Tag: Jake Fredericks

RST: A history of Black American runners at the Boston Marathon

Feb. 26, 2026 | Ethan Simmons

A new essay from a Recreation, Sport and Tourism professor shows these runners “shaping their own destinies” on a premier stage of the sport.

Ted Corbitt (center) crosses the Boston Marathon finish line in 1956. Thanks in part to his stellar finishes in the Boston Marathon, Corbitt became the first Black American to run the Olympic Marathon in 1952. (Courtesy of Gary Corbitt)

The Boston Marathon’s first known Black finishers. The first Black American to run the marathon in the Olympics. A charismatic road race organizer who ran the Boston Marathon more than 15 times—without a single recorded time. 

Jacob Fredericks, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, researches the history of race and long-distance running. His newest written project covers many of the overlooked accomplishments of Black runners in one of the premiere stages of the sport: the Boston Marathon. 

Fredericks’ essay, “The Colorful Boston Marathon: A History of Race and Long-Distance Running in Boston” will appear as a chapter in “Black Identity and Sport in Boston: New Essays on Racialized Space and Performance,” a book edited by Rob Cvornyek and Doug Stark and expected for release by the University of Tennessee Press later this year. 

Fredericks ties together the accomplishments of a handful of Black long-distance runners who left their mark on the Boston Marathon, visibly and invisibly, alongside the modern-day efforts to organize a more inclusive long-distance competition in the city. 

“Black Americans in this sport are really shaping their own destinies. They have a lot of agency in creating clubs, establishing their own races. And it’s not separate,” Fredericks said. “The things that they’re doing affect the Boston Marathon—they’re still running alongside white runners and international runners. It’s not as segregated as it seems on paper.” 

To uncover the history, he leaned heavily on newspaper clippings from publications in Boston’s Black press, like the Boston Guardian and Boston Chronicle. In the early –to –mid 20th century, the marathon got scant coverage in the mainstream press like the Boston Globe, rarely going deeper than the winners or the size of the crowd.  “[What] really comes through in the Black press: these runners having this agency at a time when most of America was heavily segregated—if not structurally, then informally. Even in Boston, those issues still remain.”

Early contenders

The first figures he uncovered—Aaron Morris and Clifton Mitchell—were club teammates from New York. In 1919, a full 22 years after the marathon’s founding, Morris became the first known Black American to cross the Boston Marathon finish line, with his sixth place finish of 2 hours and 37 minutes. 

“[Morris] is in the Black press, they’re celebrating him: ‘We have a breakthrough,’” Fredericks said. “And he disappears. Maybe he has an injury, and there’s this hope among sportswriters of ‘He’ll be back,’ but we never see him again in the results.” 

Teaching Assistant Professor Jacob Fredericks.

The very next year, their hopes were renewed with Clifton Mitchell, a fellow member of the New York St. Christopher Club for runners. Mitchell finished eighth in the 1920 Boston Marathon. Almost immediately, writers in the Boston and New York Black press rallied around him as a candidate to represent the U.S. in the summer Olympic marathon.  

Despite their fervent support, he wasn’t selected. 

“In this chapter, I think of the Boston Marathon as a stage where you can display your athletic abilities—it’s very visible, and people are watching you, and it’s being recorded. There are Black people among white people in the 1920s, running together.” 

Nearly 30 years later, another New Yorker—Louis “Lou” White—broke through in the race and the Boston press. He finished third in the 1949 Boston Marathon, seizing the highest placing for an African American runner in the first year the race was televised. 

He soon became a Boston transplant, joining the Boston Athletic Association and putting up several great performances: “Lou White, a Black man—is Boston’s man in the marathon, a symbol of the city on the world stage,” Fredericks said. 

White had a protege of sorts: Ted Corbitt, who in 1952 became the first African American to run the marathon in the Olympic Games. One of the most prolific marathoners in history, he finished the Boston Marathon 22 times. 

“He is a big proponent of running for health, but also integration, and trying to challenge the status quo and build these new structures,” Fredericks said. 

A fixture and “father figure” in the long-distance running community, and a committed member of the integrated track-and-field New York Pioneer Club, Corbitt later helped found the New York City Marathon. 

An invisible organizer and the ‘true’ Boston Marathon

Perhaps the most unique figure in Fredericks’ chapter is O’Neil Shannon, a professional boxer and Bostonian. Shannon ran the Boston Marathon at least 16 times without ever receiving a runner’s bib. 

“His name comes up again and again as this guy who’s training for the Boston Marathon and running the Boston Marathon. And I’m looking at the results, and I just never see his name,” Fredericks said. “I finally found from his own interview that officials told him the first time he stepped up to the line, ‘We know you. You’re that boxer who was at the Garden last night. You can’t run here officially.’”  

So Shannon joined the Boston Marathon’s long tradition of race “bandits,” runners who participate in the 26.2-mile race without registering. At the time, race officials mostly tolerated these bandits, who ran alongside official runners on public roads.

Though he remained invisible in the record books, Shannon continued to build an athletic legacy in Boston. He founded the Blockbuster Athletic Club, where boxers came to both spar and train to run long-distance. 

Reverend O’Neil Shannon (left) shakes the hand of Boston Mayor John F. Collins in August 1965. Though he never recorded an official time, boxer and road race organizer Shannon ran the Boston Marathon at least 16 times. (City of Boston).

Shannon began organizing his own road races, all weaving through Boston proper, and fielded serious competitors—including Ted Corbitt. In the mid-1950s, Carter Playground on the Northeastern University campus became a common site where he’d start and finish his own races.

It’s the same playground where, a decade later, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march downtown to advocate for desegregation and equal access to schools and transportation. 

“Shannon becomes this cornerstone of the Boston Black community, where he’s a leader of his own club,” Fredericks said. “He’s hidden in the marathon results. We never see him, but he’s present. You can feel his impact on the sport and the city.” 

Over the decades, qualifying for the Boston Marathon has become increasingly competitive. Just this year, the time requirement to qualify was upped by 5 minutes. 

The race path itself has begun in Hopkinton since 1924, a town 25 miles west of Boston. Local runners have responded by founding a new, unsanctioned marathon, called 26.TRUE, meant to highlight the city’s neighborhoods and celebrate its cultural and ethnic diversity. 

“The Boston Marathon’s earned its prestige over one hundred years; it’s a great course. But the question is: is it really Boston?” Fredericks said. “What kind of Boston is this presenting? And so that’s the 26.TRUE: they organized a marathon, but held it entirely within the city limits, in front of Boston people and to inspire people who live in Boston.”

To Fredericks, the existence of 26.TRUE reminds him of the resolve Black American runners showed to compete and organize in the face of formal and informal barriers 

“They’re choosing to run the Boston Marathon because they want to, and they’re part of these clubs, these networks, because they want to push themselves,” Fredericks said. “They find a lot of meaning. And they brought a lot of pride to the Black community through their participation.” 

Editor’s note

Teaching Assistant Professor Jacob Fredericks teaches management and contemporary issues in Recreation, Sport and Tourism. To reach Fredericks, email jfred@illinois.edu 

“Black Identity and Sport in Boston: New Essays on Racialized Space and Performance,” is expected for release by the University of Tennessee Press later this year.

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Fredericks: How Black American Distance Runners Shaped the Sport From the Shadows

February 29, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

Ted Corbitt (bib #999) runs in the 1952 Olympic marathon in Helsinki, Finland. Retrieved from the International Olympic Committee database.

The world of competitive long-distance running took off in the 1970s. But stories of the sport’s Black architects and pioneers who laid its foundation have been largely untold for decades. 

Teaching Assistant Professor Jake Fredericks in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois has dedicated a significant part of his research to uncovering the legacies of successful Black long-distance runners who grew the sport “from the shadows” while challenging enduring racial stereotypes. 

“The explosion of running in the 1970s could not have happened without the efforts of the earlier generation, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, to lay the groundwork for the races in the first place,” Fredericks said. “These are the men who established the marathon courses or put the structures in place for organizations that could support bigger and bigger races.” 

This Memorial Day Weekend, he’ll co-lead a panel presentation on Black running history to an academic audience at a conference for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH). Fredericks will present papers alongside Gary Corbitt, an archivist and son of legendary long-distance competitor Ted Corbitt, and Suzuko Morikawa, associate professor of History and Africana Studies at Chicago State University. 

Dave Wiggins, the former NASSH president and professor emeritus from George Mason University, will co-moderate the discussion. 

Fredericks’ paper, titled “When is it Okay to Run Around Your Neighborhood in Shorts?: Representations of Black Running at the National Marathon Championship,” examines the country’s perceptions of race and long-distance running through the prism of the AAU National Championship in Yonkers, New York, the nation’s second-oldest marathon.

From 1938 until 1966, Yonkers was the site of the country’s preeminent championship marathon race, and several Black American runners—such as Louis White, Ted Corbitt and Harold Harris—posted some of its best times, more than a decade before long-distance running grew beyond its niche, community-driven status.  

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, “marathoning was on the margins,” Fredericks said. 

In 1952, Corbitt became the first Black American to represent the United States in the Olympic marathon. Two years later, Corbitt was crowned champion in the 1954 National Marathon Championship. 

“That victory is so sparsely covered across the newspapers in the United States, that he’s mostly forgotten. Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success,” Fredericks said. “My research looks at how these Black Americans really shaped the sport, even from the shadows.” 

Chicago’s Harris posted his best performance in the 1964 Yonkers Marathon, finishing fourth—just one spot removed from a bid to compete in that year’s Summer Olympics. 

Compared to the more “glamorous” track and field events such as sprints and jumps, long-distance running lacked institutional support, Fredericks said. So, in 1958, many of the sport’s top competitors formed the Road Runners Club of America, opening chapters with running enthusiasts in major American cities. 

Harris became one of the founding members of the Midwest Road Runners branch based in Chicago, which fostered a multiracial community of runners in the city, Fredericks said. Meanwhile, based in New York City, Corbitt pioneered techniques to measure more accurately the 26.2-mile marathon races.

Back when Harris competed, marathons were lucky to run 100 participants, Fredericks said. The “marathon boom” of the 1970s changed all of that. 

A confluence of factors led to marathoning, and running writ large, to hit the mainstream. Medical science backing the health benefits of exercise had steadily grown while Cold War-era pressures to increase Americans’ fitness continued. Then, in 1972, Frank Shorter won the marathon at the Munich Games, scoring the United States’ first gold medal in the event since 1908, and first medal since 1924. 

Shorter’s success was lionized in the media, and his profile—a white, educated American man—suddenly became the prototypical image of the long-distance runner. 

“We lose the image of Ted Corbitt, who could have just as easily been the image of running, or somebody like Harold Harris, in Chicago, could have been the image of running,” Fredericks said. Those kinds of pioneering figures get replaced throughout the ‘70s, by a Frank Shorter-esque, well-to-do upper middle-class person.” 

The lack of recognition these Black American pioneers faced also played into athletic racial stereotypes. Fredericks’ dissertation, “Great Speed and Great Stamina,” in part challenged the lasting notion that Black athletes were “built” for explosive, powerful feats but couldn’t win in tests of endurance. 

The stereotype seemed to build from the sport of boxing, where analysts alleged that Black fighters couldn’t “go the distance” in the ring. Jesse Owens’ prodigious success in the sprints and long jump Olympic events of the 1930s shattered racial barriers in the sporting world but reinforced some of the same athletic stereotypes that dogged Black American athletes of the day. 

These Black runners’ success, however, “disproves these stereotypes that, unfortunately, have lasted 100 years. They’ve just been so hard to remove in the minds of the public,” Fredericks said. 

Part of the mission of Fredericks’ research, along with Gary Corbitt’s new Ted Corbitt Institute for Running History Research, is to document the history of the sport’s development more accurately and recognize the oft-forgotten figures who laid its framework. 

What stands out to Fredericks is many of these early organizers’ foresight: “They knew that road running had this potential to engage the masses,” he said. Even when races were lucky to field a dozen runners, they kept pushing to host events and spread the word. 

“Black Americans are a huge part of the story of long-distance running. Today, we reap the benefits of their efforts to establish and grow the sport of running, yet that part of the history often gets left out.” 

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How Black distance runners shaped the sport from the shadows

May 22, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, ‘marathoning was on the margins’

Long-distance runner Ted Corbitt, center, was the first Black American to represent the U.S. in the Olympic marathon. (Photo provided)

The world of competitive long-distance running took off in the 1970s. But stories of the sport’s Black architects and pioneers who laid its foundation have been largely untold for decades. 

Teaching Assistant Professor Jake Fredericks in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois has dedicated a significant part of his research to uncovering the legacies of successful Black long-distance runners who grew the sport “from the shadows” while challenging enduring racial stereotypes. 

“The explosion of running in the 1970s could not have happened without the efforts of the earlier generation, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, to lay the groundwork for the races in the first place,” Fredericks said. “These are the men who established the marathon courses or put the structures in place for organizations that could support bigger and bigger races.” 

This Memorial Day Weekend, he’ll co-lead a panel presentation on Black running history to an academic audience at a conference for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH). Fredericks will present papers alongside Gary Corbitt, an archivist and son of legendary long-distance competitor Ted Corbitt, and Suzuko Morikawa, associate professor of History and Africana Studies at Chicago State University. 

Dave Wiggins, the former NASSH president and professor emeritus from George Mason University, will co-moderate the discussion. 

Fredericks’ paper, titled “When is it Okay to Run Around Your Neighborhood in Shorts?: Representations of Black Running at the National Marathon Championship,” examines the country’s perceptions of race and long-distance running through the prism of the AAU National Championship in Yonkers, New York, the nation’s second-oldest marathon.

From 1938 until 1966, Yonkers was the site of the country’s preeminent championship marathon race, and several Black American runners—such as Louis White, Ted Corbitt and Harold Harris—posted some of its best times, more than a decade before long-distance running grew beyond its niche, community-driven status.  

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, “marathoning was on the margins,” Fredericks said. 

In 1952, Corbitt became the first Black American to represent the United States in the Olympic marathon. Two years later, Corbitt was crowned champion in the 1954 National Marathon Championship. 

“That victory is so sparsely covered across the newspapers in the United States, that he’s mostly forgotten. Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success,” Fredericks said. “My research looks at how these Black Americans really shaped the sport, even from the shadows.” 

Chicago’s Harris posted his best performance in the 1964 Yonkers Marathon, finishing fourth—just one spot removed from a bid to compete in that year’s Summer Olympics. 

Compared to the more “glamorous” track and field events such as sprints and jumps, long-distance running lacked institutional support, Fredericks said. So, in 1958, many of the sport’s top competitors formed the Road Runners Club of America, opening chapters with running enthusiasts in major American cities. 

Harris became one of the founding members of the Midwest Road Runners branch based in Chicago, which fostered a multiracial community of runners in the city, Fredericks said. Meanwhile, based in New York City, Corbitt pioneered techniques to measure more accurately the 26.2-mile marathon races.

Back when Harris competed, marathons were lucky to run 100 participants, Fredericks said. The “marathon boom” of the 1970s changed all of that. 

A confluence of factors led to marathoning, and running writ large, to hit the mainstream. Medical science backing the health benefits of exercise had steadily grown while Cold War-era pressures to increase Americans’ fitness continued. Then, in 1972, Frank Shorter won the marathon at the Munich Games, scoring the United States’ first gold medal in the event since 1908, and first medal since 1924. 

Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success.

Jake Fredericks

Teaching Assistant Professor, RST

Shorter’s success was lionized in the media, and his profile—a white, educated American man—suddenly became the prototypical image of the long-distance runner. 

“We lose the image of Ted Corbitt, who could have just as easily been the image of running, or somebody like Harold Harris, in Chicago, could have been the image of running,” Fredericks said. Those kinds of pioneering figures get replaced throughout the ‘70s, by a Frank Shorter-esque, well-to-do upper middle-class person.” 

The lack of recognition these Black American pioneers faced also played into athletic racial stereotypes. Fredericks’ dissertation, “Great Speed and Great Stamina,” in part challenged the lasting notion that Black athletes were “built” for explosive, powerful feats but couldn’t win in tests of endurance. 

The stereotype seemed to build from the sport of boxing, where analysts alleged that Black fighters couldn’t “go the distance” in the ring. Jesse Owens’ prodigious success in the sprints and long jump Olympic events of the 1930s shattered racial barriers in the sporting world but reinforced some of the same athletic stereotypes that dogged Black American athletes of the day. 

These Black runners’ success, however, “disproves these stereotypes that, unfortunately, have lasted 100 years. They’ve just been so hard to remove in the minds of the public,” Fredericks said. 

Part of the mission of Fredericks’ research, along with Gary Corbitt’s new Ted Corbitt Institute for Running History Research, is to document the history of the sport’s development more accurately and recognize the oft-forgotten figures who laid its framework. 

What stands out to Fredericks is many of these early organizers’ foresight: “They knew that road running had this potential to engage the masses,” he said. Even when races were lucky to field a dozen runners, they kept pushing to host events and spread the word. 

“Black Americans are a huge part of the story of long-distance running. Today, we reap the benefits of their efforts to establish and grow the sport of running, yet that part of the history often gets left out.” 

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Fredericks: How Black American distance runners shaped the sport from the shadows

Feb. 29, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

Black American distance runners played a pivotal role in the sport’s early growth. A professor in Recreation, Sport and Tourism is helping to uncover their hidden histories.

Ted Corbitt (bib #999) runs in the 1952 Olympic marathon in Helsinki, Finland. Retrieved from the International Olympic Committee database.

The world of competitive long-distance running took off in the 1970s. But stories of the sport’s Black architects and pioneers who laid its foundation have been largely untold for decades. 

Teaching Assistant Professor Jake Fredericks in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois has dedicated a significant part of his research to uncovering the legacies of successful Black long-distance runners who grew the sport “from the shadows” while challenging enduring racial stereotypes. 

“The explosion of running in the 1970s could not have happened without the efforts of the earlier generation, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, to lay the groundwork for the races in the first place,” Fredericks said. “These are the men who established the marathon courses or put the structures in place for organizations that could support bigger and bigger races.” 

This Memorial Day Weekend, he’ll co-lead a panel presentation on Black running history to an academic audience at a conference for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH). Fredericks will present papers alongside Gary Corbitt, an archivist and son of legendary long-distance competitor Ted Corbitt, and Suzuko Morikawa, associate professor of History and Africana Studies at Chicago State University. 

Dave Wiggins, the former NASSH president and professor emeritus from George Mason University, will co-moderate the discussion. 

Fredericks’ paper, titled “When is it Okay to Run Around Your Neighborhood in Shorts?: Representations of Black Running at the National Marathon Championship,” examines the country’s perceptions of race and long-distance running through the prism of the AAU National Championship in Yonkers, New York, the nation’s second-oldest marathon.

From 1938 until 1966, Yonkers was the site of the country’s preeminent championship marathon race, and several Black American runners—such as Louis White, Ted Corbitt and Harold Harris—posted some of its best times, more than a decade before long-distance running grew beyond its niche, community-driven status.  

While Black American athletes such as basketball’s Bill Russell, baseball’s Jackie Robinson and tennis’s Althea Gibson received significant coverage in the newspapers of the day, “marathoning was on the margins,” Fredericks said. 

In 1952, Corbitt became the first Black American to represent the United States in the Olympic marathon. Two years later, Corbitt was crowned champion in the 1954 National Marathon Championship. 

“That victory is so sparsely covered across the newspapers in the United States, that he’s mostly forgotten. Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success,” Fredericks said. “My research looks at how these Black Americans really shaped the sport, even from the shadows.” 

Chicago’s Harris posted his best performance in the 1964 Yonkers Marathon, finishing fourth—just one spot removed from a bid to compete in that year’s Summer Olympics. 

Compared to the more “glamorous” track and field events such as sprints and jumps, long-distance running lacked institutional support, Fredericks said. So, in 1958, many of the sport’s top competitors formed the Road Runners Club of America, opening chapters with running enthusiasts in major American cities. 

Harris became one of the founding members of the Midwest Road Runners branch based in Chicago, which fostered a multiracial community of runners in the city, Fredericks said. Meanwhile, based in New York City, Corbitt pioneered techniques to measure more accurately the 26.2-mile marathon races.

Ted Corbitt is not a name that we often say alongside Jackie Robinson, even though they’re competing at the same time and had similar levels of success. My research looks at how these Black Americans really shaped the sport, even from the shadows.

Jacob Fredericks

Teaching Assistant Professor of Recreation, Sport and Tourism

Back when Harris competed, marathons were lucky to run 100 participants, Fredericks said. The “marathon boom” of the 1970s changed all of that. 

A confluence of factors led to marathoning, and running writ large, to hit the mainstream. Medical science backing the health benefits of exercise had steadily grown while Cold War-era pressures to increase Americans’ fitness continued. Then, in 1972, Frank Shorter won the marathon at the Munich Games, scoring the United States’ first gold medal in the event since 1908, and first medal since 1924. 

Shorter’s success was lionized in the media, and his profile—a white, educated American man—suddenly became the prototypical image of the long-distance runner. 

“We lose the image of Ted Corbitt, who could have just as easily been the image of running, or somebody like Harold Harris, in Chicago, could have been the image of running,” Fredericks said. “Those kinds of pioneering figures get replaced throughout the ‘70s, by a Frank Shorter-esque, well-to-do upper middle-class person.” 

The lack of recognition these Black American pioneers faced also played into athletic racial stereotypes. Fredericks’ dissertation, “Great Speed and Great Stamina,” in part challenged the lasting notion that Black athletes were “built” for explosive, powerful feats but couldn’t win in tests of endurance. 

The stereotype seemed to build from the sport of boxing, where analysts alleged that Black fighters couldn’t “go the distance” in the ring. Jesse Owens’ prodigious success in the sprints and long jump Olympic events of the 1930s shattered racial barriers in the sporting world but reinforced some of the same athletic stereotypes that dogged Black American athletes of the day. 

These Black runners’ success, however, “disproves these stereotypes that, unfortunately, have lasted 100 years. They’ve just been so hard to remove in the minds of the public,” Fredericks said. 

Part of the mission of Fredericks’ research, along with Gary Corbitt’s new Ted Corbitt Institute for Running History Research, is to document the history of the sport’s development more accurately and recognize the oft-forgotten figures who laid its framework. 

What stands out to Fredericks is many of these early organizers’ foresight: “They knew that road running had this potential to engage the masses,” he said. Even when races were lucky to field a dozen runners, they kept pushing to host events and spread the word. 

“Black Americans are a huge part of the story of long-distance running. Today, we reap the benefits of their efforts to establish and grow the sport of running, yet that part of the history often gets left out.” 

Editor’s note:

To reach Jacob Fredericks, email jfred@illinois.edu.
 

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