Tidye Pickett is a two-time Olympian and the first Black woman from the United States to compete in the Olympics. In 1932, she and Louise Stokes became the first Black U.S. women to be selected for an Olympic team. In 1936, she made her debut at the Berlin Games. Tidye Pickett was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1914. She first got into running during sponsored picnic races at Washington Park. She frequently competed and earned prizes like baseball bats and cameras. “Everything I entered, I won,” Pickett told Northern Illinois Alumni Magazine in 1984. Eventually she moved to Carter School playgr ..read more

A new book about women’s basketball history and culture publishes next week, and I’m here to tell you all about it! Hoop Muses, written by Kate Fagan, curated by Seimone Augustus, and illustrated by Sophia Chang, releases March 7, 2023 in the United States. The coffee table book covers the origins of the game, various semi- and fully-professional leagues, the overseas experience, college basketball, and even major pop culture and activist moments. It also highlights specific athletes who may not even fit into one of those categories. The book opens in New York, 2072 with Jacklyn Jones, who is ..read more

Florence Griffith-Joyner (1959-1998) set world records in 1988 for both the 100 and 200 meter. They have never been broken. She won four medals at the Seoul Olympic Games with the U.S. track & field team – three golds and one silver and is the fastest woman of all-time. Griffith-Joyner won silver during the 1984 Olympic games in the 200m dash and won four medals in 1988: gold in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay and silver in the 4x400 meter relay. The record she set during the 1988 Olympic Trials are records that still haven’t been broken - though many are working on it. She said her most ..read more

Luisa "Lucha" Fuentes (1948) is a legendary Peruvian volleyball player, six-time South American champion, and two-time Olympian. “Fuentes will be eternally associated with the origins of competitive volleyball,” writes Abelardo Sánchez-León in The History of Peruvian Women’s Volleyball. Luisa was born in Ica, Peru on August 19, 1948 and in 1962, the father of Peru women’s volleyball, Akira Kato, noticed her. Fellow volleyball player Pilancho Jiménez said that Akira revolutionized volleyball and one of the principals was Luisa. By 1965, Luisa had been invited by the volleyball federation to be ..read more

Veronica Campbell Brown (b. 1982) is a Jamaican sprinter, Olympic and world champion. She is the first Jamaican woman to win gold in a sprint race. VCB won eight Olympic medals: three gold, three silver, and two bronze. Growing up in Trelawny, Jamaica, Campbell Brown used to race boys on the street. Her mom would send her to buy groceries, and she’d run to the store. Eventually, she attended Vere Technical High School, where she started to take athletics seriously. Growing up, she looked up to Florence Griffith Joyner, she liked her technique and tried to emulate her. She also looked up to le ..read more

Surya Bonaly (b. 1973) is a French figure skater and Olympian often famous for her flips; she landed a backflip on one foot at the 1998 Winter Olympics – something never performed before in competition. She was raised in Nice, France, and became a world champion in tumbling at 12, and said she was naturally gifted in sports – except those that involved catching a ball – and competed at a young age in diving, fencing, and equestrian. Bonaly was the first woman to attempt a “quadruple” in skating, which is a jump that involves four revolutions/spins. She dominated the rink – and remained the Eu ..read more

Tessa Sanderson (b. 1956) is a six-time Olympian who competed for Team Great Britain in javelin from the 1976 Olympics until 1996 Games. She won gold in the event in 1984. Sanderson is the first black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal and the first British athlete to win a throwing event at the Olympics. She battled both rivals and injuries and competed at the Olympic level for eight years before making history. “We were all capable of throwing that distance but when I threw that in the first round I thought, ‘This is a big competition, they are going to have to throw like hell to ge ..read more

Alice Coachman (1923-2014) is the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, winning the high jump in the 1948 Olympics in London. Coachman grew up in Albany, Georgia in a family of 10 children. She didn’t have access to the local facilities, but created ways to train. “During the segregated days there were track fields, but black people couldn’t use the track field. So I had to run up and down the road and all to train,” she said in an oral history interview. “And before that, I didn’t know anything about track, I just start skippin’ and jumpin’ and playing ball with the boys.” She also ..read more

Enith Brigitha (b. 1955) is the first Black woman to medal in Olympic swimming, winning bronze in the 100 and 200 freestyle in 1976. The East German athletes who won gold and silver ahead of her were later revealed and admitted to being involved in “systematic doping.” Brigitha considers herself a gold medalist. She has also won silver and bronze medals at the World and European championships in the 200 backstroke, 100 freestyle, 200 freestyle events. View more of her career highlights. She was born in Curaçao – formerly a Dutch colony – to a Curaçaoan father and Dutch mother who met in the N ..read more

Jessie Ellen Abbott is an interesting figure in women’s sports history. She was a member of the historic – and dominant – Tuskegee Tigerettes of the 1930s and ‘40s and was the first coach of what is now the legendary Tennessee State Tigerbelles program, who would dominate in the 50s and the 60s. “I ran for Tuskegee six years, track, played basketball for Tuskegee six years,” she said in a 1974 oral history interview. “Then I started the first girls’ track team at Tennessee State, so I’m a legend at Tennessee State.” Jessie Ellen Abbott is the daughter of Cleve Abbott (1894-1955), Tuskegee ath ..read more