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Oral history interview with John Woodruff

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0456.2 | RG Number: RG-50.429.0002

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    Oral history interview with John Woodruff
    Transcript

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    OK, I was asking you if there was any sort of special feeling
    or pride in being a Black American winning
    the gold medal in Berlin.
    It was very definitely a special feeling
    in winning the gold medal and being a Black man,
    because here, I was doing something, and particularly,
    this particular event, had not been won by an American
    in 24 years.
    And that was won by a white man, not a Black man.
    So I was very proud of that fact, very proud
    of that achievement.
    And I was very happy for myself as an individual, for my race
    and for my country.
    Now, you had started to mention something about auxiliaries.
    What's that about?
    Well, after the Olympic games were over,
    I think it must have been published
    in the German publications, the German newspapers,
    that Hitler made the remark that if it wasn't for the Black
    auxiliary, the American would not have won the Olympics.
    That's what I heard, and I didn't read it,
    but I heard that that was a remark that he made.
    How did that make you feel?
    Well, it made me feel good, because what we did,
    we destroyed his master race theory.
    It made me feel very good, because you know,
    he had that master race theory that the superior race,
    only the pure Germans could do certain things in this world.
    That was what he was advocating, but we destroyed his theory.
    when we started winning those gold medals.
    Tell me a little bit about your return home as an Olympic hero.
    How were you received?
    Where did you come first?
    We came to New York, and they had a big parade for us.
    Can you say it again?
    Say, after the Olympics.
    After the Olympics, we came home.
    We came home on the SS Washington.
    Now, of course, Jesse Owens came home ahead of us
    because he didn't do any running after the Olympics
    outside of Dresden, Germany.
    One week after the Olympic Games,
    Jesse ran in Dresden, Germany, and of course he
    was defeated by Ralph Metcalfe, who took second to him
    in the Olympic Games in Berlin.
    But he had some offers that was made, some professional offers,
    and of course, he came back on the Queen Mary
    to take advantage of those offers,
    because Jesse came from a poor family too.
    Most of the Blacks came from poor families, you see.
    None of us came from any wealthy homes or middle-class homes,
    most all from poor families.
    But many of those offers didn't pan out for him At all.
    And of course, due to the fact--
    see, he was scheduled to run in various countries.
    He didn't run.
    He came home, so they declared him a professional.
    So Jesse, his amateur days were over with after that scene.
    But I ran after the Olympic Games
    I ran in White City Stadium in London.
    Then from there, I ran up in Oslo, Norway
    before coming home.
    But we all ended up in New York, and they
    had a big ticker tape parade for us in Manhattan
    up Fifth Avenue.
    And there was a lot of cheering, and of course, Mayor Laguardia,
    who was the mayor of the city at the time,
    gave us a medal from the City of New York.
    And then from there, we all departed New York City
    and we went to our various homes.
    And of course, when I got back to Connellsville, Pennsylvania,
    they had a big parade for me in my hometown,
    which was the biggest parade that they ever turned out
    for anybody in that small town.
    That must have felt fabulous.
    It was.
    It was.
    It was a fabulous time, a fabulous occasion,
    and a happy time for me and for my family,
    and for all my friends back there in Connellsville.
    How long did the euphoria last?
    Well, it lasted for quite a long time, you know,
    because you know, I used to go out
    and do a lot of speaking to young kids
    after the Olympic Games.
    And of course, I was still in school,
    and I was still making records as an athlete
    because I won every major track meet
    in the country at that particular time,
    right up until I stopped running in 1940.
    Did winning the Olympics open doors for you
    that wouldn't have been opened otherwise?
    Some doors.
    Some doors, because you know, I never received
    any fabulous offers in terms of making any money,
    because you see, first of all, I was still in school.
    And I had three years to go to get my degree,
    and when I was graduated, right after I was graduated
    from University of Pittsburgh, then I
    went to New York University.
    And while I was in graduate school,
    I got a job at John Wanamaker's running an elevator.
    And of course, you know, there was quite a lot of publicity
    that came out about an Olympic champion getting
    a job running an elevator.
    And the only thing that John Wanamaker wanted to do
    was give me a permanent job running an elevator.
    That was all.
    Then I got a job as a social investigator for the City
    of New York, working with disadvantaged people
    who were on welfare.
    Then I got a job working for the Police Athletic
    League, director of one of the centers up in Harlem, New York,
    working with disadvantaged kids.
    And while I was working in that job,
    I took the examination for state parole officer
    for the state of New York, and I became a parole officer,
    supervising parolees who were released from the New York
    State reformatory state prisons.
    Then from that, I worked for a short period of time
    with Schieffelin and Company advertising
    alcoholic beverages.
    I didn't particularly care for that
    because I couldn't see myself making a permanent job pushing
    booze.
    So I got out of that.
    Then I got a job as an insurance agent
    for the Prudential Insurance Company.
    I worked a while in that job.
    Then I ended up my career with the Job Corps program.
    You know about the Job Corps program,
    again working with disadvantaged kids.
    I never made a lot of money, but I made a living.
    But the compensation that I got from the work that I did
    was helping people, and I helped a lot
    of people, a lot of people.
    Did being an Olympic winner open doors in other ways?
    Well, not from my experience.
    Not from my experience.
    Get you access to places that you weren't
    able to go and do before?
    I can't recall just looking back on my early career
    after winning the Olympics that it opened any particular doors,
    being a gold medal winner.
    Did you expect it to?
    Well, I expected and I had hoped,
    but nothing materialized in that regard.
    Now, I'm sure many of the white Olympians
    were made offers, very fine offers.
    But I can't recall any Black Olympians
    making any great offers.
    Now, Jesse did pretty well.
    He got in public relations work.
    But when he first came back from the Olympic Games,
    he found it very difficult to get any decent work.
    He came back.
    He ran against racehorses.
    You may have heard of him running against a racehorse.
    He did a number of things in order
    to try to make a living for his family.
    But only in the later years, he started a public relations
    organization there in Chicago, and he
    was on a lot of speaking engagements.
    And he picked up quite a bit of money doing that,
    but he didn't have any big job.
    He never had any real big jobs, you know.
    What I'm trying to get at here is, it seems that
    after all of the excitement of winning this medal,
    winning this race, coming back to all kinds of parades,
    how long did it kind of take to come back to Earth
    and realize that things hadn't changed much?
    Were there any moments that kind of showed you that clearly?
    Yes.
    When I came back to the University of Pittsburgh,
    they didn't want to let me into the English class
    because I was a month late.
    And of course, I guess the chancellor
    straightened that matter out.
    Then one day, I went downtown Pittsburgh one evening
    to [? Chow's ?] Restaurant.
    They refused to serve me.
    That was one incident.
    Then when I was graduated and they had the University
    Hall of Fame, here I'd brought international recognition
    to the school.
    The All-American football players like Marshall Goldberg,
    they brought national recognition to the school.
    They made the Hall of Fame, but I didn't make it,
    in spite of the gold medal that I'd won,
    and bringing the school international recognition.
    So that let me know just what the situation was.
    Things hadn't changed.
    Things hadn't changed.
    But I was young, and of course, as the years went on,
    things got better.
    And to date, things have gotten much better for the Blacks,
    but we still have a long way to go.
    Can I ask you a little bit about what
    was going on, what was unfolding in Germany and in Europe?
    When, after the Olympics, did you
    become more aware of what was going on,
    and how did you find out?
    Well, I personally became aware of what
    was going on based on the publications,
    on what was printed in the various newspapers
    and magazines of what was happening in Germany.
    Of course, right after the Olympics, in 1939,
    Hitler started World War II when he marched on Czechoslovakia.
    That was the beginning of World War II.
    And of course, we all knew what happened after that.
    How did you get that information?
    How did you start learning more?
    Was that the point at which you became more aware
    of the atrocities?
    Yes.
    I became aware of those atrocities and things
    from what was printed in the newspapers
    throughout the United States.
    After having this glorious week in Berlin,
    this is hard to believe.
    Yes, it was very hard to believe.
    It was very hard to believe, but we
    knew what was going on based on the publicity
    prior to the Olympic Games, what Hitler was doing.
    And as I said, he declared a moratorium, opened up
    everything, made everything very pleasant,
    very accommodating for the visiting Olympic teams,
    the nations.
    But after the Olympics, then he went right back to the things
    he had planned.
    And of course, all these things he had planned
    was laid out in his book, Mein Kampf.
    So the Olympics were really a propaganda coup.
    It was.
    He made it so.
    He made it so.
    He made it a propaganda coup to further his cause,
    or to further his program that he had set up.
    When you started learning more about all
    of the horrible things that were happening,
    did you think about the Olympics in the context
    of politics at all?
    Or were you just still feeling the same way you did at age 21?
    Well, I would think it was pretty much the latter, pretty
    much the latter, because we had some background on what was
    going on prior to the games.
    And of course, it was brought out more
    pointedly after the games.
    See, when after the Games were over, then
    Hitler continued with his program,
    you see, marching on Czechoslovakia
    and starting the war.
    And of course, it was something that we more or less expected.
    We more or less expected it.
    You know, the world didn't think Hitler
    was doing what he was doing.
    You see, they should have known what he was doing.
    You know, Germany was part of the League of Nations,
    like all the nations were part of that league.
    And the reason that they set that league up, as you know,
    from history, was to more or less keep
    a tab on each nation in terms of them building up
    war armaments to start a war.
    Now, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations.
    They should have known then what he was going to do,
    but they didn't believe him.
    They didn't believe him.
    They didn't believe what he had printed in that book Mein
    Kampf.
    Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England,
    called him the little corporal.
    They downplayed Hitler.
    They didn't believe what he was about to do.
    So therefore, they didn't put a curb on him, see.
    They probably could have stopped World War II
    if they had done so at that time.
    When he withdrew from the League of Nations,
    if they had put a clamp on him at that particular time,
    there probably would have been no World War II,
    but they didn't do it.
    Do you think if we had believed what was going to happen
    and had exercised a boycott, it would have made any difference?
    You mean exercised a boycott of the Olympics?
    Yeah.
    I don't know that it would have made any difference or not.
    I really don't.
    I can't answer that question.
    In retrospect, because I know how you felt at the time.
    Learning how bad things became, do you
    think we should have participated in the Olympics?
    Well, in retrospect, based on all the training
    that the athletes had gone through
    in preparing for the Olympic Games,
    I felt that they should have gone on with the Olympics
    as they did, because I think that would have been a very
    bad thing to have taken place.
    It would have been very hurting for the athletes who
    made so much preparation, who trained so long over the years.
    Fortunately for me, I didn't train like that.
    I was more or less a gifted athlete.
    I came up very fast, but there were other athletes who
    had trained for the Olympics, trained for years to prepare
    for the Games, and that would have been very, very bad
    if they could not have gone.
    That's my feeling personally for me.
    Now, I mean there might be others
    who would feel differently about it based on the question
    you posed to me, but that's my feeling.
    That the Olympics and politics should stay separate.
    That's right.
    Let's take a break.
    I want to-- you're great.
    There are a couple of specific questions I want to ask you.
    You had mentioned one incident where
    you had contact with a German athlete at the Olympic Village.
    Mm-hmm.
    Did you have other contact with German athletes?
    That was the only one.
    That I remember this young man that came in.
    He was young like we were, and he came to visit with us,
    you see.
    And of course, we heard all this information about Hitler,
    and that's when we posed the question.
    What did he think, what did the German people think of Hitler?
    And he said they thought he was a very good man because of what
    he'd done for the country economically speaking, made
    it possible for all of them to work.
    And of course, you know, all of them worked in these factories
    where they were making weapons.
    And that's why they felt, because after World War I,
    you know, the Germans, they really were beat down.
    They were in a bad way, and I guess
    they were looking for a savior.
    And that's when Hitler came into play.
    They were looking for somebody to pull them out
    of those doldrums that they were in, you see.
    And of course, when he withdrew from the League of Nations,
    started building all this war armament,
    putting all these young people to work,
    he was a great guy as far as they were concerned.
    But they didn't know the whole story.
    Did you encounter any other international athletes?
    No, no, no.
    Was there much of a bond or camaraderie that sort of
    lasted with the other athletes after the Olympics?
    That lasted from other teams?
    From here.
    Yes, yeah.
    Quite a bond.
    You know, we became very, very close friends, and we--
    Can we have you start, and instead of saying we,
    you can say, you know, the other athletes.
    The other athletes on the team were very close.
    I was very close to them.
    I'm still very close to some of them that are still around.
    I still make contact with them, you see.
    But of course, many of them are gone.
    Many of them have passed, and as I said,
    I'm the only one who's left now, you see.
    Archie Williams, who won the 400 meters,
    he died about three years ago, and he
    was the last of the gold medal winners
    other than myself that was still living.
    So it was really a special bond.
    Oh, yes.
    Stronger than a fraternity, much stronger than a fraternity,
    because of what we go through in training and what have you,
    the feeling of pain when we're training,
    the feeling of pain when we race.
    That gives us a lot of strength, and it's something
    that we have in common with each other and something
    that we understand.
    See, one athlete understands another athlete
    and what he has to go through.
    If he's a football player, a football player
    understands what another football
    player has to go through, and that same way
    in track and field.
    When did you become friendly with Marty Glickman, or how?
    We lived in the same neighborhood
    up in New Rochelle, New York.
    His family and my family lived in the same neighborhood.
    But you met at the Olympics.
    We met at the Olympics.
    OK, I need you to say his name.
    Marty Glickman, I met in Olympics as part of the team.
    I didn't know him before that, but I knew him after that,
    after the Olympics, where he resided in New Rochelle
    and where I resided with my family in New Rochelle, New
    York.
    Do you remember him at the Olympics?
    I used to see him on occasion because he was a sprinter,
    and I used to see Sam Stoller.
    Also, incidentally, is Sam Stoller dead?
    From your memory of 1936, what kind of a guy
    was Marty Glickman?
    Nice fella, very nice fella.
    Very friendly, as all the athletes that were on the team
    were all very friendly, all very cordial, all very
    accommodating.
    We were just like one big happy family.
    Was there anything that set him apart in your mind?
    No.
    No, he was just another athlete like all the rest of them
    that were over there to win a gold medal.
    And I was very, very sorry that he didn't get that opportunity
    to do so.
    Did you go to the closing ceremonies?
    The closing ceremonies at the Berlin?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Tell me.
    It was very, very, very exciting.
    We need to start--
    The closing ceremonies were very, very exciting,
    because of course, I witnessed the closing ceremonies
    on the Olympic Games that I attended,
    but this one was much more important
    because I was part of it.
    And they put on quite a show, quite a show.
    Tell me about it.
    Well, they had the athletes-- of course,
    one thing about the closing ceremonies, the closing
    ceremonies are not as exciting as the opening
    ceremonies because a lot of the athletes after competing
    go home.
    So the whole team is never there at the closing ceremonies.
    So therefore, it's not quite as exciting as the opening
    ceremony when they march in each country with their flags,
    and of course with the Olympic flag preceding everything,
    you see, the five-ring Olympic flag.
    But as I said, it's not as exciting.
    But it's still exciting for those who participated
    in the closing ceremonies.
    What did it look like?
    Well, it looked like a closing ceremony.
    That's all I can see.
    I don't know what you--
    I've never been to one.
    I don't even know what the opening ceremonies look like.
    Well, the opening ceremonies were all these various nations.
    All these Olympic athletes representing all
    these various nations march in.
    The host country athletes march in last.
    It's all set up.
    It's all organized, and of course, all these countries,
    it's preceded by the Olympic flag, the five-ring flag.
    And of course, right after they march in
    and the Games are declared open, they have pigeons,
    and they release all these pigeons, and they all fly.
    And that's the opening of the games.
    It was beautiful.
    And you were on the field at that time?
    On the field as part of the American team.
    We came in with our white trousers, blue jackets
    and straw hats with a red, white, and blue band,
    white shirt.
    And I think the tie was white, if I recall.
    It has been a little while, but I remember the hat.
    I remember the jacket and I remember the trousers,
    and of course, white shoes.
    How were you feeling?
    How were you feeling marching across that?
    Oh, felt good.
    Felt good.
    You know, you always felt good marching in the parade.
    Always did.
    It kind of does something to you.
    It was a big parade.
    It was.
    It was.
    I'm going to ask you, is there anything else
    that you can remember about what the stadium looked,
    like what the track was like?
    Was it similar to other tracks that you competed on?
    It was a very beautiful track, a very fine track.
    It was made with some kind of red dirt, red cinders
    or something.
    It was different.
    It was very different to the tracks
    here in America at that particular time.
    And when I was over there for the 50th anniversary
    and I got a chance to visit the track again,
    that track was still in excellent condition,
    and the stadium was in excellent condition.
    All the facilities that the Germans
    built for the 1936 Olympic games,
    they did a marvelous job, a marvelous job, and everything
    is still intact even today, even today.
    Did the weather cooperate?
    It cooperated very well.
    We had no inclement weather at all.
    So it was kind of an ideal situation?
    Ideal.
    End the tape.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    John Woodruff, born July 5, 1915, discusses his childhood in Connellsville, PA; his introduction to track and field sports in high school; his memories of racism in Connellsville and at the University of Pittsburgh; his impressions of Adolf Hitler and Germany's treatment of the Jews at the time of the 1936 Olympic Games; his memories of the 1936 U. S. Olympic team's voyage to Berlin; training before the games; the athletes’ lifestyle in the Olympic village and relationships with fellow athletes; his recollections of Marty Glickman and Sam Stohler and the controversy over their exclusion from the 1936 Games; his memories of winning the 800 meter race and receiving the gold medal; his return to the United States and the University of Pittsburgh; his memories of Jesse Owens during and after the 1936 Games; his experiences of racism after returning to the United States; his impressions of Hitler's actions after 1936 and the use of the Olympic Games as propaganda; his relationship with Marty Glickman; and his recollections of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1936 Olympic Games.
    Interviewee
    John Woodruff
    Interviewer
    Randy M. Goldman
    Date
    interview:  1996 May 15

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    3 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

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    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition Department produced the interview with John Woodruff in preparation for the exhibit, "The Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936."
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:31:40
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    Time Coded Notes (English)

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    Also in The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 oral history collection

    Contains interviews conducted in May 1996 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Exhibitions Department in preparation for "The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936" exhibition. The interviewees include: Milton Green, John Woodruff, Herman Goldberg, Marty Glickman, and Margaret Lambert. The interviews document the lives of five athletes and their experiences during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany

    Date: 1996

    Oral history interview with Milton Green

    Oral history interview with Milton Green

    Oral History

    Milton Green, born circa 1914 in Lowell, MA, discusses his childhood in Brookline, MA; his three siblings; attending Reform Temple with his family; his early interest in track and field sports; his participation in track sports while studying at Harvard University; receiving a certificate from Avery Brundage, of the American Olympic Committee, informing him of his qualification for final Olympic Team tryouts at Randall Island, NY; deciding with his teammate Norman Carnis to boycott the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany at the urging of Rabbi Levi and other members of the Temple Israel; meeting with Harvard track coach Yacko Macola, who attempted to persuade him not to boycott the Olympics; following the 1936 Olympic events by radio and newspaper; his thoughts on the lack of an overall United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; enlisting in the United States Navy in 1943; being in Scouting Squadron 31 as an air combat intelligence officer; and leaving the service in 1946.

    Oral history interview with Herman Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Herman Goldberg

    Oral History

    Herman Goldberg, born in November 1915, discusses his childhood and family in Brooklyn, NY; the importance of sports in his life; playing baseball at Brooklyn College and in the Canadian American League, where he was catcher for the Rome Colonels; his selection for the 1936 United States Olympic Baseball Team at pre-Olympic try outs in Baltimore, MD; his participation in exhibition baseball at the 1936 Olympics; his participation in baseball demonstrations throughout Germany immediately after the Olympics; discovering that the Olympic village would be used for the German Army after the close of the games; his memories of the voyage with the United States team to Germany; his memories of the proposed United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; and his impressions of Adolf Hitler's behavior during the various events of the Olympics, especially when black or Jewish athletes won medals.

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

    Oral History

    Marty Glickman (né Martin Irvin Glickman), born in 1917 in Bronx, NY, discusses his childhood and growing up in Brooklyn, NY; his Romanian parents; his participation in sports throughout his childhood and youth; his competition with Ben Johnson and realizing his potential to compete in the Olympics; his memories of antisemitism in Europe and the United States; his races against Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe during the Olympic qualification events at Randall Island, NY; the voyage to Germany with the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team; his memories of a possible United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; his friendship with Herman Goldberg, a member of the 1936 U.S. Baseball Team; his views on the role of politics in the Olympic Games; the arrival and reception of the U.S. Team in Berlin, Germany; Hitler's reaction to the victorious black athletes; his memories of the Olympic village in Berlin and the opening ceremonies; the controversy that arose when he and Sam Stohler were removed from the 400 meter relay and replaced with Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf; the role of Dean Cromwell, the American track coach, in excluding Glickman and Stohler from the relay; his memories of watching Owens and Metcalfe win the relay; his views on the involvement of Avery Brundage, President of the American Olympic Committee, in having him and Stohler removed from the relay; his experience with racism in 1937, when a fellow Syracuse football teammate was excluded from a game because he was black; and his hopes to compete in other Olympics after 1936.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lambert

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lambert

    Oral History

    Margaret Lambert (née Gretl Bergman), born April 12, 1914, discusses her childhood in Laupheim, Germany; her involvement in various sports as a child; her memories of antisemitism after the Nazis took power in 1933; her relationships with non-Jewish friends and athletes; moving to England in October 1933 to attend school and to train; her victory at the British National Championships in June 1934; returning to Germany to become a member of the 1936 German Olympic team; her relationships with other athletes and coaches on the German team while training for the Olympics; her reflections on how she depended on her anger toward the Nazis to help her succeed in the running and jumping events; her time in school and training in Stuttgart, Germany; her outstanding performance in qualifying events in Stuttgart just prior to the Olympics; her dismissal from the German Olympic team following the qualifying events in Stuttgart; immigrating to the United States in May 1937; her father's brief imprisonment in the Dachau concentration camp in 1938; her family's escape from Germany to England in 1939; her impressions of the Olympic Games as Nazi propaganda; and her decision to attend the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 as a special guest of the German government.

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