Len Taw and Yamasani

Len Taunyane and Jan Mashiani. Did Mashiani run barefoot, as this picture suggests We on’t know.

Looking at recent iterations of international competitions, from the Olympics to the IAAF meets, it’s easy to forget that about a century ago, it was almost impossible for a black person to represent his country.

Yet, despite these most unfavorable circumstances, it took only three editions of the Olympics for black men to represent their nations.

The setting was St. Louis, Missouri, host of the 1904 Olympics, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which was celebrating the centennial since the fledgling USA bought the territory known as Louisiana from France.

The World Fair preceded the Olympic, and as was the norm for the time, and a while after, such fairs were incomplete without the inclusion of human zoos. Nonwhite ‘savages’ were shipped from all over the world for the amusement of attendees. There were Inuit forced to wear winter wear in muggy St. Louis, Geronimo the Apache was there to be photographed, and Filipino aborigines, such as the Negritos, were there to participate in “savage games”. These games included pole climbing and archery.

The Fair ran from April to December, while the Olympics were from August to September. For the fair, the South African dominion had assembled a group of about 500 – 150 Britons, 200 Boer men, 50 Boer women and children, and 40 black Africans. Somewhere among these Africans were the first two black Africans to participate in the Olympics, Len Taunyane (aka Len Taw), and Jan Mashiani (aka Yamasani).

This group was to reenact scenes from the Boer Wars, the second of which had ended in 1902 with victory for the Britons. This included acting as prisoners of war, which was in the case of Taunyane reliving a recent horror. They were also to showcase traditional South African life. What other roles these two served is unclear, though it is claimed that they served as dispatch runners in the war.

Before the Olympic races, these two had been drafted in one of the “savage games”, a mile-long race in which Taunyane came third.

For the organizers of these savage games, the performance of these people, transplanted to a strange land and expected to participate in games without fully understanding the rules of the games, “the whole meeting proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrate man from an athletic point of view.”

Yet despite the organizers’ apparent disappointment, Taunyane and Mashiani got numbers to participate in the Olympics marathon race, barely three weeks after their savage games.

The marathon route was pure torture. It was set on unpaved roads, and car and horses ran ahead and behind the runners, engulfing them in a suffocating plume of dust. It was this dust that kicked American William Garcia out of the race. Garcia was recovered lying in the middle of the road, the dust having caused internal bleeding in him.

Because this was a tournament to torment, the only water was to be found in a well 11 miles from the stadium in which the race ended. And in their wisdom, the marathon organizers started the race in the afternoon, when it was above 30^oC outside.

But the two unlikely trailblazers stepped up to the start all the same. And they ran on their own strength, unlike Fred Lorz, who hitched a ride along the way, or Thomas Hicks, who won only because his dedicated team gave him raw eggs, brandy, and drugs, before propping him to the finish.

Len Taunyane did run some extra distance, as he was chased off the course by some aggressive dog(s). He emerged 9^th.

Jan Mashiani finished 12^th.

Only 14 athletes, from a pool of more than 30, managed to finish the marathon.

While these two became the first black Africans to participate in the Olympics, an African-American blazed yet another trail.

George C. Poage participated in the 200- and 400-meter hurdles, scooping bronzes in both, and becoming the first black person to win a medal in the Olympics.

By Matengo Chwanya

Africa Global News Publication