(Source: Chicago Tribune)
By Eddie Pells /Associated Press
Mabel Landry Staton, the Black track and field standout who broke through racial barriers and became the only woman to compete for the United States in the long jump at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, died Thursday. The Chicago native was 92.
Staton, who went by the name of Mabel Landry when she attended DePaul from 1951-54 — before the school had a women’s track team — was inducted into the university’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2011. Senior associate athletic director Thad Dohrn said Landry’s daughter notified the school of her mother’s death, which came after a long battle with cancer.
“At DePaul I was treated royally by fellow students,” she told the Tribune in May 2008.
A long jumper and sprinter, Staton was the only American woman to meet the Olympic qualifying standard in the long jump in the lead-up to the Helsinki Games, where she finished seventh. Her best jump at those Olympics was 5.88 meters (19 feet, 3½ inches) in qualifying, which for a few minutes made her the Olympic record holder. New Zealand’s Yvette Williams jumped 6.16 (20-2½) later in the same round.
“Being on the Olympic team was not about winning; it was about taking part,” Staton said in a recent interview with CBS News Philadelphia.
Staton grew up on the South Side. At 13, the coach from St. Elizabeth’s, where Staton attended grammar school and high school, “discovered” her and by 16, she was running for a Catholic Youth Organization team, winning national AAU events. Calling it a “team,” however, was a stretch because Staton was its only member.
Staton’s coach bought her a spot in a sleeping compartment for a train ride to Texas to compete in her first national AAU meet. Early in the morning, a conductor banged on her door and told her the train had crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and she had to move out and sit with other Black passengers.
She did what she was told, joining her visibly upset coach, who did not let it go. When they returned home, the CYO sued the Illinois Central Railroad and won. That afforded her the money to form an interracial track team that was thought to be the first of its kind in the Midwest.
“And we beat everybody,” she told the Tribune.
Three years later, at 19, she was competing in Helsinki at the 1952 Olympic Games. In the ’55 Pan Am Games, Staton won a gold medal in the 400-meter relay and a bronze in the 60-meter dash. She was the co-holder of the American 50-yard dash record.
She went on to win four national long jump titles and anchored the winning 4×100-meter relay team for the United States at the 1955 Pan American Games.
