"OLD GLORY'S" DEBT TO NEGRO

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 35, 10 August 1936, Page 8

"OLD GLORY'S" DEBT TO NEGRO

Negro triumph in the old Greek Games, as revived in the twentieth century of the Christian era of while civilisation, makes an interesting footnote to racial history. Not the least significant element in this ''barbarian" Olympic glory is the fact that it is witnessed, recorded, j solemnised in Aryan Germany; and, with ';Old Glory" waving in the breeze, the white-skinned German maiden crowns the dark-skinned champion. With the fifth United States victory (400 metres) won through a negro, in a major event, the athletic ascendancy of the negro race receives its Olympic certificate, won by Africa, via America, in Europe, and in the most race-bigoted country of Europe—the country of the "blonde beast." From the days when they were dragged from their African homes, transported, and sold in America, the Western section of the negro race became endowed with a destiny which, in its various forms, has astonished the Americans, and which remains full of worldpossibilities yet unguessed. Tne athletic side of the story ■is sufficiently symbolic. About forty years ago there appeared in nn American magazine a story of the handicapping of negro children, as against white, in school sports. When the negro child jumped, the bar went up at once six inches or a foot, not on merits but on colour; result—the negro boys, habituated to racial handicap, overcame it and still outjumped competition. Out of this kind of foundry have come athletes so finely forged that, in the sprint and middle distance events, the white world can no longer deny them. The results of Heir Hitler's Olympiad constitute a comment on his race-bigotry that he could- hardly have foreseen. If America had won with white athletes Americans might have been better pleased, but their contribution, to the Olympic Games would have lost its piquancy and symbolic value.