The AAU Sullivan Award
Known as the “ Oscar” of sports awards, and older than The
Heisman, the AAU Sullivan Award honors the outstanding amateur athlete in the
United States. It has been presented annually by the AAU since 1930 as a salute
to founder and past president of the Amateur Athletic Union, and a pioneer in
amateur sports, James E. Sullivan. Based on the qualities of leadership,
character, sportsmanship, and the ideals of amateurism, the AAU Sullivan Award
goes far beyond athletic accomplishments and honors those who have shown strong
moral character.
The namesake of
the award is James E. Sullivan. James E. Sullivan actually created the Amateur
Athletic Union in the clubhouse of the New York Athletic Club back in 1888.
Since then, the AAU has become one of the largest, non-profit, grass roots
sports programs in the country.
The AAU’s roster
includes Olympic Gold medallists, Professional Baseball and Basketball players,
and hundreds of World Champion athletes who all began as young children with stars
in their eyes as they looked to the future.
BSTM will
present to you, those minority athletes who have won the Sullivan Award in the
1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, a five-part series.
The 1960s
1960: Rafer Johnson
Rafer Johnson was born on Aug. 18, 1935 in Hillsboro, Texas,
about 55 miles south of Dallas. At Kingsburg High School, Johnson was a superb
all-around athlete, winning varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball
and track. He averaged nine yards a carry as a halfback in leading the team to
three league championships, scored 17 points a game in basketball and was a
.400 hitter for the baseball team. But he was even better in track and field.
As a high school star in four sports, he decided to compete exclusively in
track. He chose the decathlon.
Johnson already
had the world record, three national AAU championships and a silver medal in
the Olympics on his resume when he competed in the 1960 Olympics. Missing was
the gold. Johnson led his friend and UCLA teammate by 67 points going into the
final event on the night of Sept. 6, 1960. He had won the gold medal, setting a
then-Olympic record of 8,392 points in the process.
He won the
Pan-American Games in Mexico City in 1955.
Returning to
Kingsburg, he scored a world-record 7,985 point at a welcome-home meet,
breaking Bob Mathias’ mark by 98 points.
In 1956, he won
his first national decathlon championship.
Johnson, at the
age of 25, had fulfilled his high school dream. He received the 1960 Sullivan
Award for being the Outstanding American Amateur Athlete of the Year and was
named the Associated Press Athlete of the Year.
He is a member
of the National Track and Field and U.S. Olympic Halls of Fame.
In 1984, 24
years after his gold-medal performance, Johnson again participated in the
Olympics. As the final torchbearer, he climbed up the stairs at the Los Angeles
Coliseum and lit the flame that symbolized the opening of the Games.
1961: Wilma Rudolph
Wilma Rudolph was a sight to behold. At 5-foot-11 and 130
pounds, she was lightning fast. Wilma watchers in the late 1950s and early ’60s
were admonished: don’t blink. You might miss her. And that would be a shame.
At the 1960 Rome
Olympics, Rudolph became “the fastest woman in the world” and the first
American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics. She won the 100- and
200-meter races and anchored the U.S. team to victory in the 4 x 100-meter
relay, breaking records along the way.
In the 100, she
tied the world record of 11.3 seconds in the semifinals, then won the final by
three yards in 11.0. However, because of a 2.75-meter per second wind — above
the acceptable limit of two meters per second — she didn’t receive credit for a
world record.
In the 200, she
broke the Olympic record in the opening heat in 23.2 seconds and won the final
in 24.0 seconds.
In the relay,
she overtook Germany’s anchor leg, and the Americans, all women from Tennessee
State, took the gold in 44.5 seconds after setting a world record of 44.4
seconds in the semifinals.
Rudolph’s
Olympic performances (she also won a bronze medal at age 16 in the relay at
Melbourne in 1956) were spectacular despite her adversities. She was born
prematurely on June 23, 1940 in St. Bethlehem, Tenn. She suffered from double
pneumonia, scarlet fever and later she contacted polio as a child. After losing
the use of her left leg, she was fitted with metal leg braces when she was 6.
However, years of treatment and a determination to be a “normal kid” worked.
Despite whooping cough, measles and chicken pox, Rudolph was out of her leg
braces at age 9 and soon became a budding basketball star.
At the all
African-American Burt High School, Rudolph played on the girls’ basketball
team. Rudolph became an all-state player, setting a state record of 49 points
in one game. Then Ed Temple came calling.
Temple, the
Tennessee State track coach, asked the coach at Burt to form a girls’ track
team so he could turn one of the forwards into a sprinter. And Wilma was the
one.
Almost the
entire 1960 Olympic team, coached by Temple, came from his Tennessee State
team.
Wilma was voted
into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1973 and the National Track and Field
Hall of Fame in 1974. NBC made a movie about her life from her autobiography,
“Wilma.”
Rudolph died of
brain cancer at age 54 on Nov. 12, 1994 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her
extraordinary calm and grace are what people remember most about her. Bill
Mulliken, a 1960 Olympics teammate of Rudolph’s said, “She was beautiful, she
was nice, and she was the best.”
Reprint permission from www.bstmllc.com.