Willye White didn’t need any motivation when she began sprinting in the 1950s.
“For us in the South, athletics was the flight to freedom, freedom from bias, from discrimination, freedom from illiteracy. It enabled me to escape,” said White, an Olympic track champion who became director of the Chicago Park District’s Recreation Services Department two years ago.
White’s motivation led her into the 1956 Olympics, where she was a silver medalist in the long jump. Later she won a track and basketball scholarship to Tennessee State University in Nashville; she graduated from Chicago State University.
In her position as outreach coordinator for the park district, her challenge is to motivate Chicagoans-especially women and girls-to get more involved in sports.
On Wednesday, White will discuss her own odyssey in track and field and the history of women in sports as part of Women’s History Week at Harper College in Palatine. Chicago’s high school-age female athletes will remember White for recognizing 66 of them for their achievements at a dinner on National Girls and Women in Sports Day in February.
Her present challenge is planning the Park District Girls’ and Women’s Track and Field Games. White wants to implement the program by early summer, but because of the Park District’s limited funding, she needs a sponsor to pay for T-shirts and to pay the officials.
Physical education gets little attention in school, and parents are not encouraged to watch their children compete, she said.
“For a young lady to compete in athletics in the city of Chicago, there is no motivation at all. If you go to a game, no one is there.”
Using herself as an example, she is trying to “explain the beauty of competition, and that a total person is developed. When you combine athletics with an education, you develop physically, mentally and spiritually.”
Willye White will speak at 9:45 a.m. in the Board Room, Building A, Harper College, 1200 W. Algonquin Rd., Palatine. Free. More information: 708-397-3000, ext. 2560 or 2272.
