From Cincinnati to Olympic Gold-Medal Glory: De Hart Hubbard 

Written by Kathy Hurst, Digital Services Assistant, Downtown Main Library

As hundreds of athletes will be named gold medalists at the upcoming Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games, many will follow in the footsteps of De Hart Hubbard, the first African-American to win an individual Olympic gold. His journey from Cincinnati to Olympic fame is a story of breaking barriers and making history. Jump into the life of this trailblazing athlete and his remarkable achievements through materials compiled on the Digital Library. 

De Hart Hubbard 

De Hart Hubbard (1903-1976) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and named William De Hart Hubbard after A. J. De Hart, the first principal of the Douglass School. De Hart attended the Douglass School and first discovered his athletic abilities there as he started running track. He was not successful at first, but he was determined to succeed. By the time he graduated from the Douglass School, he was a champion runner.

He attended Walnut Hills High School, exhibiting excellence in track and other sports, graduating with the highest scholastic record of any boy in his class of 1921. Due to prejudice, the athletic board governing city high school athletics barred him from playing on the football team at the beginning of the season his senior year. The team had already played one game but refused to play the rest of the season, protesting this unfair ruling.

By the spring of his senior year, the ruling was reversed, and he was able to play on the baseball team and participate as their star track team member and captain, winning and setting records in board jump, high hurdles, discus throwing and the 100-yard dash. The Walnut Hills yearbook remembers De Hart Hubbard as a stellar athlete who encouraged others and won the respect of his school and competitors.

He was awarded the Enquirer college scholarship and attended the University of Michigan. In 1922, while a student at the University of Michigan, he broke the running broad jump record with a leap of 24 feet, 3 ½ inches, beating the 1914 record of 24 feet, 1 inch. While participating on the 1924 Olympic team, he won the gold medal in the running broad jump, the first Olympic gold for an African-American in an individual event. Later that year, he broke the record for the broad jump as a University of Michigan senior with a distance of 25 feet 10 3/4 inches. He also set records in the fifty, sixty, sixty-five and one-hundred-yard dashes.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, he became a supervisor in the Department of Colored Work for the Cincinnati Public Recreation Commission. De Hart Hubbard also founded the Cincinnati Tigers, a Negro League baseball team. He later moved to Cleveland and worked as a race relations adviser for the Federal Housing Authority. William De Hart Hubbard died in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 23, 1976.

Image credit: ‘Cincinnati's colored citizens: historical, sociological and biographical’, by Wendell P. Dabney.

Take a trip through our digital archives to learn more about the people, places, and events that have made Cincinnati a unique place.