Mabel 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. She was 92.
Staton, who went by the name of Mabel Landry when she attended DePaul in the 1950s, 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 Staton’s daughter notified the school of her mother’s death, which came after a long battle with cancer.
Staton was the only American woman to meet the Olympic qualifying standard 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 Chicago’s South Side and ran for the Catholic Youth Organization.
As a story on the DePaul website recounts, when she was a teenager, 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.
The CYO went on to sue the Illinois Central Railroad in a civil rights case 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.
“Living in the era of segregation wasn’t a bed of roses. What helped me was my faith and the support of family, coaches and teammates,” Staton said in the story on the DePaul website.
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.
