This project is the seed of an idea to write about the life of Barney Ewell, an Olympian from Lancaster, Pa., whose track career and professional career was stunted because of a world war, his race, as well as other elements out of his control. The text below is the beginning of the project — a gathering of thoughts (if you will). A fuller project will use Barney Ewell as the lens to show how an extraordinary African-American made his way through uncompromising times in America and Lancaster, Pa. 

ABSTRACT

A national champion track star in high school, college and on the international stage, Barney Ewell was prepared to become “the most decorated Olympian history.” However, when his career was derailed by forces beyond his control, Ewell lived the quintessential life of an African-American in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. In this project, I use Ewell to explain how an African-American, with advanced education and achievements, suffered when reaching for the “American Dream.” I show how life was different for men like Ewell, who were not only world-record holding athletes, but also were college-educated and served in the U.S. military at a time when a majority of the U.S. population had not achieved nearly as much. Finally, I show how race limited the chances of men like Ewell from a level of success that men without his accomplishments achieved. What did these men do to catalyze people who followed like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Carl Lewis and the team athletes of the modern era?

The Lost Generation:

Barney Ewell and the African-American Olympian in Post-War America

Barney Ewell did not mind waiting. Why would he? Waiting was the natural part after all that had happened. The cancellation of two Olympics, a World War, a turn at Penn State that he completed after being drafted into the Army and waiting to compete in the 1948 London games at age 30. An ancient age for any amateur athlete, but a sprinter? One dependent on the fast-twitch muscles of youth? A prime that seemingly had passed him over long before he returned home to Lancaster, Pa. after the war, started a family and searched for work that was difficult to find all while training for the Olympics.

Sure, Ewell would have waited forever. Furthermore, as a black man in the United States, waiting for opportunities that he earned became a fact of life.

Moreover, Ewell was about to learn that a high level of accomplishments that surpassed an overwhelming majority of the U.S. population – Olympic medals, national championships on the track, military service and a college degree – did not create opportunities for an African American.

In the Olympics, though, the hard part was over. Ewell put in the work, trusted the process, set world records and then watched it disappear because of circumstances out of his control. Never mind the plans of Hirohito, Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill and Roosevelt. Ewell had come out of it on the other side and celebrated just past the finish line of the 100-meters at Wembley Stadium. He jumped, skipped, clapped his hands together and raised them over his head before repeating the ritual, only faster.

Barney Ewell, from Lancaster, Pa., J.P. McCaskey High School and Penn State University, had just won the 100-meter dash in the Olympics and thus earned the title of the “Fastest Man on the Planet,” a title that still carries with it an immense gravity even now.

The Heavyweight Champion of the World.

The Fastest Man on Earth.

Even without world records, the titles carried some weight. Ewell tied the world record in the 100 meters in the weeks leading up to the Olympics. He also held the world records in the 50 and 60-yard dashes, events rarely raced, but an indicator of sheer speed. So, heading into the games, he was the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the race.

Despite this and despite Ewell’s high level of education, success as an athlete and the support of his local community, the racism of the period prevented him from achieving economic and social success. There was no level of merit or accomplishment achieved by Ewell that could overcome racism. Nor was Ewell alone in this regard. Ewell earned a bachelor’s of science degree from Penn State and won three medals in track and field in the 1948 Olympics at the age of 30. He did this after serving during World War II in the Army. Ewell was accomplished as any man of his time. Nevertheless, because of his race, he was unable to find the work or vocation he was trained for.

The countervailing of the racism in the 1940s through the 1960s and the hegemonic forces of the times, forced Ewell to wait throughout his life for opportunities that befit a man of his education and international athletic achievement.

Would life had turned out differently for Ewell if he had won the gold? Harrison Dillard, the winner of the 1948 100-meters, became a scout for the Cleveland Indians after the 1952 Olympics even though he was never a competitive baseball player. The Indians’ owner, Bill Veeck, did not want Dillard to fall into the same underemployment and dignity-destroying curiosity races against horses or relay teams like Jesse Owens or Ewell had to participate in to earn money after their athletic careers ended. (McGraw 2016)

Would life had turned out differently for Ewell if he had been an activist, perhaps like contemporary Paul Robeson? A star athlete in college at Rutgers and a professional football player, Robeson went on to earn a law degree, only to find himself blacklisted and his passport revoked after being called to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee. The State Department and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI circulated critical information about Robeson in order to ruin his reputation. (Bryant 2018)

Ewell decided his Olympic medals, his degree from Penn State and his military service would be his ticket. Instead, he faced indiscriminate racism at every turn. He was unable to become a teacher and the jobs he held were production positions that white men with Ewell’s credentials – minus the Olympics and the medals – would never have to subject themselves to.

An Elite Athlete

Heading into the 2020 Olympics, only 25 different men had won the gold medal in the 100 in the Olympics. Ewell was about to become the 11th. For context, only 12 men have walked on the moon. Ewell was ready to become the rightful heir to Jesse Owens, the previous winner of the 100 in 1936. If the 1940 and 1944 games were not canceled, Ewell would have become the next Jesse Owens. According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Bill Lyon, Ewell “probably would have been the most decorated Olympian in the history of the Games.”

“He would have had more medals than Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis,” Penn State track coach Harry Groves said. (Pencek 2018)

That might be true, but the opportunities for employment and status eluded Owens even with his medals just as they were absent for Ewell and the black athletes that followed.

So, as the officials reviewed the photo to determine the winner, Ewell did not mind waiting. He had waited long enough anyway and he was going to wait for the rest of his life for opportunities in a divided America that never arrived.

Thus, wait he did. For 15 minutes. It is an excruciating amount of time to wait for one’s fate, especially since in all the Olympics that came before, Ewell would have been standing on the highest level of a podium as the “Star-Spangled Banner” was played for him, as a gold medal was draped around his neck.

Instead, he waited some more. For 15 minutes until the photo was developed and it showed something completely different than what everyone in the stadium thought they saw. Instead of Ewell edging the field to become the fastest man in the world, Harrison Dillard slipped by in an eyelash. Ewell’s American teammate from Cleveland — from the same high school as the great Jesse Owens — had won the race in an identical, world-record beating 10.3 clocking, the photo finish revealed, and the celebration was in vain. Maybe it even seemed a bit silly, given the closeness of the race and the outcome that took 15 minutes to determine. However, there it was on the scoreboard and soon written in the history books for the next 71 years.

Gold — Dillard, USA 10.3 (Olympic record)

Silver — Ewell, USA 10.3

Bronze — Lloyd LaBeach, Panama 10.6

“Barney was all class,” teammate Curt Stone recalled. “He promptly turned, went over to Dillard, and congratulated him warmly.” (Durso 1996)

If this were the most significant defeat for Barney Ewell, it would be one thing, but sometimes in sports, history has a way of repeating itself. Alternatively, maybe, bad luck is contagious. Professional athletes like to say that they are not superstitious because “it is bad luck.” Maybe those lousy luck superstitions began after the 1948 Olympics when Barney Ewell lost the 100 meters in the first-ever photo finish and then followed it up with a defeat in the 200 meters by the same margin after another photo finish.

Lightning did indeed strike twice.

This time there was no celebration by Ewell at Wembley Stadium. The lesson was learned. However, they consulted the photo finish again and this time, it showed that U.S. teammate Mel Patton had won in 21.1 seconds. Ewell was second in an identical time of 21.1.

Two races, two photo finishes and two identical times as the winner. But no gold medals.

Facing racism on the track

Perhaps Ewell received a signal for the racism he would face for the rest of his life, too. Ewell was edged in the 200 meters by Patton, whose college coach at USC, Dean Cromwell, doubled as the U.S. head track coach. Cromwell was overheard by a reporter at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin saying, “We should not have Negroes on our team; they discredit our country.” When Cromwell returned from Berlin, he told a crowd at the National German-American Alliance rally in New York City, “Only one in seven New Yorkers is American-born. Oh, if I could only be that handsome Hitler in New York for one hour.” (Moore 2017)

Cromwell also was the coach on the 1936 Olympic team that saw Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller replaced on the 4x100 meter team because they were Jewish. Cromwell and Avery Brundage, the U.S. Olympic chairman, did not want to risk embarrassing Hitler at the Berlin games with two Jewish members and two African American members on the gold-medal-winning team. (Moore 2017)

Still, America’s best sprinters were African American despite Cromwell’s subterfuge. Ewell was the NCAA 100-meter champion in 1940 and 1941, and from 1932 to 1944, an African American won 10 of the 13 NCAA titles and all except for Tuskegee’s Mozelle Ellerbe came from the most prominent athletic schools in the country. Three-time winner Ralph Metcalfe came from Marquette, Owens from Ohio State and Buddy Young won in 1944 for Illinois.

However, Patton, who was white, received all of Cromwell’s attention and the coach’s racist tendencies did not stop when he was coaching the 1948 Olympic team. Black athletes complained that Cromwell openly treated white athletes better. Ewell complained that Cromwell intentionally had him practice his starts in a “wrong” manner to throw off his rhythm and give an advantage to Patton.

So overt was Cromwell’s racism that he refused to congratulate Harrison Dillard and Ewell when they beat Patton in the 100 meters and the U.S. black press openly challenged Cromwell’s views. Leslie Matthews of the People’s Voice wrote, “Dean Cromwell should not be chosen as the Olympic coach. He does not want a winning team, but an all-white team to represent the U.S.”

Arthur Kirk, writing about Ewell and Dillard for the St. Louis Argus, claimed the athletes had overcome a coach openly working against them. “These athletes deserve more credit than just winning, because they had to face all of their events under a narrow-minded, color-blind, individual who couldn’t see anything by [sic] white.” (Moore 2017)

What happened next was something that would make a man question if there were higher forces working against him. Selected to run the first leg of the 4x100-meter relay for the strong U.S. team featuring Dillard, Patton and Lorenzo Wright, Ewell built a lead through the first 100 meters and passed the Paton to Wright. Dillard and Patton took it home from there as the U.S. team cruised to a victory of more than five meters. However, officials ruled that Ewell had passed the baton to Wright illegally outside of the passing zone and the British team was awarded the gold.

Again to the photos. Again a wait. This time the wait was even longer. Instead of mere moments or minutes, Ewell and the U.S. Olympic sprinters had to wait for three days.

The U.S. team appealed the decision on the relay and this review of the race film — recorded by a fan sitting in the stands — took three days. Three days to wait to learn if he was a goat or a member of the gold-medal winning team. Finally, a jury of appeal reversed the officials’ decision and awarded the gold medal to the U.S. team. There was no ceremony, no standing on the podium as the “Star-Spangled Banner” played, no cheers from the crowd. Instead, Ewell and his teammates were given their gold medals while eating lunch in a cafeteria in the Olympic Village. (Gross, The Modest and Amazing Life of Lancaster Olympian Barney Ewell 2018)

The 30-year-old Ewell finally had his Olympic gold medal. He got it — literally — unceremoniously.

He had to wait, of course. A few days or eight years. After all the national titles in high school, the championships at Penn State, world records broken and tied, service for his country in a world war. A time in which he was drafted as a student at Penn State, left his studies behind and returned to finish in 1947 to earn a B.S. degree. Then, he returned home to Lancaster to work in an iron foundry and continued working out in the evenings on the track at Franklin & Marshall College or in the grass field in the city’s Farnum Park, near his home in the Seventh Ward. Though he secretly harbored a dream of becoming a soft-shoe dancer, Ewell continued the dream of running — and winning — in the Olympics. If for no other reason than for the opportunities that winning Olympic medals affords someone, especially an African-American man who held a B.S. degree from Penn State, won dozens of national championships at every level and served his country in the military.

The wait, beyond his lost prime years when a sprinters’ fast-twitch muscles were extra twitchy, was worth it for Ewell. At age 30, Ewell was more than a veteran sprinter, and some wrote him off as over-the-hill. As of the 2016 Olympics, Ewell is still the fourth oldest sprinter to make a U.S. Olympic team. The dichotomy that he won his medals at an advanced age when he nearly made the 1936 team with Jesse Owens as a teenager was not lost on Ewell. His teammates called him “grandpa,” and he loved it. Better yet, through all that waiting and perseverance, Ewell finally (finally) was an Olympic champion. (Miller 2019)

The Ewell’s and The Great Migration

The Ewell story begins in Thoroughfare, Virginia in Prince William County, approximately 10 miles due west from the Manassas battlefield, the site of where the Confederate army defeated the Union in one of the first major battles of the Civil War. Thoroughfare was a town founded by formerly enslaved people on a site of plantations where they built homes and established a farming community. Ewell’s grandfather was one of the founders of the town, but his father left the town just before his birth in search of work in the industrial north. Ewell’s father, Edward, and his mother, Mossie, settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where his father found work in the Bethlehem Steel mills at Steelton, Pennsylvania. When Ewell was still a toddler, his family moved 30 miles southeast to Lancaster. The oldest inland city in the U.S. and the capital of the United States for a day in September of 1777 as the Continental Congress fled the British in Philadelphia, Lancaster was a crossroads thanks to the country’s first long-distance paced road, connecting Lancaster with Philadelphia. Its location brought settlers who helped turn Lancaster into an industrial center. First, it was the Pennsylvania long rifle and the Conestoga Wagon. Because surveyor Andrew Ellicott called Lancaster home, Meriwether Lewis was a visitor and student learning the techniques he used on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Milton Hershey began his first candy and confection company in Lancaster and Franklin Winfield Woolworth opened his first “five and dime” in the city.

It was the lure of jobs in Lancaster as an industrial center that led the Ewell’s to the city in the second decade of the 20th century. Much like the northern industrial centers like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit, Lancaster’s burgeoning industrial businesses lured African Americans from the south to work in the factories. Though not at the scale of the larger northern cities, Lancaster and similar-sized cities like Harrisburg and Allentown show its populations grow with the influx of new workers. In Lancaster, the flooring giant Armstrong, Inc. became the city’s largest employer and Ewell worked there as part of the production staff after his athletic career ended. Ewell also worked at Hamilton Watch factory, manufacturing watch parts. He also found work at RCA, working on the assembly of televisions for the subsidiary of General Electric.

Ewell’s jobs were all in production, which did not count many college graduates amongst its ranks. However, Armstrong, Hamilton Watch and RCA employed many blacks in production positions, especially those who came from Lancaster’s historically black Seventh Ward.

Lancaster’s Seventh Ward

The family settled at 446 S. Christian St. in Lancaster’s Seventh Ward. It was a section of town in which 94 percent of the total population of African Americans lived in 1960, according to U.S. Census records, and it was a neighborhood where Ewell remained throughout his entire life. Ewell lived at the Christian Street house until he left for Penn State in 1936 and it was where he returned when he had breaks from school or his track training. It also was the Seventh Ward where Ewell settled when he returned from the Olympics in 1948, moving into a home at 55 Green Street. (Miller 2019)

The Seventh Ward was a working-class neighborhood, according to Elizabeth Ford, who remembers spending her days bouncing from all her relatives’ homes in the neighborhood, including her Uncle Barney.

“My uncle was so grounded,” Ewell’s niece, Elizabeth Ford, said. “He was a heckuva lot of fun. When we were adolescents and kids, they lived on Green St. and we lived on South Christian St. My mother Viola is his sister. We were a close-knit family and were always hanging out at each other’s houses. It was kind of traditional back in the 1940s and 1950s for families to constantly hang out together. We could go two or three blocks in the city and run into 12 relatives. That’s what I loved about growing up in the Seventh Ward of Lancaster. It really was a sub-community within a community.” (Ford 2019)

The Ewell’s were poor, and everyone was expected to chip in when they could. Barney contributed to the family’s income by shining shoes and dancing and singing. His favorite song, the 1923 hit, “Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes),” was from which he earned the nickname, Barney. Ewell also had a fondness for Cab Calloway and Count Basie, but Duke Ellington was a particular favorite. Ewell loved music so much that the caption beneath his senior picture in McCaskey High’s yearbook indicated that he planned to be a “nightclub entertainer” when he was finished with school. (Ewell, Henry Norwood 2019)

“He was always full of laughter and he was always around people,” Ford said.

His good-natured demeanor is a characteristic that remained with Ewell to the very end, even when he was living in a nursing home, paid for by the generosity of friends, and after his legs had been amputated because of a circulatory ailment.

Indeed, hardship and tragedy were never far behind the glories and victories. Money was tight and jobs for African-Americans in industrial Lancaster were something to hold onto when possible. Edward Ewell worked as a waiter at Lancaster’s Hamilton Club, a social club founded in 1889 by the power brokers of the city. Edward, a rail-thin and tall man with a friendly demeanor and sunny disposition — much like his son Barney — also worked for the city’s street department where he lost his leg in an accident working in the sewer for the city. According to his granddaughter, Elizabeth Ford, a large slab of granite came loose and crushed Edward’s leg.

Nevertheless, the loss of the leg did not slow down Edward.

“My grandfather, Edward Ewell Sr., was a tall, stately man who lost a leg working for the city of Lancaster. He cleaned the sewers and he was working in a sewer one day when the support mechanism crushed his leg,” Elizabeth Ford said. “My grandfather, I never saw him take it out on the city. It was just something that happened and you dealt with it.”

Barney Ewell adapted his father’s demeanor, and though he never became the nightclub entertainer he dreamed about while in school, he took on the vocation on a pro bono basis, according to his niece Elizabeth. Around the neighborhood, everyone knew they could find Ewell holding court on his front porch, singing songs, talking to whoever walked by, or trading stories about his latest track meet, current events, or the latest athletic hotshot to come out of The Ward.  

“He was confident in who he was,” Elizabeth Ford said. “He was engaging and very comfortable in his own skin.

“He was always full of laughter and he was always around people. Whenever he came home from a track meet, it wasn’t anything for him to sit out on his porch and the neighborhood would come out. Before you know it, hours have gone by and he’s out there telling stories and listening.” (Ford 2019)

Singing and dancing was a great salve because his father’s injury was hardly the only heartache in the family. When he was a child, Barney developed polio and it was touch-and-go whether he would regain the use of his left leg. Figuring he could strengthen himself through exercise, Ewell took up running in order to repair his left leg and much to his surprise, his legs became so strong that he was routinely outrunning everyone around. But no sooner than he began to establish himself as an athlete, tragedy struck again.

This time it was Ewell’s mother, Mossie. In 1933 she contracted tuberculosis and died when her oldest son was barely a teenager at East Junior High (now Edward Hand Middle School). When that happened, Ewell was beginning to separate himself from the rest of his classmates as an athlete. At East Junior High, Ewell was on the basketball, soccer and track teams. Though he was a star in all sports, it was on the running on the track where his talent was otherworldly.

Ewell did not know at the time was that his athletic ability could only take him so far. He was able to attend college at Penn State University as one of two black students on campus at the time. At a time when only 6.2 percent of the population in the United States had a bachelor’s degree, Ewell, as an African American, was an anomaly. He was in all facets of his life, too. When he was still in high school Ewell participated in the 1936 Olympic Trials to earn a spot in the 100 meters for the U.S. Olympic team. With Jesse Owens leading the way, Ewell finished in fourth place, just one spot away from making the Olympic team bound for Berlin.

Had he made the team, Ewell would have been the youngest member of the U.S. track-and-field team in history to that point. Instead, when he made the team in 1948, Ewell became the oldest member of the U.S. track-and-field team ever, though as of 2019 he is the fourth-oldest member of the track-and-field team.

 So, no one would have faulted Barney Ewell if he thought he was special. Forget about the elite-level talent on the track, Ewell was special. Using his extraordinary ability to run faster than any human on earth, Ewell enrolled at Penn State after graduating from J.P. McCaskey. Indeed, in a different era, Ewell could have decided to attend any college in the nation. After all, at the Olympic Trials, where the U.S. team is chosen from the top three runners in their disciplines through a winnowing of dozens of the best athletes in the country, Ewell finished in fourth place. Typically, a fourth-place finish would be devastating for any athlete. However, Ewell was still in high school and just 17-years-old. Clearly, his best days on the track were still to come. At 17 and still a high school student, Ewell’s showing in the Olympic Trials was a harbinger of American dominance on the track.

Life After Sports for the Black Athlete

Along with Owens, who grew to fame at the Olympics in 1936, the real star of American track was Eulace Peacock from Temple University. Peacock was the world-record holder in the 100-meters and in the ten head-to-head races against Owens leading up to the trials, Peacock won seven times and was expected to be the star of the Berlin Games. (Hymans 2008) However, a hamstring injury sidelined Peacock at the trials, and instead of a smooth path to the Olympics and the gold medal, the winds of opportunity blew toward Owens. It was Owens who won four gold medals in front of Hitler and not Temple’s Eulace Peacock. Jesse Owens became world-famous and an international star depicted on U.S. stamps and the subject of major motion pictures. Peacock became a footnote in the story.

Eulace Peacock served in the U.S. Coast Guard and opened a liquor store in Yonkers, N.Y. before dying of Alzheimer’s disease in 1996. Since 1969, a portrait of Peacock has hung in McGonigle Hall as a member of the university’s athletic Hall of Fame. But little else is known about Temple’s greatest athlete in the modern-day. Whether cruelly or not, legacies are defined by the Olympics and Owens made the most of his opportunity. “If not for that injury,” track teammate Herb Douglas said. “History would have been different. [Eulace Peacock] could have been Jesse Owens.” (Rhoden 2012)

Ewell hoped to make the most of his opportunities, too, both on and off the track. At Penn State he was called, “another Jesse Owens.” (Eckert 2019) His dream after competing in the Olympics was to become a teacher and a coach while continuing to race professionally in the few places in Europe and Australia where professional and exhibition races existed. Owens, the African-American star of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, augmented his income taking on all-comers in races all over the globe. Sometimes those races were barely a novelty or one step above the freak show at the carnival. There were handicap races where men were given head starts against Owens. He also raced against motorcycles, cars and trucks. But also, there were races in which Owens was merely a freak show or a glorified carny racing against horses.

Races against farm animals were not the greatest indignity for the Olympian. When Owens came home from the Olympics in 1936 as a hero, the opportunities were few and far between. Often, Owens saw promises go unfulfilled. Owens, educated at Ohio State and a native of Cleveland, returned home to an America that was willing to cheer for him when he took on Hitler, but it was not ready to embrace him in the workplace or as a neighbor. While many of the white members of the Olympic track team went on to careers as coaches, teachers or found jobs in the media, or positions in line with their education, Owens, the biggest hero of the 1936 Olympics, found himself racing against horses at local carnivals or minor-league baseball parks.

Owens had to hustle to turn the lack of opportunities into a living.

“People say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals,” Owens said.

When there was no more scholarship money from Ohio State, or Olympic training camps to help him make it, Owens went to work. He was an elevator operator immediately after the Olympics. Owens also worked at a gas station and for a dry cleaner. If the status of his employment was not enough to let Owens know where he stood in America, the other reminders were just as harsh. When Owens returned home from Berlin after the 1936 Olympics, he was the guest of honor at a ticker-tape parade and a celebration at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. However, in order to get to the ballroom for his fete, Owens had to enter the hotel through the service entrance and take the freight elevator. “I came back to my native country and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door,” Owens said. (Caponi-Tabery 2008)

Meanwhile, Owens’ teammate. Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson, who integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, turned his silver medal in the 200-meters in the 1936 games into work as a janitor and a street sweeper on the night shift. As Jonathan Eig wrote in Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, “In what was an act of either remarkable provocation or extreme self-pity, Mack wore his Olympic jacket while he swept trash.”

Sports provided opportunities and a better life and equal conditions with white athletes for African-American athletes as long as they kept playing. Sports were a great equalizer and even a meritocracy, but they only did so much. As Eig wrote, “When the competition ended, the universe reverted to its original form.” (Eig 2007)

The same went for athletes of future generations, too. John Carlos, famous for his black-gloved protest at the 1968 Olympics, returned home to find all doors closed to him. In his autobiography, Carlos wrote:

By 1969 and into 1970, my life was beg, beg, borrow, and steal. If I had $ 100, I would leave my family and hightail it to Vegas and hit the crap tables to see if I could score us up some money. I just felt like the hustle was the only way to solve the most immediate problems: food and shelter. The hustle is what I did when I wasn’t working. Whatever jobs I had to take, I wasn’t too proud or too ashamed to do it. I had a job as a security guard at a nightclub, wearing this brownstone ranger uniform. Many people used to come in the club and say, “Hey! Aren’t you John Carlos?” They were shocked that I would be doing work like that. But I did what I had to do. I put out the word that I would take whatever job was necessary to make sure my family was able to eat. (Bryant 2018)

America, wrote Amy Bass in Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete, took responsibility for allowing athletes of all races to achieve success on the playing field. However, that rarely transferred beyond athletics, wrote Bass.

When a black athlete such as Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Wilma Rudolph, Gail Devers, or Tiger Woods thrives, the story is read as the possibility of success offered by American society, a national and societal project of victory. However, such high points of achievement work in constant dialogue with events such as the 1968 Olympic Games, Mike Tyson’s rape conviction, O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, and Abdul-Rauf’s suspension, in which the “failure” of the individual involved is placed within a context of subversion antithetical to American belonging. The individual is seen as an incapable citizen, is accused of misusing “natural” aptitude, transforming the ability to run fast into the ability to run away fast. With this blending of scientific and social implications and speculations of the black athlete, this process provides justification for broader perceptions regarding the role of the black community in American society. The black athlete – off the track, off the court, off the field – remains, in the words of Tommie Smith, “just another nigger.” (Bass 2002) 

This sentiment echoes author Richard Wright in Black Boy, where he writes about the 1940s and the “essential bleakness of black life in America,” and wrote that blacks “have never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization.”

For Ewell, he saw that the people who were quick to celebrate his successes on the track and recruit him for teams in college and the military were also just as quick to remind him of where he stood in society. Ewell could experience the thrill of victory, as long as he always remembered his place and did not challenge the status quo.

Sports provided the closest thing to equal opportunity Ewell had found in his young life. In Lancaster, at McCaskey, he was a star amongst stars. His classmate, Richard Winters, had yet to become the leader of “The Band of Brothers,” receiving almost a mythological treatment in Stephen E. Ambrose’s Band of Brothers and later produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks as an award-winning mini-series on HBO. Ewell’s stardom on the track in high school received national attention, though his modest upbringing taught him not to take the acclaim for granted.

Living in Lancaster, it seemed, allowed Ewell a chance to dream. Known for his “half-moon smile and a notably pleasant and easygoing personality,” Ewell might have been using a smile as a façade for the trauma he experienced at home. With a widowed, disabled father, Ewell was not going to have many opportunities because of his family’s money or any semblance of privilege. Unlike his classmate Richard Winters, Ewell was not going to be able to pay his way into Franklin & Marshall, a small and expensive liberal arts college located across town from the Ewell home in Lancaster. Instead, Ewell was only going to go as far as his speedy legs would take him.

A Lack of Opportunities

It was from this background as a star athlete that provided a path to Penn State in 1938. At Penn State, Ewell immediately made an impact. Between 1940 and 1943, he won 12 college track meets and 11 national events. Ewell won back-to-back NCAA titles in both the 100- and 200-meters in 1940 and 1941 and was on pace to graduate in 1942. Not only was Ewell set to graduate in four years as a busy athlete, but also, he was one of the few African-Americans on campus. In 1940, only 5.5 percent of men in the United States had a college degree. In 1947, when Ewell graduated from Penn State, only 6.2 percent of men in the United States had a college degree. That total is significantly lower for African-American men at the time. (Caponi-Tabery 2008)

Nevertheless, Ewell had an opportunity and took it to its completion. Sports opened the door, but Ewell was brave enough to enter and do the necessary work when might have just as quickly failed. If he had broken the law (even the slightest misdeed), defied customs or cultural norms, if his grades and studies had slipped, or even if his athletic performance had waned, Ewell most likely would have been asked to leave Penn State. So much was riding on his every action and he had the thinnest of margins for error. He virtually was walking on a tight rope. Instead, Ewell showed he belonged at Penn State. On the track, he belonged on the world stage and in the classroom, he was good enough to earn a B.S. degree in physical education. He was, in essence, an example of something tennis star and activist Arthur Ashe later described as a shining example for black athletes who did not allow the mind to take a back seat to the body.

As Howard Bryant wrote in The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism about Ashe’s thoughts:

“The black mind should never have been secondary to the black body. It was a formula that elevated the winners of the athletic gene pool and abandoned the rest. ‘What’s my advice for black parents?’ he once said. ‘Take your kid out of the gym and into the library.’” (Bryant 2018)

After all, finding success in sports, especially professional sports, was and is only slightly less probable than winning the lottery, and steering kids into thinking they could win it posed devastating consequences. (Bryant 2018) Even Owens, who had to enter through the backdoor at his own party, embraced “respectability politics” for a time. Respectability politics is the thought that reinforced patriotism and ownership of land. The only way to gain rights, Owens and many others of his generation thought, was through the benevolence of whites to lift the race by winning white respect through good behavior.

America was not perfect, Owens reasoned, but at least it allowed the possibility of meritocracy, especially through sports, he said. “The Nazis often point out that American Negroes are victims of discrimination, but Negroes are not barred from our Olympic teams,” he said to The Washington Post in 1936. Owens abandoned this type of thinking in the 1970s, but for those who looked up to him, like Ewell, this was a difficult path the navigate. As the years passed and the 1940s and 1950s gave way to the 1960s, a generational rift occurred. Owens knew those ideas were false promises and the idea of an America for all was simply a fairy tale. But publicly Owens said that athletes who pushed too hard, too fast would lead the powers-that-be to take away athletics as an opportunity, closing yet another door. As a result, Olympians that followed like John Carlos, Tommie Smith and Muhammad Ali, saw Owens as out of touch. (Bryant 2018)

Meanwhile, Ewell suffered silently. He was not an activist, at least not in the traditional sense. He did not protest or join organizations that promoted black causes, though he was a frequent volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club located in Lancaster’s Seventh Ward, just a block away from where Ewell grew up on Christian Street.

Moreover, it would have been challenging to be an activist for civil rights in Lancaster, Pa. where exclusionary zoning and redlining kept the class and race order just as the powers-that-be wanted. Not to mention that Ewell’s home and automobile were gifts from the community leaders. When Ewell returned home from London in 1948, he was given a car — a Mercury convertible — and the home on Green Street where he would live for 30 years. Green Street, of course, was located in the traditionally black Seventh Ward and the car allowed him to get to jobs that were arranged for him. The car and the home were necessities because by accepting them, Ewell forfeited his amateur standing and, as a result, was no longer eligible to compete in the Olympics or the AAU and national championship track meets held in conjunction with the international sports federations that selected the Olympic teams. (Gross, The Modest and Amazing Life of Lancaster Olympian Barney Ewell 2018) (Miller 2019)

But if Ewell thought he was going to use that car to drive to a new neighborhood or sell that home on Green Street and move out of the Seventh Ward to a different part of town, he could think again. Ewell’s home was purchased by the supporters and city leaders specifically in the Seventh Ward. The reasoning, perhaps judging by racial attitudes and exclusionary zoning practices of the time, was that Ewell would likely feel “more comfortable” in the familiar environs of “The Ward.”

“When we grew up the Seventh Ward always had a negative connotation,” Elizabeth Ford said. “We’re here to dispel those stories and to let people know that it was such a rich, vibrant and supportive community. And, we interacted well with other cultures. It’s not a place that is different or isolated.” (Ford 2019)

The Ward has not changed much in the last century. Historically, the south east portion of the city was where African-American’s could put down roots. The Ewell and Ford family have seen five generations born and raised in the Seventh Ward, and a quick read of census records and school enrollment ledgers finds many similar surnames spanning the generations. In the 1970s, however, the Ward saw the demographics change from a predominantly African-American neighborhood, to one that has become home to one of the most robust enclaves of Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania and the United States. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Lancaster, Pa. has the 12th-highest percentage of Puerto Ricans as a percent of total population. At 29.23 percent of its population claiming Puerto Rican descent, it is second in Pennsylvania – behind Reading – and has the fourth-highest population of Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia, Reading and Allentown. 

The promise of jobs and affordable housing that brought the Ewell family from Virginia, also attracted people from Puerto Rico to Lancaster and the Seventh Ward. According to the official website of the Lancaster County Community Foundation, the migration of Puerto Ricans to Lancaster’s Seventh Ward began in 1948.

In 1948, experienced, unemployed farm workers from Puerto Rico began to settle in Lancaster County. When they arrived, there were no accommodations for their wives and children. Many of the men lived in barns or the bunkhouses of their employers, returning to Puerto Rico and their families after a season of planting and harvest. With unemployment continuing to be a problem in Puerto Rico, the men began to look for other jobs such as manufacturing, hotels and restaurants, and poultry processing plants that offered year-round employment and the opportunity to bring their families to Lancaster. By 1959, a least 1,200 Puerto Ricans were permanent residents in Lancaster County. A 1964 report by the Lancaster City Redevelopment Authority found that most of the city’s Puerto Rican residents were living in rental units in the 7th ward of Lancaster City because many landlords were unwilling to rent to them outside of this quadrant. By 1968, the City’s Spanish-speaking population almost equaled the number of Lancaster’s African American population. (Foundation n.d.)

Earning a Living

Ewell’s ouster from the athletic organizations occurred swiftly so instead of thinking about the Olympics in 1952 — not that it would have been on his mound since he would have been 34 for the next quadrennial — he turned his attention to running for paychecks where he could find them. That meant travel to Europe, Australia and New Zealand, because the United States did not have a professional track circuit of any significance. Instead, the American former track stars were expected to race against horses, give dinner speeches or do the “grip-and-grin” routine as greeters for businesses, used-car dealerships or as pre- or post-dinner curiosities for various types of Kiwanis or Elks clubs. It was a reality that former stars like Owens knew all too well.

When Owens returned to the United States from Berlin after winning four gold medals and credited with “single-handedly crushing Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy,” he found few opportunities outside of sideshow antics. He earned $100 per month as an elevator operator, worked as a gas-station attendant, a playground janitor and as a clerk at a dry cleaner. “Sure it bothered me,” Owens said. “But at least it was an honest living. I had to eat.” (Caponi-Tabery 2008)

 Though Owens did not finish his degree at Ohio State, he had more education and more accomplished than a vast majority of the U.S. population. Moreover, his fame was a marketing opportunity in itself. The marketing of professional and well-known athletes and celebrities had begun in the 1920s with Babe Ruth. At the end of the 1936 Olympics Owens was a big star of equal magnitude of Babe Ruth. In 1921, Ruth hired Christy Walsh as a ghostwriter and public relations man (Leavy). By any standard, Walsh became the first sports agent (Montville). As a result, Ruth became the first athlete to be famous for what he did off the field – or what people thought he did. By 1927, Ruth earned more income from what he did away from baseball (Montville).

The Professional Circuit

To be sure, Ewell did quite well in the professional track circuit. Yes, he had to participate in handicap races, but he never had to race against a horse. Marginally employed or doing menial production work in local factories, Ewell was able to find the time to take off and run around the globe. It also was his first chance to really see the world, too. His only international travel to that point came during the Olympics to London and during World War II he was stationed stateside in Virginia and New Jersey where he was assigned jobs like “sports coordinator,” which would allow him the time to participate in track meets and football games between the various Army bases. In a sense, Ewell was a ringer and leaders from the different Army bases schemed about ways in which they could obtain his services for the different sports teams. (Miller 2019)

Ewell was able to augment his income in the pro track meets, too. Even if that meant “sandbagging” in order to pull it off. Sometimes Ewell would feign an injury or allow himself to fall a little bit out of shape in order to plant the idea that he was not the runner he used to be. Then, when oddsmakers and meet organizers believed the bill of goods Ewell was fronting, he would have colleagues or friends place wagers on the meets just when the odds were ripe enough, and he would win easily. (Ford 2019) Ewell might not have been in the top shape of an Olympic medalist, but he was still fast enough to take on the local hero. Ewell’s travels allowed him to visit and meet dignitaries all over the world. He also was given gifts for appearing at public events and for winning races that he cherished and added to a growing collection that he displayed in his home. Trophies and decorative gifts from Czechoslovakia became favorites that were always in view for visitors at his Green Street home. But the gifts and celebrity Ewell enjoyed around the world was not always available for him at home in Lancaster. Though celebrated in his hometown, life was not always easy when the ceremonies and the cheering ended. (Gross, The Modest and Amazing Life of Lancaster Olympian Barney Ewell 2018)

The part that caused a lot of personal consternation and frustration for Ewell, more than any other, was his employment status. (Ford 2019) Between menial work, and the casual racism he suffered from with employers, managers and fellow employees, Ewell kept his emotions close to the vest. As a result of being unable to find meaning in his work and life outside of his family or athletics, Ewell’s spirit was broken. He wanted something that he had earned yet was unavailable to him merely because of the color of his skin.

“It frustrated him,” his niece, Elizabeth Ford, said. “When you look at the other athletes and the other Olympians and the contracts and the things they received, and my uncle never got that. His life would have been quite different.” (Ford 2019)

But it’s also more likely that the people who purchased the home for Ewell were more comfortable with him living in that neighborhood as well. Maybe Ewell would have been comfortable living in a predominantly white neighborhood. His pleasing and upbeat personality indeed lent itself to that notion. But would white neighbors have been equally as comfortable with having the great Barney Ewell as a neighbor?

History suggests not. Ewell was just a local celebrity. He had succeeded on the national stage and competed internationally with the best in the world and set records, but more famous athletes like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron and Bill Russell — icons — ran into problems when they attempted to integrate neighborhoods.

 Howard Bryant, in The Heritage, writes:

“The players knew the frustration of being rich and famous — and still have whites petition against their right to move into white communities — but all accepted their individual situations without combining their strength as they had during the civil rights movement. Willie Mays, maybe the greatest baseball player of them all, was long denied housing in the supposedly tolerant San Francisco Bay Area, even as fans cheered him nightly. The same was true for Curt Flood, who tried to move into the city’s Alamo neighborhood. In 1970, while with the Milwaukee Bucks, white neighbors petitioned Oscar Robertson’s move to Glendale. Henry Aaron’s neighbors welcomed him as the first black resident in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon, but only because he was the great Hank Aaron.”

Jackie Robinson, who only found his home in Stamford, Connecticut when he stopped telling realtors his name, explains it deftly:

“I don’t think anyone in or out of sports would accuse Willie Mays of offending white sensitivities,” Robinson wrote in Baseball Has Done It. “But when he was in California, whites refused to sell him a home in their community. They loved his talent but didn’t want him as a neighbor.” (Bryant 2018)

The housing situation was one that Ewell could live with. After all, he was happy in Lancaster’s Seventh Ward and so was his wife, children and nephews and nieces that lived nearby. Elizabeth Ford recalls the neighborhood full of life that was indeed a community in the truest sense of the word. Nearby was the Lancaster County Park, which has 544 acres of woods, hiking trails, picnic areas, swimming pools and all the outdoor freedom an imagination could hold. Elizabeth Ford describes camping out in the park and picnics and family outings with her uncle and their families.

“I loved walking around town and when we came into the Seventh Ward and it was a plethora of trees.,” Ford said. “I felt safe.”

Crime and deterioration of the neighborhood would not become an issue for Ewell and his family until the 1980s, so at least for a few decades his home was his castle. The issue for Ewell was not that whites did not want him for a neighbor. It was that they did not want him as an employee with any essential responsibilities. (Ford 2019)

Though Ewell had a B.S. degree in physical education with designs to be a teacher and a coach, the reality was the local schools were not ready for a black teacher. Or, as Leroy Hopkins, a family friend and neighbor of the Ewell’s said, quotas were firmly in place. Mostly, those were quotas of one.

“This is not an area of opportunity for African-Americans,” said Hopkins who went on to become a professor of history and German at Millersville University. “With discrimination the way it was, it was almost impossible for African-Americans to get jobs.” (Miller 2019)

Imagine this reality. At a time when approximately 6 percent of the population held a degree from a university, a man who had one was shut out from the rewards that came with the achievement simply because of race. That’s it. To make matters more striking, Ewell was one of two African-Americans on campus at Penn State during his entire stay in Happy Valley.

Moreover, Ewell made a point to complete his degree despite being drafted away from his studies during World War II when he was in the last year of his studies. He was in the Army from 1941 to 1946 — not because he signed up — and returned to Penn State to earn his degree in 1947 at age 29. Then, he worked in a factory in Lancaster, continued to train on the track, and made the Olympic team at age 30 in 1948. (Gross, The Modest and Amazing Life of Lancaster Olympian Barney Ewell 2018)

Actually, he did not just make the Olympic team at the trials in 1948. He tied Jesse Owens’ world record in the 100-meters at the trials and earned a spot on the 200-meter team as well.

At least outwardly — and publicly — Ewell kept a positive attitude. His disposition, always sunny, rarely deviated. When he was not at work, Ewell often spent time on the front porch of his Green Street home greeting passersby with his trademarked, “Hello, ‘mate!” Also, he always had a smile and a kind word for folks he knew and was often whistling or singing a song. His desire to be a night club entertainer as he wrote in his high-school yearbook never left him.

But inwardly and behind closed doors, Ewell was frustrated. He was frustrated that he could not find meaningful work or put his degree from Penn State to good use. Though family members said his frustration never bubbled over to violence, there was no mistake that the frustration over his standing was apparent. Elizabeth Ford remembers hearing her uncle speak with her parents and other family members in hushed tones when the children were around. Though they could not make out all the details of the conversations, they knew it was not pleasant.

“I never picked up that he harbored animosity,” Elizabeth Ford said. “But he was frustrated. I knew it bothered him, particularly when he was with his siblings and they were talking the adult talk and I just happened to be in the room. You could tell he was frustrated. But he would not allow that to overtake him because he knew he had to do the best that he could given the circumstances for which he was living. But he wanted so much more. It’s very hard.” (Ford 2019)

Ewell was hardly unique. Amateur athletes were always on the lookout for ways to earn money, usually under the table. Finding sources of income while maintaining amateur status has always been a craft not only for Olympians from the 1930s to the 1980s, but also for collegiate athletes in the present day. Usually it comes from the kindness of boosters or from fans that want to lend some help and donate a few dollars here or there. Other boosters find no-show jobs for some spending money for athletes that fall in line with maintaining amateur status or, in extreme cases, find payroll jobs for family members. Around college athletics, this has always been the norm. It’s finding the income when the amateur status is exhausted or when the professional careers have dissipated that is the trick. Ewell was lucky enough to be gifted a car and a house when he returned from the Olympics, but work was another issue. All that was available to him were production jobs at companies like Warner-Lambert, an international pharmaceutical firm and subsidiary of Pfizer, as well as the international Armstrong Flooring company. He even worked for a time as an electrician, a trade for which he was not formally educated. Still, Ewell was educated to be a teacher and a coach. He had the B.S. degree from Penn State to prove it. Yet the doors remained closed to him. (Ford 2019)

Ewell was luckier than others, including the great Jesse Owens. Like Ewell, Owens attended college (Ohio State) and was one of only a handful of African-American students on campus. But even though he was a scholarship athlete, Owens was not permitted to stay in a dormitory on campus because of his race. Instead, he took up residence in a boarding house off campus where he lived until he left for the Olympics in Berlin in 1936.

Things did not change until the 1950s when Owens became an in-demand corporate speaker. He opened his own public relations business and eschewed the civil rights movement and questioning the motives of athletes like John Carlos and Tommie Smith, whose dramatic black-power salute in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City became the defining moment of the games and an emblematic moment in all of sports.

“The black fist is a meaningless symbol,” Owens said. “When you open it, you have nothing but fingers — weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there’s money inside. There’s where the power lies.”

Ever enigmatic, Owens reversed his stance entirely and saw the merits and importance of the protests by Carlos and Smith.

“I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward,” Owens said. (Bryant 2018)

Owens saw what author Jonathan Eig described in Jackie Robinson’s desegregation of Major League Baseball. The stakes were high for all African-American professionals. There was no margin for error. Eig wrote:

“Robinson, in his fight for dignity, supplied a morale boost of almost unimaginable consequence, and yet he never completely vanquished the fear of humiliation among his constituents. ‘Our approach was almost humorous, because that kind of humor was part of the culture,’ recalled Colin Powell, who was ten years old and a Giants fan, living in the Bronx at the time. ‘We said ‘Oh, Lord, don’t let him strike out.’ The greatest fear was that he wouldn’t do well, and that would be a mark against all of us. … ‘There were still no black Greyhound bus drivers, no black airline pilots,’ he said of 1947. ‘I still remember joking when Greyhound … hired its first black driver, ‘Oh, Lord, just don’t let him run into anything … You’re living as a group through those selected individuals.’ (Eig 2007) 

That went for Ewell, too. Though he could not be a teacher or a coach — not because he did not have the qualifications — Ewell was in the crosshairs at his jobs, around town and even in the volunteer positions he took on with the McCaskey and local college track teams. He had to conduct himself perfectly and in the instance he reacted out of character against a racial slur, he was terminated from a job. Ewell was straddling a tightrope over a thin thread of poverty even when he was gainfully employed, so anything less than perfection was not good enough.

“He was very cognizant of his place in his small world. That’s a lot of pressure,” Ford said. “Especially when you’re a human and people are constantly watching you and waiting for you to mess up. He was human and he was full of flaws. But what I liked about my uncle was that he didn’t stay in that muck forever.” (Ford 2019)

Kindness of Friends

As frustrating as it was, Ewell did not complain. He settled into his life, working for local companies and watching the up-and-coming track athletes who rose out of the Seventh Ward, McCaskey and on to the local colleges like Franklin & Marshall and Millersville University. Some of his co-workers wondered why someone like Ewell would be working in certain jobs and why he sometimes was not known as the hardest worker, despite his legendary standing in the community. They never thought that Ewell’s spirit might have been broken and perhaps his heart just wasn’t into such menial work, his niece, Elizabeth Ford, surmises.

“People who are not part of the disadvantaged group sometimes don’t understand the emotional impact of always being on the outside looking in can have on you,” she said. “Unless you are grounded in something. Taking my family for instance, it’s grounded in a faith or something you believe in that is bigger than yourself or grounded in a capacity to always do better.” (Ford 2019)

Often, Ewell would depend on the kindness of friends. In the early 1990s Ewell developed a circulation issue and his overall health deteriorated. Without the unparalleled excellent health care that modern athletes receive thanks to athletic unions, Ewell struggled. He lost several toes, and in 1993 had his right leg amputated below the knee after his veins became infected. In 1995 his left leg was amputated above the knee. At the time he was living in Conestoga View, a nursing home in Lancaster, and used a wheelchair or crutches to get around. Still, his good nature and friendly demeanor was tough to crack. When old friends would joke about running a race against the Olympian, Ewell would say, “Oh sure, now that I don’t have any legs everyone wants to race.” (Miller 2019)

Herman Goffberg, a Penn State teammate, visited Ewell in the early 1990s and was upset by Ewell's poverty. Here was the greatest athlete to come from Lancaster, Pa. and Penn State and he was living in poverty with substandard healthcare after losing his legs. Goffberg raised $16,000, which, coupled with employee funds from some past employers, allowed Ewell to live out the last years of his life in relative comfort and dignity.

“When I saw the condition he was in and the tiny, little house, I thought, ‘Is Someone going to do something,’” Goffberg said. (Pencek 2018)

But the circulation issues lead to Ewell’s death in April of 1996 at the age of 78. His death was quite newsworthy in Lancaster and Philadelphia, where he was eulogized in the local newspapers and television stations, as well as larger city newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. (Durso 1996)

After his death, Ewell’s fame appears to have spiked. Ewell was named one of the 10 greatest sprinters of all time by the Track and Field News and his lifetime achievements were honored at halftime of a Penn State basketball game in 1996. Ewell’s old teammate Goffberg established a $25,000 scholarship in Ewell’s name. (Pencek 2018)

U.S. Track and Field News named Ewell one of the ten greatest sprinters of all time, and he was named to the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1986. His lifetime achievements were honored at halftime during the Penn State-Wisconsin men's basketball game on 17 February 1995, and Goffberg has established a $25,000 scholarship in Ewell's name at Penn State. In addition, the Penn State Sports Hall of Fame named a section of its building after Ewell. In Lancaster, there are even bigger plans to secure Ewell’s legacy. (Pencek 2018)

In August of 2019, the Lancaster City Council voted to change the name of the city’s square to, “Ewell Plaza,” in honor of the Olympian. There are also plans of a museum dedicated to Ewell in Lancaster. Additionally, the McCaskey High School football stadium and track has been named in Ewell’s honor since 1987 when he was the inaugural member of the school’s athletic hall of fame. (Gross, Lancaster Leaders Want to Ensure Legacy of McCaskey Grad, Olympic Gold Medalist Barney Ewell, Lives On 2017)

All of the resurgence of fame and memories of her uncle are bittersweet to Elizabeth Ford. On one hand she is excited and she and her family see no more worthy person for the city to honor than Ewell, who possessed once-in-a-century talent for a city like Lancaster.

However, Ford wishes her uncle would have received the honors when he was alive. Or, better yet, it would have been great for Ewell to receive the opportunities and accolades befitting a world-class athlete when he returned from the Army and the Olympics.

Ford can’t help but wonder about how life would have been different if a college-educated, Army veteran and medal-winning Olympian had been afforded the opportunities he had earned and not had to suffer through racism.

“There were two pathways for my uncle for how he was received and recognized with all of the blessings he brought to this community. To be a world-class Olympian – and especially as an old man. My uncle was not a young man when he was in the Olympics,” Ford said. “My uncle, despite all the celebrity, was really a humble man. He enjoyed being recognized by the family. But he did not need it. He knew what he did. He knew he was blessed, and he knew he had a special gift. He was not narcissistic.

“What I admired about him because I grew up in a very traditional African-American family that was male dominated. My father really put forth a lot of effort to make sure I had a voice. And whenever Uncle Barney came over, sometimes I wanted to hear his stories and he always included me and that was a big deal for a little girl to be a part of that.” (Ford 2019)

Barney Ewell was not a civil rights pioneer of his era like Paul Robeson or Jackie Robinson. Nor was he like the generations that followed like Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith or Jim Brown. In a sense, Ewell suffered silently. “He played by the rules,” as his niece, Elizabeth Ford said. Those rules, of course, were stacked against him not because he was not good enough, smart enough or skilled enough. Instead, Ewell a stacked deck simply because of his race. It was as simple as that. He was not unlike his hero Jesse Owens, or Eulace Peacock. And different from those men, Ewell was an internationally elite athlete who served in the U.S. Army and was a college graduate. Indeed, Ewell played by the rules and followed the rules. Like Owens before him, Ewell exercised caution out of a fear that the powers-that-be would take away the few strides African-Americans had made.

But to paraphrase Jonathan Eig when describing Jackie Robinson, Ewell fought discrimination through quiet and modest action. Ewell, indeed, “proved that black Americans had been held back not by their inferiority but by systematic discrimination. And he proved it not with printed words or arguments declaimed before a judge. He proved it with deeds. …” (Eig 2007)

One has to wonder how we would remember Ewell not if he had slipped past Harrison Dillard or Mel Patton at the Olympics and won gold medals in 1948, but if he had been able to work as a teacher or a coach. Imagine the impact that a black man with a college degree in the 1950s would have had on his students. Imagine if Barney Ewell had been able to do what he was trained for off the track as well as on it.

One has to reason that his impact as a teacher and coach would have been far more significant than the substantial legacy he accomplished through sports. Or simply look to his nephew, Ronald Ford, the older brother of Elizabeth Ford, who served as a city councilman from Lancaster’s Seventh Ward from 1975 to 1993 before becoming Lancaster’s first (and still only) African-American County Commissioner from 1993 to 2003. (Murse 2016)

Ewell’s legacy not only is seen in the newly named landmarks in the city, but also with Elizabeth and Ron Ford who continue to serve their community using their uncle as their role model.

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