Before Jesse Owens became a household name, there was William DeHart Hubbard, a Cincinnati athlete who had already learned what it meant to compete while being told he did not belong. At Walnut Hills High School, Hubbard excelled in both academics and football. When opponents objected to a Black player taking the field and the school board suspended him, his teammates refused to continue without him. They forfeited the season rather than accept a team that excluded Hubbard because of his race. Track and field eventually gave him a larger stage. Hubbard earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan through a newspaper subscription contest and became the only Black athlete on Michigan’s track team. He won NCAA and Big Ten titles and six consecutive AAU long jump championships. In 1924, he traveled to Paris as one of only four Black athletes on the 299-member U.S. Olympic team. Before the ship sailed, Hubbard wrote to his mother that he would do his best to become the “first colored Olympic champion.” On July 8, 1924, despite bruising his heel during the competition, he used his final attempt to leap 24 feet 5½ inches and win the long jump. He became the first Black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal. Hubbard's career did not end with that medal. He later set a world long jump record, tied the world record in the 100-yard dash, founded the Cincinnati Tigers of the Negro American League, and worked in recreation and housing. His achievements helped establish a path later followed by athletes such as Jesse Owens. Hubbard died in 1976, but the significance of what he accomplished in Paris remains enormous. He was not simply the first Black American to win an individual Olympic gold medal. He was one of the athletes who helped make it harder for the country to argue that Black excellence belonged anywhere less than the biggest stage. #BlackHistory