“Edward, that should have been your race!”
Allen Woodring’s American accent cut through distinctly autumnal Antwerp air and into the ears of Harry Edward, Britain’s bronze medal winner in the 200m at the 1920 Olympic Games.
Antwerp’s Games are remembered for the debut of the Olympic Rings. The Olympic flag flew for the first time and a new athlete’s oath was taken.
‘Flying Finn’ Paavo Nurmi won three gold medals, fencing fiend Nedo Nadi five and it rained for most of the fortnight, in the shadow of the First World War.
But the remarkable story of Harry Edward shines out from the gloom, carrying a new radiance a century on. It starts in Berlin and takes in Britain, Belgium and Brooklyn.
Edward’s is the tale of the first black athlete to compete and win medals in the 124-year history of Team GB.
The picture show Harry Edward, who competed for Britain in the 1920 Olympics and later worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration https://t.co/5ihiT46yJc pic.twitter.com/dnviqeEH8k
— University Of Westminster Archive (@UniWestArc) June 8, 2020
Harry Francis Vincent Edward was born in Berlin in 1895, the son of a waiter and former circus worker from the British-occupied Caribbean island of Dominica and a Prussian piano teacher.
As a teenager, he devoured reports of the excavation of ancient Olympia by German archaeologists and French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin’s efforts to revive the Olympics.
Edward’s story would be tied to Europe’s turmoil and his athletic breakthrough came at a meeting staged in Berlin on the day Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
The continent was shaken and he remembered anti-Serbian protests engulfing Budapest when he travelled to an international event - war was declared two days later.
Within months German secret police knocked on the door of his family home and told him as a de facto British subject, he would be detained as a prisoner of war at Ruhleben camp.
Edward would confront horrible conditions in the camp. He could scarce afford to eat and his possessions amounted to a sack, a small towel and a bowl, in which he had to eat and wash.
Sport was his saviour and like Eric Liddell - latterly a prisoner of war in China - built his life around prison yard races, winning over 75, 100, 220 and 440 yards.
When the war ended, revolution broke out against the Kaiser and Edward along with 3,000 prisoners were brought en masse to Leith, Scotland.
Edward travelled to London where his multilingual skills helped him enrol as a German and French teacher at a Pitman’s school.
He had to be convinced by friends he was allowed to stay awake after 10pm and raise his voice, staggering scars from his wartime trauma that lingered for a long time.
Edward joined the Polytechnic Harriers club and became a star of the annual AAA Championships, sweeping the 100 and 220-yard titles from 1920 to 1922.
The Olympics beckoned after he won over both distances at the Olympic Trials - beating Harold Abrahams in the former - and he took a fortnight’s holiday from his clerical job to join Team GB in Antwerp.
Edward was embittered of his two Olympic finals - claiming he was distracted by a shout from a starter in the 100 and sprained his tendon in the semi-finals of the 200.
Eventual gold medallist Woodring’s finish line holler couldn’t detract from the gravity of Edward’s achievement, earning the acclaim of King George V, no less.
He didn’t stay in Britain long, however, deciding to leave his wife of one year and stepson to pursue a future on America’s east coast after being invited to compete at the Yankee Stadium in 1923.
The title of his memoir - ‘When I Passed the Statue of Liberty, I Became Black’ - tells all and he needed a patron in Paul Furnas to help him set up a life in Washington D.C.
This is not to say these were his first experiences of prejudice, just that the implications of race for his social position were more pronounced in the US.
Edward said: “I would never have succeeded had I relied on my own personal efforts even using the same arguments and proofs. Washington D.C. was a Jim Crow town.
“My personal appearance would have undoubtedly created unsurmountable prejudices in my appeal.”
Edward’s latter years were spent using his language and diplomatic skills as part of United Nations relief efforts in Greece, Germany, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. He died in the country of his birth, on a visit to Augsburg in 1973.
‘Run your own race’ is a phrase never far from the lips of today’s athletes. Few ran their own race like Harry Edward.
With thanks to Team GB’s official university partner The University of Hull for their research work which has supported the Black History Month series on TeamGB.com.
Sportsbeat 2020