Eddie Tolan: Detroit's Midnight Express

Here is a Detroit champion too few people know. Eddie Tolan moved to Detroit as a teenager in the 1920s, starred in track and football at Cass Technical High School, and ran for the University of Michigan. He didn’t look like a sprinter — compact, bespectacled — but he was, for a time, the fastest man on Earth.

At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Tolan won gold in both the 100 meters and the 200 meters, setting records and edging his great rival Ralph Metcalfe in a 100-meter final so close it came down to his torso crossing the line first. With those two golds, Tolan became the first African American to be called “the world’s fastest human.” He ran with his glasses taped to his head and a stick of gum in his mouth, which he said calmed his nerves. Detroit threw him a hero’s welcome, and the governor declared an “Eddie Tolan Day” across Michigan.

Glory, sadly, didn’t pay the bills in the Depression; Tolan struggled afterward, later turning pro and then settling into a long career as a Detroit schoolteacher. But for two August days in 1932, no one on the planet was faster.