By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (August 18^th 2020)

Olympic Spirit?

Len Taunyane and Jan Mashiane were black – members of the Tswana tribe. They were in St Louis for (the World Fair), the utterly racist Louisiana Purchase Exposition. These Games would go down in history as one of the most poorly organised and racist in the history of the Olympic Games in the events and outside too.

This would become important in the history of the Olympic Games Football Tournament before South Africa’s suspension and expulsion from both the IOC and FIFA. So would the story of African-American, George Poage.

South African sport and its society was abhorrently racist. There is no doubt about that. Perusal of laws that pre-date this Olympiad establish that the tenets of Apartheid existed in South Africa long before the National Party won power on that basis in 1948.

Precursors of Apartheid laws existed long before St Louis’ Olympic Games. Society was abnormal in South Africa before and after 1904. Its sport was not normal, but St Louis’ Exposition of revolting racism should not get a free pass either.

The racism of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was off the scale – even the ‘sports’ side of it.

Boycott Calls

Despite hosting the first Olympic Games to take place in the USA, St Louis has a claim to shame – one for which the IOC should apologise. The 3^rd Olympiad of the modern era was scheduled to take place in Chicago.

St Louis’ businessmen bullied their way into hosting that Olympiad by threatening to host another athletics event. Rather than have a rival event, the IOC, under the stewardship of its founder, de Coubertin, reluctantly let St Louis host the Games.

De Coubertin did not attend this Olympiad – he could see it was a disaster in the making. He was not proved wrong. The businessmen who organised the Exposition (also known as the World Fair) saw the Games as part of their publicity strategy for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

The first African-American competitor in the modern Olympic Games, George Poage, won bronze medals in the 200m hurdles and also 400m hurdles. He competed despite a call from black community leaders to boycott the Games because of the segregation that black Africans were forced to endure by the Exposition organisers and, also, segregation at the Olympic Games as well.

The racism at the Exposition was intolerable – hence the call to boycott the Games.

The Racist Games

The lack of interest from other nations made this Olympic Games an abysmal failure. Only twelve countries were represented at this Olympiad. The overwhelming majority of participants represented the USA – some were not even citizens of the USA at the time. Decades later some nations still dispute the nationality of ‘US’ medallists.

To avoid the Games being seen as the dismal failure that it was, organisers of the Exposition recruited some of the participants of the Exposition to enter the Olympic Games. This was how Taunyane and Mashiane became the first Africans to complete an Olympic Games Marathon race.

Almost the Last Olympic Marathon

It should also be noted that the conditions – searing heat – could not have been much more unsuitable for a Marathon. That was one of many things that the organisers got wrong.

The first to cross the finish line was a prankster disqualified for cheating – he had been given a lift for much of the race. Originally banned for life, Frederick Lorz, had his ban reduced after claiming ‘temporary insanity.’

The eventual winner, the British-born Thomas Hicks, had been ‘assisted’ with two doses of strychnine washed down with brandy because he was suffering in the race. It was clearly performance-enhancing drugs – not banned then but strychnine is now.

The conditions were appalling. Eighteen of the 32 starters failed to finish. One was disqualified and the winner should have been as well.

This Marathon almost ended the race in the Olympic Games – it had only been introduced in 1896 to give a historical link to the Ancient Greeks. The highlight of the first Modern Olympic Games was the only Greek victory in the athletics – Spyridon Louis[1] in the Marathon. It made him a national hero.

Outrageous

Controversy over this Marathon did not end there. The black South Africans, Taunyane and Mashiane were recruited for the Olympic Games as a result of the scandalous Anthropology Days in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. They happened to be in St Louis for the Exposition’s Boer War Exhibition.

It should not be forgotten that both of them were subjected to racism so abhorrent that members of St Louis’ black community – no strangers to experiencing despicable racism themselves – were outraged by the conditions they found the black South Africans subjected to at Exposition.

They helped the black South Africans escape and assisted them with accommodation and more!

These Olympic Games were segregated as well – one of the reasons black community leaders called for a boycott.

More Segregation

Baseball was a Demonstration Sport at St Louis’ Olympic Games. Even before St Louis’ Olympic Games baseball was segregated. Its colour bar was disgraceful as virulent racists like Cap Anson are in baseball’s Hall of Fame. At the very least, Anson deserves an asterisk for his role in baseball’s colour bar.

The sport had an established and despicable colour bar and segregated leagues long before other sports and countries. Baseball’s colour bar was broken by Jackie Robinson in 1947.

How was this normal sport? How was a society that utilised the racism of Jim Crow lynching anything but grossly abnormal?

St Louis’ Exposition organisers were instrumental in bullying their way into hosting that Olympiad. They exhibited gross racism in and out of the Games. Consequently, the racism demonstrated in the Exposition was part and parcel of racism at the Olympics too.

Sport in the USA was abhorrent too. Why isn’t this mentioned?

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[1] After the Olympic victory Louis became a farmer and later a policeman. In 1926 he was arrested for forgery. He was acquitted after spending a year in jail awaiting trial. Ten years after his arrest he was the Guest of Honour at Berlin’s Olympic Games. After the Opening Ceremony – he carried Greece’s flag – he was received by Adolf Hitler. He gave the Nazi dictator – the symbol of peace – an olive branch from Olympia. He died in 1940 just over seven months before the Italian invasion of Greece.