who was the first black gold medal winner
Even though the Collingsdale, Pa., cemetery contains the bodies of several black luminaries -- including civil rights leader Octavius Valentine Catto and opera singer Marian Anderson -- Williams didn't come for any of these big names. He was there to see John Taylor, the first African American to win Olympic gold. Taylor was a college graduate and a star athlete, recognized for his success even by then president Theodore Roosevelt. But in 1908, the same year he medaled at the Olympic games in London, he died of typhoid pneumonia.