There are several answers to this question depending on what the specific question is: Alice Coachman made history when she became the first black woman and also the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal at the 1948 Games. The first woman competing for an African country to win an Olypmic gold medal was South African Esther Brand who won the women's high jump in 1952, though she was a white South African. The first black true African woman to win an Olympic gold medal would have been one of the members of Zimbabwe's women's hockey team who won gold in the 1980 Olympics. The first black true African woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal was Derartu Tulu winning gold for Ethiopia in the women's 10,000m in 1992.
Wilma Rudolph in 1960.
Wilma Rudolph.
History is made everyday. In 1908 John Baxter Taylor was the first African American to earn a gold medal in the Olympics.
The first African American woman to win a gold medal was Alice Coachman of Albany, Georgia who won the high jump event at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
1948 Summer Games in London. She won gold in high jump and became the first African-American woman, and the first black woman of any nationality, to win an Olympic gold medal.
Althea Gibson.
hillary
Vonetta Flowers was the first African American to win gold in the Winter Olympics when she teamed with Jill Bakken to win the two-woman bobsled event at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
kristin otto
Vonetta Flowers (2002 Olympic Bobsled Champion) was the 1st African-American to Win a Gold Medal in the Winter Olympics
Reggie Walker.
In 1908, John Baxter Taylor became the first African American to win a gold medal at the Olympics. Unfortunately, Taylor died of typhoid pneumonia later that year.