JOHN WOODRUFF
Ninety years ago, a rising University of Pittsburgh sophomore named John Woodruff delivered a mesmerizing victory in the 800 meters race in the 1936 summer Olympic Games in Nazi Germany. Of course, Ohio State University African American sensation Jesse Owens triumphed with four gold medals at the Berlin games that summer.
But the drama of John Woodruff’s gold medal-winning performance likely upheld one’s faith in miracles. Not only did John Woodruff come in first in the 800 meters race, he came from last place to do so. A Black small-town young man with world-class talent, the native of Connellsville, Pennsylvania (a town near Pittsburgh) put his little birth place on the map.
Born in South Connellsville in 1915, John Woodruff was part of a working class family of 12 children. A stand-out football, as well as track and field athlete in high school, for college he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh with a track and field athletic scholarship.
During his freshman year in college, John Woodruff experienced limited preparatory competition. That was yet another reason why his international Olympic gold was all the sweeter in that 800-meter race that summer of 1936, on the world stage.
In the race John Woodruff was in an inside lane. Soon, he was boxed in by other runners. He knew that fowling as he would try to break free would result in his elimination. He also knew that if he did not get clear that he would lose the race.
Astonishingly, John Woodruff stopped running; let all competitors move past him; restarted on the outside track; caught up; passed; and almost lost but won the 800. His nearly 10-foot stride didn’t hurt either.
In reporting on the race, the New York Times wrote John Woodruff’s version of the story of the race. And amid other reports that he paused or almost paused, he insisted, ‘’I didn’t pause; I stopped running’’. John Woodruff still griped about the reported action decades later in an interview.
John Woodruff went on to win every varsity race in which he competed thereafter. After the Pan American 1937 Dallas, Texas race for which officials disallowed his record-setting time, some Arizona middle schoolers
mathematically proved the officials to be in error decades later.
Further, also in 1937, the racist Naval Academy of the United States—in racially segregated Annapolis, Maryland—barred Black student athletes from a track and field meet there. The University of Pittsburgh participated in the competition at Annapolis, leaving John Woodruff behind in Pittsburgh. Later—70 years later—his alma mater apologized to him. A few years after that, the U.S. Naval Academy apologized to late John Woodruff’s son, John Jr. and widow Rose, in 2009.
John Woodruff earned a master’s degree from New York University and was a member of the Black Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (as was Martin Luther King, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is an Alpha as well.)
The track star served his country in the racially segregated U.S. Army as a second lieutenant in 1941 and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1957. By Executive Order 9981, President Harry S. Truman integrated the U. S. military in 1948.
John Woodruff did coaching, youth development work and worked in many public and private professional assignments in New York State and in New Jersey.
He gave his Olympic gold medal to his high school, but security issues concerning its public display surfaced, and he gave it to the University of Pittsburgh, which displays it in an elaborate kiosk in Hillman Library.
During the 1936 Olympics, it was reported that bigoted German fuhrer Adolph Hitler refused to shake hands with any Black medalists. ‘’President Franklin Roosevelt did not shake my hand either when we got stateside again,” John Woodruff later observed.
The 18 African American men and women competitors in the 1936 summer Olympics went on with life. They had not only disproved the Nazi theory about Black inferiority, but their performances embarrassed the American White supremacy practices as well. (By the way, Tidye Pickett won the women’s 800 meters race, meaning an African American man and an African American woman owned the 1936 800 meters summer Olympics race.)
Even Black gold medalists, along with other victors, were given little oak saplings from Germany’s Black Forest. Some of the recipients threw their Nazi saplings overboard on the return cruise home. Jesse Owens and John Woodruff did not. The western Pennsylvanian’s little bit of German foliage was brought to Connellsville.
When John Woodruff died in 2007 a memorial service honoring him was held on an athletic field on Connellsville High School grounds. Nearby stood a 90-year-old, 50-foot tall mighty oak from Germany’s Black Forest.
(Robert Hill is an award-winning Pittsburgh writer and communications consultant.)