 "Photo: Jordan Gomez")
Under the raised skylight in the main room of UT's Etter-Harbin Alumni Center, Olympic gold medalist and record-holding heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee spoke nostalgically about the community center in East St. Louis, Ill., where she first competed academically and athletically.
On Friday, Joyner-Kersee brought the 21st annual Heman Sweatt Symposium on Civil Rights to a close with her keynote address in which she described her transition from an athletic career to her work with the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which helped revive the community center where she discovered her gift for running.
"Growing up in East St. Louis, all I really wanted was to make my parents happy," Joyner-Kersee said to an audience of about 200. "At that community center, I got involved in athletics, and I knew I had a gift to be able to run, but I also really didn't know where that gift was going to take me."
UT's Division of Diversity and Community Engagement worked with the African American Legislative Summit to organize this year's symposium, titled "Bridging Economic Disparity Through Education," said Stella Smith, an administrative associate for the division.
Joyner-Kersee struggled to pursue a higher education through athletics while growing up in East St. Louis, a predominantly black community.
"When we would play different sporting events on the high school level, we had to go to the other schools," she said. "They didn't want to come to our community. For the longest time, we thought that if we wanted to go to a major university, that maybe our talents would never be discovered."
Joyner-Kersee eventually signed a letter of intent to play basketball at the University of California, Los Angeles, but was torn between pursuing her education and staying with her family when her mother died of meningitis after her high school graduation.
"The thought of giving up my education did cross my mind," she said. "I came back into the community of East St. Louis to try to support my brothers and sisters. But the one great thing I had going for me was that scholarship, and I knew it was more important to my mom to get that education."
After four years at UCLA, Joyner-Kersee decided to give up basketball to pursue a spot on the Olympic track and field team. She went on to win three gold, one silver and one bronze Olympic medals and continues to hold an unbroken 1986 heptathlon world record. In the early '80s, she went back to East St. Louis and found that the community center was shut down.
Her foundation funded a new center that opened in 2000. However, Joyner-Kersee emphasizes education more than athletics and the importance of the people from her community who helped actualize her dreams.
"I wanted to go back into that community and give hope to the young people who feel that there's no other way out," she said. "The hope that our young people see and feel is that they too can make something out of their lives. We can all go all over this world, but it's so important for us to go back into our community and thank the people that made a difference."
Gregory Vincent, vice president for diversity and community engagement, praised the event's organizers for choosing Joyner-Kersee as an embodiment of a person who dealt with black health, education and criminal justice issues and uses her position to help others.
"Ms. Joyner-Kersee epitomizes excellence in sport and used her fame to make a profound impact on our community," Vincent said.
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