Ralph Boston

High school

Oak Park High School

College

Tennessee State University

Hall of Fame

⭐ USA Track & Field Hall of Fame

Ralph Harold Boston was born on May 9, 1939, in Laurel, Mississippi, and attended the historically Black Oak Park High School in Laurel (Jones County) before going on to Tennessee State University in Nashville — one of the preeminent HBCU track programs in the country. At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Ralph Boston leaped 26 feet 7¾ inches in the long jump to win the gold medal — and in doing so broke Jesse Owens's 25-year-old world record of 26 feet 5¼ inches that had stood since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was a moment of breathtaking symbolic weight: a young Black man from the segregated South of Mississippi, who had attended a segregated high school where facilities were inferior by any measure, had just bettered the record of one of the most celebrated Black athletes in American history. He went on to win the silver medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the bronze medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics — making him one of the few track and field athletes in history to medal at three consecutive Olympic Games. He was also the first man to break the 27-foot barrier in the long jump. He was inducted into the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1975 and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and historically significant track and field athletes Mississippi has ever produced. Born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi.