Otis Davis.
Credit: Wikimedia commons via Henk Lindeboom
Otis Davis, who was not allowed to attend the University of Alabama, in his home state, because he was Black, but flourished at the University of Oregon, which became his springboard to winning two gold medals in sprints at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, died Saturday in hospice care in North Bergen, New Jersey. He was 92.
His daughter Liza Davis confirmed the death.
Davis was part of a stellar American athletic contingent in Rome that included boxer Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), sprinter Wilma Rudolph, decathlete Rafer Johnson and basketball player Oscar Robertson.
Davis did not have the star power of those athletes, but he had a compelling story.
He left the Jim Crow-era South after graduating from high school served four years in the Air Force and received a basketball scholarship to Oregon. He was converted to a sprinter by the school's track and field coach, Bill Bowerman, who would later found Nike with Phil Knight.
Shortly before the Olympics in Rome began, Bowerman provided a scouting report on Davis' forthcoming men's 400-meter race. "His job is simple to remember," Bowerman told The Capital Journal, of Salem, Oregon. "He is supposed to start fast and finish before any of the rest of them." He added, "I think he can."
On September 6, 1960, Davis got off to a slow start in the final. Halfway through, however, he accelerated with sudden force and took the lead. But was he running too fast, putting himself in danger of tiring and being passed? His lead, which had stretched to seven yards, began to shrink in the last 100 meters. Carl Kaufmann, an American-born runner competing for Germany, was closing in.
"Davis ran upright -- 'swayback,' he called it -- with his hands in front of him, while the German leaned far forward at the end, his head low, his hands winging behind him as though he were preparing to dive into a pool," David Maraniss wrote in his book "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World" (2008).
Both men crossed the finish line with the same time -- a world-record 44.9 seconds -- but the photo finish was decided in Davis' favor. Kaufmann took the silver medal, Malcolm Spence of South Africa the bronze.
"They didn't think any human could go that fast, and I didn't either," Davis told The Register-Guard of Eugene, Oregon, in 2015. "If you can imagine, I was still learning how to run in different lanes."
Two days later, Davis ran in the 4 x 400 relay. As he waited to run the anchor leg, Jack Yerman took the lead over Germany. It was extended slightly by Earl Young, who then handed a 3-yard edge to Glenn Davis. When Otis Davis took the baton, he had a 4-yard lead in a rematch against Kaufmann.
"I accelerated a little to make Kaufmann use his strength to catch me, then I floated," Davis told Track & Field News after the race. "When he came up again, I'd accelerate, then float again. I figured he'd use up his power trying to catch me each time, then I'd turn on the kick and walk away."
The Americans won in a world-record time of 3 minutes, 2.2 seconds.
Otis Crandall Davis was born on July 12, 1932, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and raised by his maternal grandmother, Carrie Eaton. He occasionally lived with his mother, Mary Alice (Eaton) Davis, a science teacher and movie theater cashier, and his father, Johnie Davis, a bellhop.
Tuscaloosa was segregated at the time; although there was an all-white high school about a block from his home, Otis attended an all-Black school more than a mile away. He once saw Ku Klux Klansmen march in Tuscaloosa and recalled feeling sad that some of the shorter ones were children.
After serving four years in the Air Force in England and the United States, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College, where he played basketball. He transferred to Oregon on a basketball scholarship in 1957, but after playing sparingly in his one season on the team, he shifted to track, with Bowerman's encouragement -- first as a high jumper and then as a sprinter.
"Otis never had run the 440 until this year," Bowerman told The Oregonian in 1959, "but he has the strength, the speed and the determination necessary."
Davis finished seventh in the 440-yard dash in the NCAA track and field championships in 1959, but he placed third in the 400-meter race at the U.S. Olympic trials a year later, qualifying him for the team headed for Rome.
He graduated with a bachelor's degree in health and physical education in 1960.
After the Olympics, he raced for another year and, in his final event, successfully defended his 400-meter title at the Amateur Athletic Union's 1961 national track and field championships in New York.
After Davis' competitive career was over, his jobs included physical education teacher at a high school in Oregon, civilian sports director at Army bases in Germany, athletic director at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, counselor for the Urban League in Jersey City and truant officer in Union City, New Jersey. He also ran youth sports programs in New Jersey and New York.
Last year he published a memoir, "Destiny's Daredevil: The Autobiography of an Olympic Champion Helping Others Cross the Finish Line."
In addition to his daughter Liza, Davis is survived by another daughter, Diana Davis, and a grandson. His marriage to Lucille Mathes ended in divorce.
In early March 1994, burglars broke into Davis' apartment in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City and stole his gold medals. Neighbors heard about the theft and raised a banner on the porch of a nearby house that said, "Bring Home Otis Davis' Gold."
Police recovered the medals about a month later.
"Things happened so fast, it was like magic," Davis told The Jersey Journal. "The timing couldn't have been more perfect -- Good Friday. Now I can have a Happy Easter."