comes home as the first Black woman in history to win Olympic gold — and the only American woman champion of those entire Games.
Alice Coachman died on July 14, 2014, at 90. The bar she cleared in August 1948 was set at 5 feet 6⅛ inches. The bar she raised for every woman who came after her cannot be measured — and nobody has ever lowered it.
Join the conversation
First attempt, Olympic record, first Black woman in history to win gold — had you ever heard Alice Coachman’s name before today? And who do you think stands on her shoulders every four years? Tell us below.
Source note: Alice Coachman’s story — born November 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia, and died July 14, 2014, at 90; her high-jump win at the London 1948 Olympics in August 1948 with 5 ft 6⅛ in (1.68 m), an Olympic record cleared on her first attempt; becoming the first Black woman from any country to win an Olympic gold medal, and the only American woman to win gold at those Games; King George VI presenting her medal; her 10 consecutive U.S. national high-jump titles (1939–48); and U.S. Track & Field’s count of 25 national titles across her events — is from U.S. Track & Field, Britannica, the National Women’s History Museum, and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
