[b.1882 – d.1908]

At the age of 26, John Baxter Taylor was considered one of the best quarter-mile racers in the world. Not surprisingly, he went on to win a gold medal in the 1908 Olympics and became the first African American gold medalist. Just months after winning, however, Taylor suddenly died of typhoid pneumonia at his home.

The next morning, the notice of his death was the featured story in the Philadelphia Inquirer sports section. The headline, above a large photograph of him, read “Red and Blue Athlete Runs His Last Race. John Baxter Taylor, the Former Colored Champion Quarter Mile Runner of the Pennsylvania Track Team, Dies After Severe Attack of Illness.”

The New York Times, in its report on the funeral, called Taylor “the world’s greatest negro runner.” It went on to list many of the great American track athletes, coaches, and officials who came to Philadelphia for his memorial, and wrote: “Several thousand persons viewed the remains and after the services at the house in which four clergymen [from as far away as Boston] officiated, fifty carriages followed the hearse to Eden Cemetery [some four miles away]. It was one of the greatest tributes ever paid a colored man in this city.”

Celebrating Black History Month: Profiles of the Ivy League’s Black History