With Simone Manuel’s gold, a liberating page in Olympics history has turned
For 16 years, through Olympics in Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London and Rio, African-Americans swam under a microscope for their country. Questions about oddity and identity weighed them down as they tried to outrace history and the competition. Finally, on Thursday night, Simone Manuel's gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle turned a liberating page for black swimmers. Trailing by an ominous half-second at the turn, Manuel used a furious closing charge […]







