1. Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American sprinter who overcame polio as a child and went on to become a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field following her successes in the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games.
Wilma Rudolph was acclaimed as the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s; she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games.
Wilma Rudolph became a role model for black and female athletes; her Olympic successes helped elevate women's track and field in the United States.
Wilma Rudolph is regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer.
Wilma Rudolph died of brain and throat cancer in 1994, and her achievements are memorialized in a variety of tributes, including a US postage stamp, documentary films, and a made-for-television movie, as well as in numerous publications, especially books for young readers.
Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely to Blanche Rudolph at 4.5 pounds on June 23,1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee.
Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children from her father Ed Rudolph's two marriages.
Wilma Rudolph had several early childhood illnesses, including pneumonia and scarlet fever, and she contracted infantile paralysis at the age of five.
Wilma Rudolph recovered from polio but lost strength in her left leg and foot.
Physically disabled for much of her early life, Wilma Rudolph wore a leg brace until she was 12 years old.
Wilma Rudolph received subsequent at-home massage treatments four times a day from members of her family and wore an orthopedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years.
Wilma Rudolph was initially homeschooled due to the frequent illnesses that caused her to miss kindergarten and first grade.
Wilma Rudolph began attending second grade at Cobb Elementary School in Clarksville in 1947 at age seven.
Wilma Rudolph attended Clarksville's all-black Burt High School, where Rudolph excelled in basketball and track.
Wilma Rudolph became a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
In 1963, Wilma Rudolph graduated from Tennessee State with a bachelor's degree in education.
Wilma Rudolph was first introduced to organized sports at Burt High School, the center of Clarksville's African American community.
Wilma Rudolph continued to play basketball in high school, where she became a starter on the team and began competing in track.
The day that Temple saw the tenth grader for the first time, he knew Wilma Rudolph was a natural athlete.
Wilma Rudolph had already gained some track experience on Burt High School's track team two years earlier, mostly as a way to keep busy between basketball seasons.
Temple invited 14-year-old Wilma Rudolph to join his summer training program at Tennessee State.
Wilma Rudolph raced at amateur athletic events with TSU's women's track team, known as the Tigerbelles, for two more years before enrolling at TSU as a student in 1958.
When Wilma Rudolph was 16 and a junior in high school, she attended the 1956 US Olympic track and field team trials in Seattle, Washington, and qualified to compete in the 200-meter individual event at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
In 1958, Wilma Rudolph enrolled at Tennessee State, where Temple continued as her track coach.
Wilma Rudolph won the AAU 200-meter title in 1959 and defended it for four consecutive years.
Wilma Rudolph, who won a gold medal in each of these events, became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad.
Wilma Rudolph ran the finals in the 100-meter dash in a wind-aided time of 11.0 seconds.
Wilma Rudolph won another gold medal in the finals of the 200-meter dash with a time of 24.0 seconds, after setting a new Olympic record of 23.2 seconds in the opening heat.
Wilma Rudolph ran the anchor leg for the American team in the finals and nearly dropped the baton after a pass from Williams, but she overtook Germany's anchor leg to win the relay in a close finish.
Wilma Rudolph returned home to Clarksville after completing a post-games European tour, where she and her Olympic teammates competed in meets in London, West Germany, the Netherlands, and at other venues in Europe.
Wilma Rudolph heard this and refused to attend her own celebration of it being segregated.
Wilma Rudolph makes everlasting history by standing up for what she believes in as this marks the first ever integrated event in her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee.
Besides, Wilma Rudolph was invited to compete in New York Athletic Club track events and became the first woman invited to compete at the Millrose Games.
Wilma Rudolph was invited to compete at the Penn Relays and the Drake Relays, among others.
In 1961, Wilma Rudolph married William Ward, a North Carolina College at Durham track team member; they divorced in 1963.
Wilma Rudolph had won seven national AAU sprint titles and set the women's indoor track record of 6.9 seconds in the 60-yard dash.
Wilma Rudolph served as US representative to the 1963 Friendship Games in Dakar, Senegal, and visited Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Upper Volta, where she attended sporting events, visited schools, and made guest appearances on television and radio broadcasts.
Wilma Rudolph attended the premiere of the US Information Agency's documentary film that highlighted her track career.
In May 1963, a few weeks after returning from Africa, Wilma Rudolph participated in a civil rights protest in her hometown of Clarksville to desegregate one of the city's restaurants.
Wilma Rudolph married Robert Eldridge, who had fathered her child when she was in high school, later that year.
Wilma Rudolph did not earn significant money as an amateur athlete and shifted to a career in teaching and coaching after her retirement from track competition.
Wilma Rudolph began as a second-grade teacher at Cobb Elementary School, which Rudolph had attended as a child, and coached track at Burt High School, where she had once been a student-athlete herself, but conflict forced Rudolph to leave the position.
Wilma Rudolph moved several times over the years and lived in various places such as Chicago, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Saint Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Tennessee; California; and Maine.
Rudolph's autobiography, Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, was published in 1977.
In Boston, Massachusetts, she became involved in the federal Job Corps program, and Wilma Rudolph served as a track specialist for Operation Champion in 1967.
Wilma Rudolph went on to host a local television show in Indianapolis.
Wilma Rudolph was a publicist for Universal Studios as well as a television sports commentator for ABC Sports during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, and lit the cauldron to open the Pan American Games in Indianapolis in 1987 in front of 80,000 spectators at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In 1992, two years before her untimely death, Wilma Rudolph became a vice president at Nashville's Baptist Hospital.
Wilma Rudolph dated boxing legend Muhammad Ali during the early 1960s.
Wilma Rudolph was married twice, with both marriages ending in divorce.
On October 14,1961, Wilma Rudolph married William "Willie" Ward, a member of the North Carolina College at Durham track team.
In July 1994, Wilma Rudolph was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Wilma Rudolph's condition deteriorated rapidly, and Rudolph died on November 12,1994, at her home in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee; she was only 54 years old.
At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad.
Wilma Rudolph was one of the first role models for black and female athletes.
Wilma Rudolph's life is remembered in numerous publications, especially books for young readers.
Wilma Rudolph's life has been featured in documentary films and made-for-television movies too:.
Wilma Rudolph was named United Press International Athlete of the Year and Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year.
Wilma Rudolph was the recipient of the James E Sullivan Award for the top amateur athlete in the United States and the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award.
Wilma Rudolph was inducted into several women's and sports halls of fame:.
In 1994, a portion of US Route 79 was named Wilma Rudolph Boulevard, extending from Interstate 24, exit 4, in Clarksville to the Red River bridge near the Kraft Street intersection.