Columbia Athletics Celebrates Black History Month; A Look Back at Ben Johnson '39CC
2/10/2016 2:21:00 PM | General
Benjamin Washington Johnson, also known as the Columbia Comet, was once the world's fastest man.
As a first-year at Columbia in 1934, Ben Johnson was quick to make a name for himself by upsetting Ralph Metcalfe, the world record holder in the 100-yard dash and eventual Olympic gold medalist. Johnson also helped the Lions win the freshman mile relay with a 49-second quarter-mile at the Penn Relays.
The next year, Johnson beat Metcalfe, Eulace Peacock, and the famed Jesse Owens for the indoor AAU 60-meter championship, matching Owens' record of 6.6 seconds in the process. Unfortunately, Johnson's missed most of the season with a torn hamstring.
With a healthy hamstring the following summer, Johnson was ready to take on Owens and others at the Olympic Trials for a spot on the American Olympic team competing in the 1936 games in Berlin. However, the day did not turn out in Johnson's favor, as he pulled up after two strides in the first heat of the day with a strained muscle. Johnson was unable to compete in the trials and Jessie Owens went on to become the hero of the games.
As people in America called for a boycott of the 1936 Olympic games due to Germany violating Olympic rules forbidding discrimination based on race and religion, Johnson spoke up. Johnson called for the people to “put their own house in order before criticizing other,” claiming the problem of discrimination in the U.S. was more significant to Americans. Ben citied the case of Jimmy Johnson, an African-American track star from Illinois State as an example of racial discrimination in American Athletics. Jimmy Johnson was not placed on the American Olympic team in 1932, although he “logically deserved a post according to the way the team is chosen.” Ben Johnson went on to point out other cases of discrimination in the American South, furthering his point that the American people had problems to fix on their own soil before worrying about problems in Europe.
Missing the Olympics was not the end of the Columbia Comet. In 1937, Johnson went on to win the AAU and IC4A titles, along with the NCAA 220-yard championship (21.3). He was the first athlete in the 20th century to win three events at the IC4A Championship, winning the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the broad jump.
Johnson then went overseas for a European tour following the 1937 track season. Famed track and field journalist Jesse Abramson wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, “Then Johnson went abroad, beat the pick of Europe, sweeping 11 of 12 races, returning a world- record 10.2 for 100 meters twice with a favoring breeze. John P. Nicholson of Notre Dame, manager-coach on that European tour, called him the world's finest after seeing him run week after week in small towns, in world capitals, on good tracks and bad.”
In 1938, the Columbia Comet put a final stamp on his career with an outstanding performance at The 1938 Melrose Games in Madison Square Garden. In front of 17,000 fans, Johnson ran 6.2, 6.1 and 6.0 in the 60-yard dash, tying the world record, breaking it, then breaking it again. “With his final performance,” Abramson wrote, “he wiped out all recorded 60-yard records, on boards, on dirt, with and without starting blocks, surpassing the feats of Loren Murchison, Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, Eddie Tolan, Emmett Toppino and all others.” Voted the outstanding performer by a panel of eight sportswriters, Johnson was hailed as “world's fastest human.”
The rest of his senior season was lost because of a case of the measles, but he did sweep the 100- and 220-yard dashes at White City Stadium in London before 70,000 fans that summer.
With no professional track and field at the time, Johnson began to teach history and coach track after graduation from Columbia in 1939. Johnson then enlisted in the Army in December of 1942 and fought for his country in Germany in World War II. He ended his Army career in the mid-1950s among the nation's first black colonels.
Johnson was inducted into the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006.
