Wilma Rudolph

When Wilma was 4 she had polio. Her family was big but also poor. Her dad was a railroad porter, and her mom was a maid. The doctors said she wouldn’t be able to walk. Whenever she rubbed her legs her sisters and brothers would rub theirs too. By the time she was 8 she could walk on a leg brace. Three years after that her mom found her playing basketball, and she didn’t have her leg brace shoe on.

A track coach told her she should run track. When she was in high school she won a woman bronze medal in the woman 400 meter relay. She stopped running when she was a 22 year old woman.

Wilma Rudolph died from brain cancer in 1994. When she stopped running she went to encourage young children to run track. Even though she's not alive she still influences young ones and even older ones to.