When History Cambridge staff were at Danehy Park for a recent event, we noticed a stone marker next to the park’s track dedicated to “Cambridge Olympians.” Inspired by the current Paris Olympic Games, we decided to investigate the two young men named on the marker: Charles Jenkins and John Thomas. Drawing on research by our friends at the Cambridge Black History Project, which has featured Jenkins and Thomas as part of its Black Trailblazers bookmark series, this story has deep roots in the racial climate of the city and the nation and echoes of the Cold War competition between the United States and Soviet Union.
The granite marker next to the Cambridge Champions Track and Field Complex bears the names of two athletes who got their start at Rindge High School and went on to win Olympic medals. Charles “Charlie” Jenkins won gold in the 400-meter run and the 1600-meter relay in 1956, making him Cambridge’s first Olympic champion. John Thomas brought home a bronze medal in the high jump in 1960, followed by a silver medal in the same event in 1964. Both had been star athletes at Rindge, whose track and field program was particularly strong in the decades after World War II, and both had gone on to successful college careers – Jenkins at Villanova and Thomas at Boston University.
In addition to being record-breaking track stars, Jenkins and Thomas were Black men coming of age in the mid-20th century – a fact that not only shaped their everyday experiences in Cambridge, but also held deeper meaning as they traveled abroad in pursuit of their Olympic goals. The post-World-War-II era was one in which the United States, fresh from its efforts to defend the world from totalitarianism and genocide abroad, was forced to look inward at the ways in which Black Americans, including returning soldiers, were excluded from the promises of U.S. liberty and opportunity.
Beginning in the 1950s and reaching its peak in the 1960s, the civil rights movement added another layer of meaning to Jenkins’ and Thomas’ accomplishments. Not only were they world-class athletes at home and abroad, but also representatives of their race, whether they wanted to be or not. As such, they became symbols of pride for Black Cantabrigians and their success allowed white counterparts to make assertions about Cambridge’s character as a city where racial equality was the norm.
When Jenkins returned home to Cambridge after his 1956 wins at the Melbourne Olympics, the city gave him a hero’s welcome, complete with a motorcade from Kendall Square past City Hall to his old stomping grounds at Rindge Tech. A ceremony followed, including the passage of a resolution by the City Council commending Jenkins as the first Cambridge resident to win an Olympic medal. Hailed as a model for the city’s children, Jenkins’ celebration even resulted in a vote by the School Committee to adjourn Cambridge elementary schools at noon so they could watch the motorcade.
Jenkins received much press coverage. A December 1956 article in the Cambridge Chronicle calls Jenkins’ success “a wonderful story. A young man, born to no special privilege and to little of this world’s goods, uses the other gifts that God gave him wisely. So wisely and with such determination that he becomes the best man in the entire world at his chosen speciality.” The author goes on to argue that “athletic sports have set an example of democracy that – to our shame – is not always followed in other lines of activity. Sports give young men – regardless of race or economic background – an equal chance to rise as far as their ability and determination will take them.”
Thomas, too, received acclaim, despite not bringing home the gold. In 1959, more than a year before his first Olympic bid, the council passed a resolution honoring Thomas for achieving a record-breaking high jump height of 7 feet, calling him “an inspiration to the youth of our city.” Following his wins in 1960 and 1964, a man named Harold M. Drown wrote letters to the Chronicle congratulating Thomas. Identifying himself first as “Publicist for the Civil War Centennial Commission, City of Cambridge” in 1960 and later as “Senior Journalist, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War” in 1964, Drown framed Thomas’ accomplishments through the lens of racial equality and the progress Black Americans had made in the century since the Civil War. In his 1960 letter, Drown maintains that “‘Abe’ Lincoln, if living, would take pride that he’d been so instrumental in giving Thomas’ race more opportunity.”
Drown again invoked the memory of Lincoln in his 1964 letter, stating that “Proud would Abraham Lincoln have been, then, if living, at the beginning of Civil War Centennial, that a representative of a race set free 100 years before by the ‘Great Emancipator,’ had conquered in defeat … Thomas’ accomplishment, like the Civil War, was launched in defeat but terminated in victory.” Although Drown is praising Thomas’ athletic feats, particularly his rise from the bronze medal in 1960 to the silver in 1964, he attributes Thomas’ success to the “liberation” of enslaved Americans by Lincoln, crediting the white president for the accomplishments of Black individuals.
Jenkins’ and Thomas’ victories were not just success stories within Cambridge, or even the country at large. In the 1950s and ’60s, the United States and Soviet Union were embroiled in a Cold War, with each superpower trying to lure the rest of the world’s nations into its sphere of influence. For all of their supposed power to bring countries together in the spirit of international fellowship through sports, the Olympic Games have long been a venue at which nations have used athletic contests to symbolize political differences. This was especially true in the case of Thomas’ longstanding rivalry with Russian high jumper Valery Brumel. When a young Brumel learnedThomas had achieved a height of 6 feet, 7 inches – almost a foot higher than Brumel’s personal best – he vowed to push himself until he could beat Thomas. For the next six years, Brumel and Thomas engaged in a record-breaking battle that had fans in both countrie on the edge of their seats. Although Brumel ultimately proved the more successful athlete, their rivalry endured as a symbol of the contest between capitalism and communism. Thomas and Brumel became lifelong friends, bonded by a shared understanding of the rewards and pressures of representing one’s nation at the highest level of competition.
Although the international political scene looks quite different from when Jenkins and Thomas competed, the Olympic Games are still a platform on which rivalries play out well beyond the realm of sports. Individual athletes become symbols for their respective countries, and for the political, economic and social systems that those countries embrace. Even as we enjoy the athleticism and physical achievements of Olympians from around the globe, we also – consciously or unconsciously – align ourselves with a particular set of values embodied by competitors and the countries they represent.
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Beth Folsom is programs manager for History Cambridge.
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what a wonderful tribute. Seems like success and history are around every corner at Cambridge
John Thomas actually broke the World Record on four separate occasions, including once, in 1960, at a meet in Cambridge. Over the next three years, Brumel went on to break the record an additional six times, each time raising the bar by just a single centimeter. Between the two jumpers, they held the world record continuously for over a decade.