‘I don’t know why you’d want to play that sport because it’s dreadful to watch’: The sports quotes of the year
She claimed the book contained “race-baiting” and reiterated the Texan complaint about it “opining prejudice based on race”. She also reckoned the work “trashes and puts down those who are not black” and is guilty of “white-shaming”. Because it tells how Rudolph grew up during an era of whites-only water fountains and black people being forced to sit at the back of buses.
Sprinter Wilma Rudolph wears one gold medal and holds up the two others she won at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Part of an organised and well-funded nationwide initiative by conservatives, the campaign pressures school boards to remove from circulation any publications that touch on LGBTQ+ issues, segregation, slavery, civil rights, and all manner of other perceived hot topics.
“In other words, it tells truths, specifically that many white people in the United States acted with prejudice, sometimes extreme, against other people solely because of their skin colour. ‘Wilma’ was just one of many books with facts that some wanted removed. Also on the list was All American Boys, Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s story of a black child killed by police, and White Bird, RJ Palacio’s book about a Jewish teen living in France after the Nazis seized power.
Not long after taking bronze at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 as a 16-year-old high school student, she had her first child, Yolanda, raised by her sister in Missouri so Randolph could continue her college education and train for Rome.