Aime Alley Card - Author The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State

Aime Alley Card, author of The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State, talks about the amazing 1960 Tennessee State women’s sprinters, who attained Olympic glory at the 1960 games in Rome.

Episode Transcript

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This is What's at Risk with MikeChristian on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Hi, Mike Christian, here ofWhat's at Risk. First up on tonight's
show with the Olympics. Right aroundthe corner, we have an Encore edition
featuring Amy ali Card, author ofthe Tiger Bells Olympic Legends from Tennessee State.

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Amy discusses the amazing nineteen sixty TennesseeState women's sprinders who attained Olympic glory
at the nineteen sixty Games in Rome. And in our second segment, we
have Karamelot, manager of Client Services, and Heather Romanoff, manager of Razor
Operations for Needs. World Class ServiceDogs, the local Boston area based nonprofit

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that socializes and trains service dogs towork with their clients living with disabilities.
For the past several Amy ali Cardhas been researching, interviewing, and writing
about the Tennessee State Tiger Bells.This elite group of talented women included Wilma
Rudolph, Barbara Jones, Lucinda Williams, Martha Hudson, Willie B. White,

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and Shirley Crowder, women who wereonce and still should be known worldwide.
She conducted and reviewed hundreds of hoursof interviews and read just as many
books and articles ranging from concurrent toretrospective. She is a non fiction editor
for literary magazines and a board memberfor the Women's National Book Association. She

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serves on her town's Cultural Council,supporting educational programs. She is also the
author of and Beneath It All withLove, My Path back Home Again through
breast Cancer with Amy ali Card,the author of the Tiger Bells Olympic Legends

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from Tennessee State. Amy, howyou doing good. I'm doing great.
Thank you so much for having megreat, thanks for joining us. Maybe
a good place to start is justto tell our listeners a little bit about
your background. So I am awriter of this is my second book,
and I work with Pantyra's Literary magazineand Cambridge and have a couple of other

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kind of writing projects that I'm involvedin writing and editing. And a mom
with two kids, northsh or Boston. So that's me. You wrote a
book and it's called Tiger Bells,which was the name of the track team
for Tennessee State for many years,and it chronicles the nineteen sixty Tennessee State

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University All Black women's sprint team,which really excelled at the nineteen sixty Rome
Olympics. They were quite well knownduring that time, maybe a lot because
of Wilma Rudolph, but in generalbecause of their accomplishments. What actually inspired
you to write that story? SoI grew up in Nashville, which is
where the Tennessee State Tiger Bells arefrom. And my grandfather was a track

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coach at Vanderbilt and he became friendswith Coach Temple, two track coaches in
the same town, and he sawthe Tiger Bells rise to international prominence in
the nineteen fifties up into the nineteensixty Olympics. So I grew up knowing
about that story, and I wasalways surprised when other people didn't know about

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them, about the Tiger bells.And my daughter was working on a school
project one time and I started tellingher about the Tiger Bells as a potential
subject, and she was just enthralledby the idea. And I thought,
Okay, there's this new generation thatalso can know about the Tiger bells.
There's a new generation. And Istarted digging into the story, and the

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more I uncovered, the more Ifelt really strongly that their story should be
shared. Your grandfather, Ernest Dallywas the track coach at Vanderbilt. Did
he tell you stories about the TigerBells when you were young. Unfortunately he
passed away before I was born,but my dad was on the team at
the time in nineteen sixty and soI always heard about the Tiger Balls and

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just their legacy. They had kindof a legacy in our family, just
of being admired as just the standard. So you have track in your blood
if your grandfather coached and your dadwas a track athlete, I do.
I do, And both of myolder siblings were really amazing runners, and

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I am not, unfortunately, butI have been around the sport my entire
life, and so I'm very familiarwith the sport, even though I wasn't
good at it myself. But Ireally do know what it takes to be
a runner and what that particular sportmeans, and the kind of dedication that

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it takes and the ability to reallydig in. Tiger Bells were led by
a legendary coach at Temple. Hewas coached for a long time, starting
in the fifties and going into theeighties. What was his background, and
why was he so driven to makethese women successful. Well, he kind
of fell into coaching the Tiger Bellsby accident. He was a student at
Tennessee State and an athlete at TennesseeState. He had been recruited to play

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to rentrack himself, and he wasgraduating and looking for a coaching opportunity,
and he was living in the dormafter graduation, and he got called into
the head of school's office and hethought he was going to get in trouble
because he had overstayed the graduation inthe dorm. He thought he was going
to get kicked out of the dorm. But instead they had recommended him to

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coach the women's track team, andhe thought, you know, why not.
It was an opportunity and he'd havea problem with it, and he
didn't think that he had a lotto add at that time, but he
thought he would give it a andthey gave him one hundred and fifty dollars
a year and an upgrade to hisdorm room, and so he said sure,

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and then he never left his entirecareer, he coached the Tiger Bells
and so that dedication really came laterafter after he got into the team,
started coaching them and saw what theywere capable of and what they could do.
That was really when he dug in. And he had plenty of other
opportunities throughout his career and he neverleft. Presumably they paid him more than

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one hundred and fifty a year downthrough the years. It was a slow
growth at Tennessee State, though ittook him a long time to earn.
Every incremental increase over time was painfulfor him. Yeah, and he started
in the fifties or maybe the lateforties. I forget when he actually started.

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He started coaching in nineteen fifty two, he had started at Tennesseeze and
forty eight. What was his driveto make these women so successful? He
was obviously passionate about it. Hespent his whole life doing it. He
was an effective coach, for sure. Was he a good recruiter of athletes?

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Did you just see potential in peoplethat maybe others didn't see? What
was the magic? I think itwas both of those things. That the
thing that really sparked the team,he said, was recruiting Mayfags. And
may Fags before she came to TennesseeState had already been to the Olympics.
She came after just after the nineteenfifty two she'd already signed down to Tennessee

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State, but just after the nineteenfifty two Olympics, and she'd been in
nineteen forty eight, and she wasreally a superstar. And when he recruited
her to come run at Tennessee State, that really started off. So he
was able to scope out that toptalent and attract them to Tennessee State.
I think it was just because ofhis dedication to the team that they were

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attracted. And then Lucienda Williams,one of the superstars on the team,
said that he saw things in usthat we didn't even see in ourselves,
and so that drive that working hard, the things that he was asking of
them to do in their training,it was because he knew that they had
it in them. You're right aboutthe team's success despite the challenges of competing

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in the Jim Crow era in theSouth. What were some of those challenges,
because I'm sure there are experiences thatno athlete today could even imagine.
What were the barriers that they hadto overcome during that period of time,
particularly in the South. Exactly,so they the big meat every year that
they that they would go to wasin Tuskegee, and that was in Alabama.

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So from Nashville to Tuskegee, youknow, it took a little while.
They would have to hack up theirmeals and get a full tinke of
gas and just not stop along theway because they never knew and the jim
cross south where it would be safeto stop to use the bathroom, to
get gassed, to get some food. They also they went in nineteen sixty

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to Texas for the Olympic Trials andthe national meets, and that was a
really challenging trip. They didn't havethe same they the lodging facility for the
black athletes was different than the whiteathletes that can stay together, and of
course the conditions were not as good. You know, it wasn't separate but

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equal. It was not equal.It was not the same conditions that they
had. Food was different, butstill they were expected to perform against athletes
that had better food, better lodgings. They had to travel overnight sometimes when
they would go up to Madison SquareGarden, which was another place where they
would have a lot of events,they would have to travel overnight because they

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never knew where they were going tobe able to stay, and also funding
was an issue to be able tohave the hotel rooms that they would caravan
and two station wagons all piled downwith all their gear, all their equipment,
travel overnight and then have to runand perform and compete at the elite
level. But they did it,and they were dominant and the sport from

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the mid fifties for decades. Willtake a quick break from our interview with
Amy Card to revisit comments from theGuardian Sport blog about Ed Temple. Look
at Temple, it told his firstset of female college athletes, if the
boys can do it, you cando it. He also exhorted them not

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to overlook their studies. Athletics opensthe door for you, he said,
but education keeps them open. Hisplans for developing his squad were couraged by
his college principal, whose ambitions forthe establishment included winning an integrated title in
any sport. Under Temple, theTiger Bells became that team. The gratified

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principle presented them with an old DeSotostation wagon to take them to distant track
meets, with the coach as theirchauffeur. There is a statue of Temple
outside a sports stadium in Nashville.A Tennessee state track suit and a pair
of spikes are on display in theNational Museum of African American History and Culture.
But the old Coach's best memorial willalways be the site. In snatches

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of newsreel film were more vividly storedin the memory of Wilma Rudolph, grown
strong and tall and swift in theface of society's odds, rising from the
blocks in the Roman sunshine, toburn off her pursuers with devastating elegance,
and in the process recalibrating the world'sideas of what a black woman could be.

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And now back to our discussion withAmy Card and not unlike baseball players
and basketball players and others during thatera, it was a difficult time if
you were a black athlete. Nowthere were six women that you primarily focused
on, Wilma Rudolph, Barbara Jonesand Senda Williams, Martha Hudson, Willie
B. White, and Shirley Crowder. Were you able to get a sense

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of how they worked with each other, their teamwork, how they viewed each
other, were they friends, werethey close? What was that dynamic like
they were a family. They really, but like a family, they would
be really competitive with each other.They would there was a really intense competition

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between Lilly White and Margaret Matthews thatI go into pretty get detail about it.
They kind of regularly beat each other'sworld records in the long time.
But then they were the best offriends, and they were so close that
they stay in touch for the restof their lives. They were once you

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were in Tiger Bell, you werealways a Tiger Bell and you know,
they went to all each other's majorlife events. Definitely, it's such a
strong bond that it was like family. Wilma Rudolph was the one that was
most well known. She won theone hundred meters, the two hundred and
they all want a gold in thefour by one hundred. Was she the
leader? How did they view her? Because she really was the first major

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superstar in women's track. She was. She was definitely a breakout star and
a world I think you're right,I think the first real breakout superstar.
But she wasn't on the team aleader. She would be the first person
to tell you that it depended onthe rest of the team to get her

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where She was, and she BarbaraJones would say, when Wilma came to
Tennessee State, I beat her.She was so they had a motto on
the team that they didn't graduate fromTennessee State winning. Their job was to
pull the younger women up behind themto be better than them. When Wilma

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came to Tennessee State, she hada more raw talent. She wasn't trained
in the way to have that perfectform, and s tried. Barbara Jones
describes tying her arms down to keepher arms in line, and you know,
she had all sprattled out, shesaid, and her knees would go

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in a little bit. So shewas a little bit they called knock need.
And they put weights on the outsideof her shoes to straighten up her
gate. And so they were.These were her peers working with her,
not only her coach, and theyworked hard with her. And Wilma always
complained about her starts because she wasso tall. She thought that she was

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really slow getting out of the startingblocks. And Martha Husband was so she
was also on her relay team.Very small. She was under five feet
tall and Wilma was almost six feettall. And so Wilma was always jealous
of Martha Hudson's starts, and sothey worked together to you know, constantly

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repeat that getting out of the startingblocks faster and bus from Pastor and so
and Wilma even for little things likehanging onto her passport. Lucinda Williams was
the one who held onto Wilma's passportbecause nobody thought that she was going to
remember, she was going to beable to keep track of it. So
she was an amazing talent, butI don't think that you know, she

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was the leader later on in hertime, but she was kind of young
and green and all when she wasreally bursting onto the scene with her talent.
She ultimately became a leader and avery inspirational person. Unfortunately, she
died relatively young. She overcame we'respeaking about Wilma Rudolph now, she overcame
childhood diseases and many health challenges.That's right. She had she was born

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for mansure and she had several illness. Says Polio was the one that they
think that had an impact on herleg and so her leg was in a
grace until she was nine years old, and then she went to her first
Olympics when she was sixteen. Sobetween having her brace her leg and a
braith at nine years old to beingan elite athlete where she she won a

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bronze medal in the nineteen fifty sixOlympic as a part as part of the
port By one hundred relay team.It was just an incredible accomplishment. It
was like she had been held backfor so long, being ill in her
childhood, and then when she wasfinally able to run, no one could
stop her. She was free.I also read that Barbara Jones was actually

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the youngest gold medalist ever at fifteenyears old, which is astounding to me.
I never knew that fifteen years old. And she was there in the
nineteen That was in the nineteen fiftyfifty two Olympics in Helsinki, and she
was there with May Bags, Andthat was before she was at sannes See
State. You know, she wasfrom Chicago and she was running with the

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club there. But then in nineteenfifty six she didn't make the Olympic team,
and you know she was dead.But what May Fags said to Barbara
Jones, you need to get yourselfto Tennessee State and get some training.
And she did, and she shecame to Tennessee State in time for you

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know, a few years I hadof been nineteen sixty Olympics and she had
her chance to redeem herself there andshe did. But yeah, she was
a diva. She called herself thediva on the team. She has a
big personality still and from that earlywin, you know, was the youngest
youngest American woman to win gold inthe Olympics. Yeah, that's a pretty

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amazing stat I don't know that there'sanybody younger to this day that's won a
gold medal. I think, ifI'm not mistaken, Barbara, Lucinda,
and Martha are all still alive.Yeap, Yes they are. They are.
Were you able to interview them forthis book and talk to them?
I talked to I talked to them, except Martha Hudson is She's has Alzheimer's

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now and she's not available. ButI definitely talked to Barbara and they they
kind of are at that stage inlife where they feel like they've done a
ton of interviews and they are saying, you know, go for it,
find out find all those old interviews. They are there there, you do
your research. And so I waslucky enough to connect up with Dwight Lewis,

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who was a longtime reporter for theTennessee and and he had gone to
Tennessee State, and he had beengathering interviews with all of the Tennessee State
athletes for his entire career, andhe let me have access to some of
those, and I felt like therewas something really special about those kind of
current interviews. You know, theinterviews when they were younger, and these

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they were you know, when you'reolder and you're looking back at something and
you kind of just want to makepeace with that. You want everything to
have have perspective in your life.But when you're young and you're not,
you're not so hesitant about talking aboutrivalries on the team or our little some
of those kind of stories that addthat spark of interest, and you're also

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not afraid to say what was makingyou mad about some of the injustices that
they fased and discrimination not only justfrom the Jim Crow South but also being
women athletes. Yeah, I thinkthat makes a lot of sense because the
interviews when you're in the midst ofyour career, in the heat of battle
and competition, you're going to bea lot more energetic and effusive about what's

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going on. Right Yeah, yeah, yeah, some of those are great.
They're all in their eighties now,probably mid eighties, they are so
were they celebrated for their accomplishments ina meaningful way in nineteen sixty Were you
able to discern that? So theywere at the Olympics. They were kind
of the media darlings at the Olympics. I'm not sure if it was only

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because of their accomplishments. They weredefinitely good. I think they were just
kind of the ones to watch atthat Olympics. They were hanging out with
Cash's Clay and everybody wanted to bea part of the Tiger Bells. It
took a little while for them toget acknowledgement, even within their school and
their community. For example, whenthey won their first national championship in nineteen

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fifty five, coach Temple was justsure that that was going to change the
dynamics. They were going to getall the support they needed from the school,
they were going to get scholarships,they were going to get a real
track because they were still at thetime practicing on a truck that only went
halfway around. It didn't go fullyaround. And so they would, you
know, run halfway around the trackand maybe running in dirt. They wanted

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to do a four forty, butit didn't happen that way. He came
home and they said, you know, good job, but it's still women's
track. You know, it's stillnot not the thing that they really wanted
to focus a lot on. SoI think that was really the case about
it being women's sports. Track wasjust not the marquee sport that should have

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been, and so football and basketballkind of always took the build the state.
You know, they've sold a lottickets to those events and written about
more in the paper. Crack wasmore popular then than it is today.
Unfortunately, we've lost interest in trackas we progressed into today's sports era.
Are the Tiger Bills somewhat forgotten today? Yeah? I think it's true.

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I mean people there are lots ofpeople that I've heard of Wilma Rudolph.
I mean it's less it's less commonfor people to have heard of her in
the younger generations. But I dothink it's so important for people to know
whose shoulders they stand on. Andthey played a major part in women having

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Title nine and Title nine changed thegame for women's athletics. Having to equally
fund men's and women's athletics, andcolleges and state and state run institutions are
betterally of funding institutions. It madea space for women to be able to
really participate in a more equal level. We're still working on it, but

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more equal level. And they byproving how strong they were and how they
could represent their country on an internationalstage, helped to prove that women's sports
were worth the investment. Now therewere forty Olympians and twenty three total sprint
medals over time for coach Temple atTennessee State. And I know we talked

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about this a little bit before,but what his focus was. Was there
a secret to that he was ableto recruit more great athletes? What was
the reason for all of that?Because that spanned decades, not just a
few years. That's right, itwas his entire career. I mean,
what I think his special coaching skillwas was that he cared so much about

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his team. He was invested inthem, he believed in them, and
they wanted to perform for him.But he also was able to seek out
the players that had the athletes thathad that internal's bark that he was looking
for. He needed somebody not justto have the raw talent, but to
have that grit that you need tobe able to push yourself that extra mile.

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He has a famous quote that Ijust love. It's paraphrasing anybody says,
I'm tired. It's not the timeto quit. I'm tired. Is
the time to dig in and seeif you can find that thing within yourself
that's going to push you further.I would just love that where it's you
know, the average person is goingto stop when they're tired, and he's
looking for the people that can keepgoing and find that extra determination. He

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had these strict roles that they hadto bye by, but everyone loved him
so much and I couldn't square thatbecause to me, he sounded like a
tough coach. He was like afather to them, and they knew that
they could come to him with theirproblems. He was a counselor. He
was you know so many who wasalways looking out for their best interests and

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he was fair. Yeah, whateverthat combination of things was, it's certainly
born out in the success that theyhad over many many years. So what's
next for you? I know thisbook was just released. You're probably focused
on promoting it for a while.I'm guessing yeah, trying to try to
get this one out into the world. I'm not going to quit fishing this
at least until the Olympics this year. But then I have another story that's

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more of a Boston area story abouta navigator for a clipper ship who was
a woman in the eighteen fifties whois really kind of drawing my attention.
I think that one might be funto work on over the summer and get
out on the water into some clippershupresearch. That's great. Well, listen,
we wish you the best with thisbook. It's the Tiger Bells Olympic
Legends from Tennessee State. We've beentalking to Amy card Amy, thank you

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so much, really appreciate it.Thanks so much for having me. We'll
be right back after the news Atthe bottom of the app