In 1945, Before Jackie Robinson Came to Brooklyn, Two Sisters Ended Racism on the Racetrack: Mary and Martha's Running Adventure Part One

In 2009, retired executive secretary and former trailblazing runner from Brooklyn, Mary DeSassurer Sobers sat for a five-hour oral history interview. During the interview with historian Sady Sullivan from the Center for Brooklyn History, Mary told the dramatic story of how she and her sister Martha broke down the racist barriers that for years had prevented Black girls and women from competing in track and field events. Mary is an excellent storyteller and her important story is a joy to listen to, but in case you do not have five hours to listen to it all, here is a condensed version of her race to end injustice and racism in Brooklyn.

Sometimes an ordinary day can suddenly become extraordinary. On the morning of February 3, 1945, a mother gave her two twin daughters Mary and Martha a job to do.? “Take this empty can and go to the store.? Give the shopkeeper the money and have him fill the can with kerosene to light the kitchen stove.? While you are there, also buy us some bread.”? When Mary and Martha headed down Gates Avenue in Brooklyn that day, they thought they were going out to help their mother.? Instead, the two twin sisters wound up changing Brooklyn and America for the better. Here is what Gates Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant looked like just a few years before in 1940.

As the two sisters dashed down Gates Street towards the store, Mary suggested running down the Sumner Street sidewalk.? This route took them past their favorite new place in their Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, the Sumner Avenue Park, called the Raymond Bush Playground today.? Mary recalls the city tearing down the horse barns that had been used to keep the horses that pulled the Borden Dairy company’s milk delivery wagons. In their place the Parks Department built a brand new park, the first built in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in many years.

The construction of the park was the result of a huge battle Black activists fought against Robert Moses head of the New York City Parks Department. For years he refused to build parks in Bedford Stuyvesant, concentrating instead on building parks in areas where Black people did not live. As the 1940s photos of Gates Avenue show Bedford Stuyvesant children were forced to play on city sidewalks. Then during the years 1940-1944 local Black activists Ada B. Jackson, Maude B. Richardson, and Albert L. Clarke skillfully found ways to overwhelm the powerful parks department head and force him to build parks for their children.

The city made Sumner Park a wonderful place for children to play.? The City Parks Department planted a vegetable garden and a flower garden for kids to learn how to grow their own food and learn about healthy eating.? The new park had an outdoor classroom and a new location for a future school: Public School 44.? Handball courts, swings, climbing equipment, and places to play softball and basketball were all there in the new park.? Most important of all, the park came with a supervisor, an adult who would always be there to provide encouragement and guidance for the neighborhood children.? His name was William Jackson, and he played an important part in this story.

As they ran along the street, Mary spotted a lot of buses heading towards the 13th Regiment Armory.? The buses were filled with excited children.? “Something special was happening at the armory!” Mary shouted. The 13th Regiment Armory is one of many large Armories in New York City where New York National Guard soldiers once practiced marching on huge indoor fields.? Thanks to the plans Black community activist Ada B. Jackson set in motion, the police and the parks department were experimenting with using these large armories for sports events for kids.? Mary wanted to go see what was happening.? Martha wanted to get to the store.? Mary ran as fast as she could down Sumner Street to the armory.? Martha decided she had to follow her, perhaps to try and keep Mary out of trouble.

?When Mary dashed up the steps of the armory to the front door, there was no sign of the children.? A moment later, Martha was there at the door beside her.? The face of a police officer appeared through the glass of the front door.? He stared down at the two twins.? The door opened a little.? “What’s the matter?” He asked.? “Where are all the kids?” Mary demanded.? “They are inside.” He explained that the Parks Department was holding races inside.? Kids from every park were racing each other to see which children were the fastest in all of Brooklyn.? The police officer never imagined these two Black girls would want to run, he opened the door a little wider and shoved them inside, figuring they had a right to come in and watch.?

?There on the large field, Mary saw off-duty police officers helping five hundred and fifty boys and girls divide up by park and then get ready to race each other.? Plenty of boys and girls raced each other along the sidewalks of Brooklyn in those days, but for these events, the police separated the races into Boys events and Girls events.? Next, the children were weighed and put into groups according to their weight and the distance they wanted to run. Some of the children even prepared to run relay races where runners passed a small stick between racers as they dashed around an oval track.?

?Mary was filled with excitement!?? She did not want to watch, she wanted to run.? Finding Officer Jack, the kind policeman who let the girls in, she asked him something that would change history, “Oooh, please, please let me run, I know I can run!”? Mary played at the newly built Sumner Avenue Park, the rules stated that the races were open to any Brooklyn child that day as long as they were connected to a Brooklyn park.? Mary already knew that William Jackson the Park Supervisor would agree that she was a regular at the new park on Sumner Avenue.?

The off-duty police officer was not sure at first what to say. In the past Black kids and white kids did not play sports together.? Should he say no?? Were the old racist rules still in force? Or were the new anti-racist rules that Black activist Ada B. Jackson worked so hard to establish, the new law in Brooklyn? Officer Jack was not sure what to do.? He looked down at Mary.? She was just four feet eleven inches tall.? She was wearing a coat and underneath a long green woolen dress.? On her feet were her mother’s large rainboots.? Peeking out from inside the rainboots were her sister Nelle’s green leather dance shoes with a two-inch Cuban heel on the back.? “You want to run like that?”? The policeman asked.? The other girls and boys had come prepared to race.? Mary was dressed for shopping.

?“Yes just like this!” Mary said confidently.? Mary’s father sometimes wrote poetry and perhaps he inspired her because her next words to the police officer were filled with truth and symbolism about the battle to end racism.? “I’m always running like this!? I am from Gates Avenue and we run against the wind, and when it is [really] windy, we try, but it pushes us back.”? The police officer laughed, he was impressed with her spirit and did not have the heart to say no.?

Another official came over and asked about why the two Black girls had been let in. “She wants to run and she is not going home.”? Said the officer, he really admired her determination to run.? The two men looked across the track at all of the boys and girls.? Here and there a few other Black children had been allowed to run.? A newspaper reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle stood nearby, watching.? He would later write that the “set up was truly cosmopolitan,” code words for an event that was probably the first large-scale sports event for Black and white children in Brooklyn history.?

Times and attitudes were certainly changing for police officers and parks department officials in Bedford-Stuyvesant.? The two men doubted a girl wearing rainboots, high heels, and a long dress would win.? They weighed Mary and let her run with the 100-pound group of white girls racing in the forty-yard dash. Officer Jack, suggested that Mary take off the rain boots.? He was worried that she would fall and get hurt.? Mary insisted she would not fall. She would not take off the rainboots, she did not want anyone to see her sister’s “ugly green shoes.”? Martha, wearing flat shoes was offered a spot in the race, but she refused to run.? She still was angry that they were not at the grocery store filling her empty can with kerosene. Martha took Mary’s coat.? She sat next to the white parents of the children about to race in the forty-yard dash.

Police officer Jack, Mary never mentioned his last name, took her over to the race starting line.? He told her, “I am gonna say three things, ‘On your mark, get set, and go!” Little girl, you run like hell!? You run like nothing!”?? Up in the wooden bleachers with the parents, Martha was getting really worried.? The parents were angry that a Black girl was being allowed to race with their white daughters.? A parent pointed at Mary’s rainboots and announced that there was no way Mary could beat their daughters.

?On the shout of “Go!”? Mary blasted down the race track. Fast starts were a skill she excelled at.? Martha said all that she could see was the blur of Mary’s green dress.? Five seconds later, Mary’s face was cut by the finish line tape.? Mary crossed the finish line in first place.? Officer Jack rushed over.? “You won!” He and Martha were now Mary’s biggest supporters. Mary believed that God was helping her win.? How else was a girl in rainboots beating girls wearing running shoes?? She thought. Officer Jack asked the girls holding the finish line tape to hold it lower next time.??

Mary needed to win two more forty-yard dashes that day to be declared the fastest girl in Brooklyn. Martha could hear the parents in the bleachers next to her getting really angry.? The forty-yard dash was one of the most important races in any track meet. The top three winners of this race would be declared the fastest girls in Brooklyn, but just a few weeks later, get to race at Madison Square Garden in New York City.? The girl who won the forty-yard dash would be the fastest girl in all of New York City.? Why, these parents wondered, was a Black girl allowed to race with their daughters?? They did not want Mary to win a spot on the team that would race at Madison Square Garden.

?Officer Jack came over to explain the situation to Mary.? At this point Mary had proven herself to be faster than dozens and dozens of girls.? “Now little girl you need to run,” he said, “these girls are getting tougher and tougher.”? “I know” was all Mary said.?

?Mary ran even faster. In first place, she smashed into the finish line rope and got a cut on her neck. Officer Jack felt bad that Mary now had two painful cuts to show for her victories.? He had some good news, “I don’t believe this, you won your trials and now you are ready for the finals.? You are going to Madison Square Garden to represent Brooklyn!”? “Yep” was all Mary could say.

?The last race of the day was to determine which place on the track the girls would run in at Madison Square Garden in a few weeks. Mary got to the starting line once again with a cut on her face and one on her neck, the girls holding the finish line tape had not lowered the tape much at all. “On your mark, get set, go!”? Mary said “I was gone! When I looked, I had another mark on my face.”? Officer Jack rushed over, “Oh shorty, you got another mark, but you won!”? He lined up the girls in order of their finish time with Mary in the first-place spot.? She had won the forty-yard dash in just 5.09 seconds.??

The parents rushed up to Officer Jack and the other race officials.? They were very angry.? While Mary and the other girls stood off to the side the adults argued.? Mary could see Officer Jack holding three medals for first, second, and third place.? The parents were claiming that Mary parent’s had not filled out the paperwork before the race, so she should not have been allowed to race against their daughters. The parents wanted to make sure Mary did not get the gold medal for being first.? Officer Jack was arguing back, but it was clear to Mary that the racist anger in the crowd was making him nervous.? How dare a Black girl be allowed to beat their children!?? In 1947 Jackie Robinson battled racism in Major League Baseball, two years before in February 1945, Mary DeSaussure found herself in the middle of it at a track meet in Brooklyn. “It was [her first experience with racism], racism 101” she would later say.

Finally, Officer Jack put a medal in each box and closed the lids.? He handed the closed boxes to each girl, thanked them for racing, and reminded them to get their parents to fill out the paperwork before the Madison Square Garden Race on February 15.?? Mary stood next to Martha and opened her box.? She remembers that inside was not the gold medal, but instead the silver second-place medal. “Holy cow!”? Was all Martha could say.? The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reporter recorded an even worse situation, Mary was given the bronze third-place medal. The other girls were confused, they looked over at Mary.? “They got the medal mixed up, she won!”? Mary could hear the third-place girl telling her parents. Mary knew that Officer Jack felt ashamed. “Look, you’re going to win at Madison Square Garden, and I know it.”? He reminded her to get some running shoes and a gym outfit for the next race.

William Jackson, the Sumner Avenue Park supervisor, arrived.? “How did you do?”? “I won but…” Mary showed him her medal.? Mr. Jackson likely sensed the tension in the room.? Would the new Black Park Supervisor take Mary’s side and demand the gold medal?? “You can’t say anything.” He told her.

Mr. Jackson went with the girls to talk with Mary and Martha’s parents about the cuts on Mary's face and neck. He explained what happened, why the girls were gone all day, and how important it was for Mary to race at Madison Square Garden.? “We are going to Madison Square Garden where Joe Louis boxed!”? Mary told her father, mentioning the much-loved Black boxer who desegregated boxing in the 1930s.? When Mr. Jackson told how Mary had been denied the first-place gold medal she deserved, her mother said, “You go out there and run, you run it again!”? They did not punish the girls for not going to the store that day. Part Two Mary and her sister at Madison Square Garden

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