When Mal Whitfield sneaked into the Los Angeles Coliseum in the summer of 1932, he saw an African American sprinter win a gold medal. The experience ignited a dream for the then-8-year-old from Watts. "From that moment on," Whitfield recalled decades later in Sports Illustrated, "I knew I wanted to run in the Olympic Games." Whitfield, who earned the moniker "Marvelous Mal," went on to become the premier 800-meter runner of his era, winning gold medals in the event at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics. A member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the segregated and much-celebrated group of African American pilots who fought in World War II, he also earned the...
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