Una línea de tiempo de la historia de los corredores afroamericanos de larga distancia

When runners learn about Ted Corbitt, NYRR’s founding president, many assume that he was the first Black American distance runner of historical significance. Corbitt (1919-2007) was a towering figure in distance running, but he was far from the first—or the only—African American distance runner of note. Black running history in America dates back to at least the 1870s and is both rich and deep.

Gary Corbitt, Ted’s son, has spent years researching and writing about Black American running and bringing many untold stories to life. He established the Ted Corbitt Archives to preserve and highlight some of the amazing and near-forgotten stories of Black American runners, coaches, clubs, teams, events, supporters, and administrators.

“My father always told me that he wasn’t alone—that there were other great Black American distance runners,” said Gary, pictured below. “I didn’t know just how rich the history was until I started to look into it myself.”

Drawing from books, articles, and a huge volume of primary documents, Gary has created a Black Running History Timeline that covers 100 years (1880-1979).

“The work is ongoing,” he said. “I’ve probably captured about 75 percent of what’s known from that 100-year period.”

He’s inspired by a story his father told him of a letter he received from a young Black runner. “The runner wrote that he wished he’d known about my father when he was in school and coaches steered him away from distance running and toward the sprints,” said Gary. “If he’d had a Black distance runner like my father as a role model, things might have been different. I want today’s young Black runners to know they are part of a rich history and have many role models.”

Gary added that when he started his research, "I was both shocked and saddened to see how Black long distance running history had been ignored. This void in running history preservation motivates me to work at building a team of running history scholars to ensure this subject is never ignored again."

Here are just a few of the many highlights from the timeline; for more, visit tedcorbitt.com.

Frank Hart and the Pedestrian Movement

In the late 1870s, the most popular sport in the U.S. was pedestrianism—multi-day running and walking events of hundreds of miles, often conducted around indoor tracks in front of huge crowds. Competitors were of all races and backgrounds, and one of the most successful was a young Black runner named Frank Hart (above, left). Born Fred Hichborn in Haiti in 1858, he moved to Boston in his teens, worked as a grocer, and began running distance races to make extra money, changing his name when he became a professional “ped.”

Hart won the prestigious O’Leary Belt six-day race in Madison Square Garden in 1880, completing an astonishing 565 miles, a world record. The second-place finisher, William Pegram, was also Black. Hart’s success brought him fame and fortune; his image was on trading cards (the precursor to baseball cards) nationwide and he probably earned over $100,000 in his lifetime, thanks to the legal gambling that was central to the sport and even allowed competitors to bet on themselves!

Unfortunately, Hart also endured racism, including heckling and physical harassment from spectators and snubs and racial slurs from his rivals. By the late 1880s, baseball—with rigid segregationist policies—supplanted pedestrianism in popularity. An outstanding all-round athlete, Hart joined a Negro league team for several years.

The spirit of the pedestrian era inspired Ted Corbitt, who ran (and won) many ultra races and completed an incredible 68.9 miles in 24 hours at age 82. "My father would talk about running 600 miles in six days and walking 100 miles in 24 hours," said Gary. "These were pedestrian-era milestones that I didn’t fully understand the significance of until much later, after his passing."

Early NYC Running Clubs and Marathoners

Several Black running clubs in NYC in the early 1900s, including the Salem Crescent Athletic Club, St. Christopher’s Club of NY, Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn, showcased the talents of a generation of Black runners at distances from the sprints to the marathon.

In 1919, Aaron Morris of the St. Christopher Athletic Club finished sixth in the Boston Marathon in 2:37:13 becoming the first known African American to run the race. In the 1920 Boston Marathon, Morris’s teammate Cliff Mitchell finished eighth in 2:41:43. Mitchell finished 13th in Boston in 1921, and another St. Christopher runner, John Goff, finished ninth in 2:37:35 that year.

The New York Pioneer Club and Coach Joe Yancey

The New York Pioneer Club, founded in 1936 in Harlem by coach Joe Yancey and two other Black men, was committed to providing opportunity to anyone interested and qualified, regardless of race. “It was an integrated running team that predated the integration of pro sports,” said Gary Corbitt. Ted Corbitt joined the Pioneer Club in 1947, and in 1958 he and other members were the founding core New York Road Runners. Stay tuned for a longer article about the NYPC next week.

Marilyn Bevans and other African American Woman Marathoners

Opportunities for women distance runners were few and far between before the early 1970s. NYRR always allowed women as members and in its events, but the Boston Marathon barred women until 1972, the same year a women’s 1500m (less than a mile) was added to the Olympics.

In the 1970s, Marilyn Bevans of Baltimore came on the scene as the first competitive Black American woman marathoner in the modern era. Bevans was the first Black American woman to win a marathon—the Washington Birthday Marathon in Maryland in 1975. She placed fourth in the 1975 Boston Marathon in a time of 2:55:52, becoming the first sub-three-hour Black American woman marathoner. She ran a total of 13 sub-3:00 marathons. Stay tuned for more on Bevans (who went on to become a coach and is now in her 70s) and other Black American women marathoners in a future article.

Learn more at the Ted Corbitt Archives.

Illustration: Public domain.