Harry Edward: When I Passed The Statue of Liberty I Became Black
Harry Edward, Yale University Press, £18.99

ALTHOUGH billed as a sports memoir, Harry Edward’s book is more a microcosm of the 20th century. Originally written in the 1970s, the manuscript was rejected by publishers until it was rediscovered by TV producer Neil Duncanson in the Amistad Research Centre in New Orleans. It is now published in full. 

Edward’s father had come to Berlin in 1894 from Dominica to work in restaurants and cabarets; his Prussian mother was a teacher of piano. As such, Edward was born a British subject in Berlin in 1898, and had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, becoming fluent in French and German as well as his native English. He soon showed a remarkable aptitude for athletics.  

World War I intervened and all British military-age men in Germany were interned as prisoners of war. Despite the harsh camp conditions, detainees established education, training and dramatic societies, preparing the men for their eventual release at the end of the war. 

Moving to London, Harry taught French and German and took up his athletics in earnest. In 1920 he became Britain’s first black Olympic medal winner in the 100m sprint at the Antwerp Games. In 1922 at the Amateur Athletics Championship he won the 100, 220 and 440 yard races, all within the same hour, a feat which was never been equalled. 

Unable to capitalise financially on his success, he was lured to the US and there, as the title of the book suggests, he became black, going from “Man to Negro.” He recounts the numerous slights received, the difficulties in finding and keeping work and accommodation, and details local plans to segregate schools. The Olympian of 1920 hung up his spikes. 

The great depression made life intensely difficult, with only marginal jobs available, but eventually Harry landed a role at The Negro Theatre, where he worked with many luminaries, in 1936 producing Macbeth with an entirely black cast and directed by Orson Welles. 

After World War II he joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration working in refugee resettlement in Greece. Later he was deployed to Germany with the International Refugee Organisation. 

He returned to America amidst McCarthyism and its paranoid suspicions, and thence to Korea and Vietnam where he assisted in fostering orphans. Returning again to the US he worked in the Employment Service and on retirement completed a Masters in International Relations.

Edwards was clearly a committed internationalist, albeit one without a rigorous political philosophy. 

The language used develops with the times: in the 1920s there are valises, derby’s (bowler hats) and telegrams. He also records early commercial flights where the passenger cabins were unpressurised, with wooden seats, and the plane stank of oil and gasoline. 

As a life set in the midst of the major events of the 20th century, this is a fascinating slice of social history, covering three continents, two world wars and reconstruction.