Jackson and Meyers Taylor have made history in Beijing for Black Americans

Only two Black Americans had won an individual medal in nearly a century of Winter Olympics before this week. It took less than 24 hours for Erin Jackson and Elana Meyers Taylor to double that list.

When Jackson ended a couple of lengthy speed skating medal droughts for the United States in a sport they once dominated by winning Sunday night’s women’s 500m, the roller derby skater from central Florida became the first Black woman from any country to win an individual gold in a Winter Olympics event according to the Olympedia.org website, the most comprehensive database about the Olympic Games.

Then on Monday afternoon, Meyers Taylor took silver in the inaugural monobob event to add a fourth Olympic medal to her career haul – equalling the speed skater Shani Davis as the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history – with a warm chance for a record-breaking fifth when the two-woman bobsleigh heats conclude on Saturday night.

Black History Month in the US has always coincided with the Winter Olympics on the calendar, but it’s fair to say that any overlap between the two have almost entirely ended there. The Games have been an overwhelmingly lilywhite affair favoring richer, colder nations despite mixed efforts by the International Olympic Committee to increase diversity through quota systems without compromising elite competitive standards.

But the 29-year-old Jackson, a former inline skater with an engineering degree from the University of Florida who made the US team for the 2018 Olympics after only four months on the ice, believes there is no reason that more young athletes of color can’t thrive in winter sports if given the opportunities. She hopes that her headline-grabbing success on the global stage can help