Destiny’s Daredevil: The Autobiography of an Olympic Champion Helping Others Cross the Finish Line

By Otis Davis

Some of the things that I have been able to accomplish in life might seem unbelievable to others, but with God's help and guidance, I managed to survive, and only a daredevil can accomplish.

I was born in the segregated south, but it did not stop me from being ambitious and striving to be the best that I could be.

There was always a feeling that somewhere, someday, I would have opportunities to show the world what I could do and encourage others to not give up and not give in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886163537

Book preview

Born for Sports

Iknow I was born to be involved in sports. One of my uncles was a baseball player, and for some reason, he was given the honor of naming me. He bestowed Otis Crandall as my given name, after a White pitcher in the old Pacific Coast League. Evidently, I had a lot to live up to. Even so, somehow, I acquired the nickname of Little Nick!

My birth took place in my grandmother Carrie Eaton’s house at 2118 Eleventh Street in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Other than twice, when I briefly lived with both my parents in the Castle Hill area, I grew up in that same house and lived there until the age of seventeen when I graduated from high school and joined up to serve my country in the United States Air Force. The house is still there, and I understand, it now functions as a retirement home.

Before I reached the age of nine, I was reading the sports pages in The Tuscaloosa News, our local newspaper. I also read more sports in the Birmingham News, which was a larger paper with more photos. In addition to the reading, I listened to sporting events on the radio. This, of course, was before the common age of television and way before computers.

All this exposure led me to begin playing my imaginary fantasy games of sports on the front and backyards of that same house where I was born. I have never been without sports in my life.

My Heroes

In 1936, I was four years old when the American Jesse Owens won the long jump against the German Luz Long in the Olympics in Berlin, Germany. I later considered Owens as one of my few real heroes.

In 1938, I was six years old and at home, listening to a radio broadcast, coming from Yankee Stadium in New York City. Broadcasters Bill Corum and Don Dunphy opened with, This event is being brought to you by Gillette Blue blades, the sharpest edges ever honed, followed by music to look sharp: da da da da da! My grandmother, uncle-in-law, and I were excited when we heard, And Louis, with a left and right…and another right by the Brown Bomber, and (Max) Schmeling is down.

My grandmother was partially blind from diabetes, but that didn’t stop her from throwing her own left and right punches over in the corner. I got closer to the radio and heard, Joe Louis is the winner! A knockout in the first round. We all cheered. We were very happy because he was fighting for us. We were all fighting for respect, for dignity, for freedom. The sign on the wall with a picture of the Brown Bomber stated something like, We are going to win the war because we are on God’s side. We believed it because we believed in God, and we believed in Joe Louis. Because if Joe Louis said it, it had to be true. He was another one of my few real heroes.

In an ironic twist, I had no idea in 1936 and 1938 that one day I myself would be competing against another formidable German opponent, Carl Kaufmann, in the 1960 Olympics and that I would be the winner.

I Didn’t think I would ever meet Jesse Owens but I did. I saw him in 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games. He said Hey Otis. I was so excited and honored.

My heroes were the three J’s; Jesse Owens, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. Jesse and Joe were born in Alabama—the same state that I was born in. When Jesse passed away in 1980, I wrote an article in the Mannheim Messenger, an American military newspaper in Germany. The title was, I’m Running out of Heroes. A tribute to Jesse Owens.

Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, and Otis Davis—all three of us were from Alabama. All three of us were victorious.

Family in Castle Hill

Ilived with my parents twice, each for only a short period of time, in two different houses in the Castle Hill area of Tuscaloosa. My family then included my mother, Mary Alice Eaton Davis, my father, Johnie Davis, and me.

The first house was located on Tenth Street, just across from Castle Hill Elementary School. As a student there, I completed my first and second grades while living with my parents and my paternal grandmother, Amelia Davis. I think I also spent part of the third grade in that school.

Daddy’s mother looked a little bit like some of the Indians I saw in the cowboy movies. She always called me man, as in, Come here, man. I would say to myself, doesn’t she know that I am a little boy, not a man? Of course I never said that to her because I knew this was just her way of greeting me. Sometimes my dad would say to me, Son, you have got Indian blood in you. I don’t know what tribe, but I was told, my maternal grandmother’s mother was Native American. My grandmother never discussed her heritage with me.

Next door to the house was the armory, a place where Whites attended professional wrestling events that were very popular. We were not allowed to go over there, but we could definitely hear the noise of the crowds, even though we never went in.

The second house was on Ninth Street and was a nice large two-bedroom home with a screened-in front porch. When we moved into this house, my father’s mother no longer lived with us. It was just my parents and me. From there, as an eight-year-old, I attended the third grade at Central Elementary School in Tuscaloosa, commuting by auto. Both parents had jobs and cars, so I had a caretaker while Mother and Daddy were at work. The nanny was an older lady who had a wind on her arm. I think that large growth came from a vitamin deficiency. I really liked her, and I am sorry to say, I do not remember her name.

After living with my parents in those two homes in Castle Hill, I moved back to the house of my birth on Eleventh Street in Tuscaloosa and lived with my maternal grandmother, Carrie Eaton, and continued my schooling at Central Elementary.

Baseball in Castle Hill

Here in our Castle Hill neighborhood, we were surrounded by sporting activity, especially baseball.

Even though Jackie Robinson had not yet broken the color barrier, I was very interested in watching a Black baseball team play its games on the grounds of my elementary school. The Tuscaloosa Red Sox were very talented, colorful, and entertaining, and I thought how great it would be if they could play with or against White major league teams. They did play with other local teams from Birmingham, Bessemer, and other areas. Most of the games were very competitive. Unfortunately, the grounds lacked fencing, and I don’t think the players were paid any money. However, the teammates obviously loved the game and simply had fun. A few spectators usually stood to watch the events from the sidelines. One particular guy would always walk back and forth, yelling in a loud voice, cheering the hometown heroes, saying, Please, please don’t lose. He did this only after he finished drinking his home-brewed Wildcat whiskey! Everyone laughed and had a good time.

Even though the perimeter of the outfield was without fences, there were railroad tracks that could have been used as such, but they were too far away. Often during the games, we could see a train on those tracks and hear its whistle as the engine pulled the cars toward the station in Tuscaloosa. That inebriated fan consistently urged the players on the Red Sox team to hit the ball to the railroad tracks. Naturally, because of the distance, this never happened, but the small crowd enjoyed hearing his suggestion. My favorite player on the team was a big first baseman named Big Train Lavender. Along with that unofficial cheerleader, the other fans always yelled at Big Train to hit it to the railroad tracks. He never did, of course, due to that long distance.

As I said, the games were very entertaining. The players were happy and colorful, no pun intended! One of the visiting teams had a catcher who would actually sit down at the plate and catch the baseballs, just like the Harlem Globetrotters caught their basketballs. These guys were really good athletes but didn’t get a chance to play in the major leagues.

Eventually, our Tuscaloosa Red Sox team was allowed to play home games in a more suitable location at a good baseball facility. The competition got even more exciting for me because the teams from Memphis, Tennessee, and Bessemer, Alabama, and the very strong Birmingham Black Barons were scheduled. Ours was just a local self-supported team, but the Barons belonged to the professional Negro Leagues. I liked to watch all the teams play.

Birmingham had a talented, exciting young player named Willie Mays. Later in 1949, I saw him play in Tuscaloosa. He could do it all, so to speak, and ran so fast in the outfield that he often lost his cap. Now everyone knows that he went on to the major leagues and became an all-time great. He fulfilled his destiny in baseball just as I fulfilled mine in track.

Occasionally, I would sit in front of our home near Castle Hill and see White runners from the nearby University of Alabama, doing their conditioning exercises for their various sports by jogging up the incline and disappearing down the other side. I had no idea that competitive running was in my future, but I did admire the athletes and watched them each time until they disappeared over that hill.

As I stood through those baseball games, and as I watched those exercising runners, I thought how great, how exciting, how natural it would be for me to play integrated sports where everyone on God’s earth could share the experience of playing together with and against each other based on their athletic ability instead of their race.

I didn’t know then, at my very young age, that God was going to give me that exact opportunity. He did, and I am truly thankful.

Attending Church

My maternal grandmother and grandfather, aunt and uncle, my two cousins, Sandra and Patricia, and I lived in a quiet neighborhood in Tuscaloosa in that house that I was born in.

With three Black churches in the immediate area, my grandmother insisted that I attend church every Sunday. I wanted to go to the movies, but she was adamant that I go to church. Our friends and neighbors liked to dress up, as we called it, on Sunday. We always wore our best suits and dresses to services on God’s day. Other members of my family attended the Baptist Church, which was not in the neighborhood. I don’t know why I was the only one in my family who belonged to the Hunter Chapel AME Zion Church, which was conveniently located across from our home on Eleventh Street. But I am glad that I went there because some of my friends in the neighborhood did also. I was baptized at Hunter when I was nine or ten years old.

Beginning after I enrolled as a third grader at Central Elementary School, I sang in the church choir on Sundays after first attending Sunday school. Mrs. Jones, the minister’s wife, was our choir director. We singers sat in a designated area with our white robes on and sang spiritual hymns. The minister’s sermons were so spirited, moving, and intense that sometimes members of the congregation responded aloud. They got so emotional that they would stand up and scream happily, which brought on support from the other brothers and sisters. There was also a place appropriately named the Amen Corner where some members sat in the same seats each week.

I also actively participated in the Buds of Promise, a religious group for young Christians. We usually met monthly in various homes where we sat in a circle to study the Bible.

Although I did not understand everything that happened during those church gatherings, I was proud to be a part of something that gave us the courage to keep going in a segregated society. I was very fortunate to have been a part of that religious environment. I left my church only after I graduated from high school at the age of seventeen and joined the air force. I could then choose to go to movies on Sundays. And I did.

Imaginary Games at Home

By the age of nine, I was participating in one-player sports on the front