The nation’s official sports club, the German Track and Field Association, barred Bergmann and other Jews from its membership and controlled all athletic activities in the nation, following government policy regulating which people in its population would participate in the Olympics. This insurance policy against non-Aryans might have caused the Americans to remove Louise Stokes and Tydie Pickett in the line-up.
Disallowing Jews, living in Germany, from competing within the 1936 Berlin Olympics ignited worldwide protests of the Berlin Games; more than 10,000 gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York to protest. Ultimately, though, Ireland was the only country in the world to officially boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. America was represented in Berlin by an Olympic team that included Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in track and field wearing German-made tennis shoes.
The Olympics were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 due to the world’s involvement in The second world war. The next Games were held in 1948 in London, in which African American female track and field stars: Audrey Patterson of Tennessee State won a bronze medal for that 200-meter dash (the first time the 200-meter race was included for women); and Alice Coachman of Tuskegee Institute won a gold medal for that high jump (the first gold medal won by an Black woman).
Louise Stokes and Tydie Pickett were trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama after Tuskegee organized among the nation’s first female track and field teams in 1929 and campaigned for that inclusion of their black athletes in the Olympic Games, starting with the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1932.
Although, Stokes and Pickett qualified by defeating other members of the team, U.S. Olympic officials replaced Stokes and Pickett at the last second with white team members they had previously defeated. Again, within the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, U.S. Olympic officials replaced Stokes and Pickett at the last second with white associates they had defeated in qualifying races.
U.S. politics, Jim Crow laws and racist policies played as significant a job as foreign influences in both the 1932 Olympic Games in La and also the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1936, some observers blamed the German government for forcing a general change in the line-up of the U.S. women’s track and field team because of the German leadership’s attitude toward non-Aryans. This included their very own athlete, Gretel Bergmann, a 20-year-old high jumper from Stuttgart, Germany.