[Cobb Elementary School, 1947]
"My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother."
- Wilma Rudolph
Childhood
Wilma Rudolph was born in Clarksville, Tennessee on June 23, 1940. The twentieth of twenty-two children and born prematurely, she struggled with illnesses such as polio for much of her childhood, leaving her disabled and forced to wear a leg brace.
[Nashville Public Library, 1960]
Due to segregated medical practices, Rudolph was not granted care in her hometown and had to travel 100 miles round-trip for physical therapy in addition to multiple at-home treatments. It was with great determination, grit, and faith that Rudolph could remove her braces at the age of 11.
[How They Play]
“No one has a life where everything that happened was good. I think the thing that made life good for me is that I never looked back. I've always been positive, no matter what happened."
- Wilma Rudolph
Education
Wilma attended Cobb Elementary School and all-black Burt High School where she played basketball, leading her team to victory. At the age of fifteen, she was discovered by track coach Ed Temple at Tennessee State University, where she received a full scholarship and majored in education, becoming the first in her family to go to college.
"In college, I was an education major and qualified for several jobs. But the fame that came with the Olympic medals was too threatening to many people."
- Wilma Rudolph
[The Tennessee Tribune/TSU Archives]
[Tennessee State University Special Collections and Archives, Brown-Daniel Library, 1955]
[Getty Images, 1963]