The Olympic connection to the Jacksonville area goes back longer than most people think, and that tradition is becoming more defined as time marches on.
Among the 13 Olympic medalists who have brought home a combined 33 gold, silver or bronze medals, perhaps none should hold a greater place of reverence – despite the stunning anonymity in his own hometown – than the man who first accomplished the feat 100 years ago at the Summer Games in Paris.
Few people in Northeast Florida had any idea that Edward Orval “Ned” Gourdin, a 1916 Old Stanton High valedictorian who went on to get his law degree from Harvard, was even competing in the long jump at the ‘24 Olympics or won a silver medal.
While Gourdin (pronounced gor-DEEN) had become well-known in Boston media circles — being the first man to eclipse 25 feet during the historic Harvard-Yale vs. Oxford-Cambridge meet in 1921 — the exploits of an African-American becoming the first Harvard athlete to medal at the Olympics went unnoticed in highly segregated Jacksonville.
In fact, it would be 75 years before Gourdin’s success at the Olympics and remarkable law career received any attention in Jacksonville, which came 33 years after his death. It wasn’t until 1999, when the Times-Union published its original “Greatest 100 Athletes” ranking, that this hidden treasure of Ned Gourdin finally surfaced.
While Jacksonville will eye this week’s Olympics with great interest due to swimmers Caeleb Dressel from Clay High and Ryan Murphy from The Bolles School possibly adding to their medal collection, it seems only fitting to revisit the exploits of the city’s first medalist who distinguished himself at the last Paris Olympics a century ago.
Gourdin, ranked No. 31 on the current list of the Greatest 100 Athletes from the Jacksonville area, broke all kinds of barriers in his athletic and law career. Sadly, his achievements took forever to be acknowledged in the hometown where he spent his first 19 years because the color of his skin made for a different kind of impediment.
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The family pioneer
Growing up on Davis Street in an impoverished family, Ned was one of nine children born to Walter Holmes Gourdin, a meat-cutter and part Seminole Indian, and an African-American woman named Felicia (nee Garvin).
Due to Ned’s academic achievements, the family moved to Massachusetts after his high school graduation to enroll him in the Cambridge & Latin School. That allowed Gourdin to complete the lab chemistry course required to pursue a Harvard enrollment.
Edward Gourdin Jr., the youngest of Ned’s four children who passed away in 2013, told the T-U back in 1999 that his father’s family did everything it could to provide him with the education necessary to have a successful life.
“Often times in big, poor families, they’d pick one to be the pioneer,” Gourdin said then in an interview from his Cape Cod neighborhood of Marston Mills. “That was him. I remember he often talked about walking over the Charles River bridge to get to school at Cambridge & Latin and Harvard.
“He used to take newspapers and stuff them inside his shoes to keep his feet warm.”
A four-sport athlete at Old Stanton, he stood 5-foot-11½ inches and 172 pounds by the time he got to college. Gourdin was a catcher and basketball player at Harvard, but he achieved immortality as both a long jumper and in a formidable post-Olympic career.
By the time he earned that silver medal shortly before his 27th birthday, Gourdin had graduated from Harvard and received his law degree. He worked as a postal clerk even after law school because Gourdin couldn’t get hired by a private law firm.
“Back then, Boston had de facto segregation,” said John Powers, a 1970 Harvard graduate and a longtime Olympic writer for the Boston Globe. “When I was in high school, all the Black kids lived in the Roxbury neighborhood.
“For [Gourdin], it was still a segregated city in a certain way.”
That didn’t deter Gourdin from making his mark away from the track. He went on to command the 372nd Infantry as a colonel in World War II in the middle Pacific, then was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an assistant U.S. attorney in 1936. Gourdin would also become a retired brigadier general in the National Guard.
In Boston law circles, his crowning achievement happened in 1958, eight years before Gourdin passed away at age 68 from cancer. He was sworn in as the first Black Superior Court justice in Massachusetts.
On that day, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said of Gourdin’s achievement: “This swearing-in is doubly important. First, because it is the first of its kind in New England and, secondly, because it represents another step along the road of justice rendered without regard for race or color.”
Indeed, the family pioneer had reached another pinnacle in a lifetime full of milestones.
Jumping into stardom
Gourdin burst into national prominence three years before he became America’s first Black silver medalist at the Olympics. It happened at the Harvard-Yale vs. Oxford-Cambridge meet, which was revived in 1921 after a decade-old absence due to World War I.
Despite failing to qualify at the 1920 Olympic trials in the 100-yard and 220-yard dashes, then tiring out for the long jump and not qualifying in his strongest event, Gourdin became a force at one of track and field’s biggest stages.
First, he won the 100-yard dash in 10.2 seconds, edging out Cambridge’s Harold Abrahams, the future British Olympic sprint champion who was portrayed in the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire,” which won an Academy award for best picture.
Proceeding to the long jump, Gourdin leaped 25 feet, 2 ¾ inches to set the world record and become the first man to eclipse the 25-foot barrier. So prodigious was that jump, it stood as a Harvard record for 93 years, until Eliott Safo beat it by 1 ½ inches at the Ivy League Championship on May 10, 2014, and that record is still intact.
The Boston Post said of Gourdin’s world-record feat: “The great athlete was given such applause as has only been heard before in the Stadium at a Harvard-Yale football game.”
It also printed a step-by-step sequence of seven photos showing Gourdin’s world-record jump. A Boston Globe headline proclaimed Gourdin “Smashes World’s Record in Broad jump by Marvelous Leap.”
A New York Telegram report said of Gourdin’s jump that “It was considered almost impossible.”
That meet turned out to be a double victory for Gourdin, who met his future wife, Amalia Ponce, right after his world-record leap. They were married in 1923 and had four children. She recalled her husband’s historic day in a 1993 interview for the Harvard-Yale vs. Oxford-Cambridge track program.
“He was proud of his accomplishments, but he struck me as being very shy and mostly interested in his academics,” Amalia said. “You could tell he put his whole heart into all his efforts. And right there, I knew he would accomplish things.”
Gold turned into silver
Though he entered the ‘24 Olympics as the favorite, Gourdin also had to balance studying for law school final exams and that cut into his practice time. He led going into the final round of jumps with an average leap, by his standards anyway, of 23 feet, 10¼ inches.
Michigan star William deHart Hubbard won the gold medal, the first for an African-American athlete, with a final-round jump of 24-5.
Ironically, the day after the Olympic final, Gourdin went to an exhibition and long-jumped 25-8 to break the world record of 25-5½ by Robert LeGendre, but the leap was unofficial because it came at a non-sanctioned event.
Still, considering Gourdin’s background and path to Harvard, his feat remains one of the most impressive stories in Jacksonville Olympic lore.
It’s just a shame that his distinguished life got so little attention in his hometown until long after his death.
Chandra Cheeseborough, who won two gold medals and one silver at the 1984 Summer Games and is one of Jacksonville’s four Olympic track and field medalists, had no idea who Gourdin was until a recent interview asking about his exploits from a century ago. She quickly Googled his name, astonished at learning of his silver medal in 1924 and other post-Olympic accomplishments while scanning his bio.
Like many others in Jacksonville, she thought Bob Hayes, dubbed “the world’s fastest man,” was the city’s first Olympic medalist when he won double gold in the 100-meter dash and 4 x 100 relays in Tokyo in 1964.
“To know Jacksonville has another Olympian who medaled in track and field, I think that’s amazing,” said Cheeseborough. “That’s a great achievement, that’s awesome.”
A legacy worth remembering
Powers, 75, who will be in Paris this week to cover the Olympics for the Globe, is one of the few media people familiar with the Gourdin legacy.
That’s because Powers is a 1970 Harvard graduate who worked in the school’s sports information office as a student, and he familiarized himself with the Crimson’s storied track and field past.
He understands the near-insurmountable odds Gourdin overcame to succeed at Harvard and in the legal profession.
“Back then, if someone from the South went to an Ivy League school, it was probably Princeton because it was closer,” Powers said. “Not many came from there to go to Harvard. Ned Gourdin was certainly an outlier. I think he might have been the first Black member of the track team, but I can’t be certain.
“If Harvard had Black athletes, they were probably football players and there weren’t many of those. I’d put Ned near the very top for what he did at Harvard. He was historical for two reasons. I think he was the only Harvard track athlete to set a world record and get an Olympic medal. That was a novelty for them.”
A quarter century ago, Gourdin’s phenomenal life only came to light in Jacksonville when the late John Tenbroeck, a local track and field historian, stumbled on his name in tennis great Arthur Ashe’s book, “A Hard Road to Glory,” which traces the history of prominent African-American athletes.
Tenbroeck was surprised that none of Jacksonville’s track coaches, including those in the Black community, were aware of the Gourdin name or his accomplishments.
“From everything I could find out, Ned Gourdin was very disciplined,” Tenbroeck told the T-U. “Considering the lack of probably opportunities a Black man had back then, his achievements are even more noteworthy. He obviously used his talents to the fullest extent.”
In 1968, Gourdin was inducted posthumously by the Harvard Varsity Club into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame, one year after its inaugural class. News accounts of his funeral described a crowd of thousands at Christ Church in Quincy, Mass., including Gov. John A. Volpe and military and political figures throughout New England.
In the nearly six decades since Gourdin’s passing, his legacy has continued to gain traction. Thanks in part to his late son’s lobbying in 1997, a portrait of Gourdin hangs in the Old Suffolk County Courthouse to recognize his accomplishments and city officials designated Justice Edward O. Gourdin Veterans Memorial Park in the Roxbury neighborhood.
Many athletes in the coming Paris Olympics will achieve fame for feats of greatness, perhaps one or two from the 904 area code.
For Edward Orval “Ned” Gourdin, he has finally earned a rightful place of honor as Jacksonville’s first Olympic medalist.
It just took way too long for that recognition to come his way.
Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette
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