Born in Washington D.C. on November 3, 1882, John Baxter Taylor Jr. was an American track and field athlete and the first Black American to win an Olympic gold medal in sports history. His parents were former slaves who settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. John spent almost his childhood and teenage years in Philadelphia as he attended it's free public schools and graduated from the Central High School in 1902.
He spent one year at the Brown Preparatory School, also in Philadelphia where he began his sports career and was the fastest high school quarter-miler in the country. At the Wharton School of Finance and the University of Pennsylvania, he was the champion of the Inter-Collegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (ICAAAA) in the quarter mile and broke his own record in 1907.
He moved from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in 1908 and became a member of the Sigma Pi Phi, the first black fraternity in America and was recruited by the Irish American Athletic Club in New York and was noted as it's most prominent African American member.
In the 1908 Summer Olympics hosted in London, John Taylor was a member of the gold medal-winning men's medley relay.
He ran the third leg, which was the 400 meters. He followed William Hamilton and Nate Cartmell who were fellow athletes from the University of Pennsylvania and Mel Shepherd, an athlete from the Brown Preparatory School came after him. John received a lead in both races and won with times of 3:27:2 and 3:29:4 respectively. He set a record at the Olympics by becoming the first Black American to win an Olympic gold medal. His score for the final was 49:08 seconds. He moved on to the finals in the men's 400 meters race at the 1908 Summer Olympics and won with a time of 50.8 seconds and his semi-finals with with 49.08 seconds. There was great expectations for John but all went down the drain as in less than five months after returning from the Olympic Games in London, John Taylor Jr. died of typhoid fever on December 2, 1908 at the age of twenty-six (26).
He is interred at the Eden Cemetery in Colligdale, Pennsylvania and in his obituary, The New York Times named him “the world's greatest negro runner”. In a letter to Taylor's parents, his fellow Irish American Athletic Club member and acting president of the 1908 United States Olympic Team, Harry Potter wrote: “It is far more as the man (than the athlete) that John Taylor made his mark. Quite unostentatious, genial, (and) kindly, the fleet-footed, far-famed athlete was beloved wherever known... As a beacon of his race, his example of achievement in athletics, scholarship and manhood will never wane, if indeed it is not destined to form with that of Booker T. Washington”.
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