The sprinter Harry Edward, Britain’s first black Olympic medallist, is to be commemorated with a blue plaque on his London home.
Edward won bronze medals in the 100m and 200m at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, and was British sprint champion for three years in a row, famously winning the 100, 220 and 440 yards finals inside an hour in 1922.
English Heritage has confirmed the plaque will be placed on his former home in Huntley Street in Bloomsbury, London. An English Heritage spokesperson said: “It’s a really exciting prospect. Harry will join a fine collection of Olympic stars who are commemorated on blue plaques.”
They include the boxer Harry Mallin, the middle-distance runner Philip Noel-Baker, the tennis player Kitty Godfree and the rower Jack Beresford, who were all part of the 1920 Great Britain team.
The commemoration of Edward comes after the discovery of his memoir in an obscure New Orleans archive. It was published this year, by Yale University Press, under the title When I Passed the Statue of Liberty I Became Black, and details not only his stellar athletic career but also his extraordinary life story.
The book was launched at the Paris Olympics on Monday at the OLY House, home of the World Olympians Association at the Games, with Marlene Dortch and Julia-Vanessa Long, granddaughters of the 1936 legends Jesse Owens and Luz Long.
Edward was born in Germany, the son of a Dominican maître d’ and a Prussian piano teacher, and would probably have represented Germany in the 1916 Berlin Olympics had it not been for the first world war. Instead he was interned in a prisoner of war camp for the duration of the conflict and moved to England when it was liberated.
He lived in a house near University College, in Bloomsbury, during four years in England, before emigrating to the US, where he worked in the theatre with Orson Welles, ran food and milk programmes in Harlem, fought school segregation and volunteered for service in the nascent United Nations in Germany and Greece. He also managed a foster kids programme in Vietnam. A tireless campaigners for civil rights, he died on a family visit to Germany in 1973.
Neil Duncanson edited Harry Edward’s memoir for publication
