Mabel Marie "Dolly" Staton (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Landry; November 20, 1932 – February 20, 2025) was an American

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

athlete, specializing in

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

and sprints. She represented the United States at the 1952 Olympics.

Career

During the preliminary round in 1952, she set the

Olympic record Olympic records are the best performances in a specific event in that event's history in either the Summer Olympic Games or the Winter Olympic Games. Summer Olympics * Archery at the Summer Olympics, Archery (List of Olympic records in archery, li ...

in the long jump at , which only lasted temporarily as

Yvette Williams Dame Yvette Winifred Corlett (née Williams; 25 April 1929 – 13 April 2019) was a New Zealand track-and-field athlete who was the first woman from her country to win an Olympic gold medal and to hold the world record in the women's long jum ...

demolished her record with later in the same round. Landry finished seventh in the final, only managing one legal jump. She also was part of the American team at the

1955 Pan American Games The 1955 Pan American Games, officially known as II Pan American Games () and commonly known as Mexico 1955 (), opened on March 12, 1955, at University Stadium in Mexico City, Mexico, in front of a capacity crowd of 100,000 spectators. A total ...

, winning a bronze medal in the

60 meters 60 metres, or 60-meter dash, is a sprint event in track and field. It is a championship event for indoor championships, normally dominated by the best outdoor 100 metres runners. At indoor events, the 60 metres is run on lanes set out in the mi ...

and a gold medal in the 4×100 meters relay anchoring a team with Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, and Barbara Jones. She was a four time United States champion in the

. She also won two outdoor titles in the now defunct 50 meter dash. Indoors, she won the national title in the 60 yard dash twice, but did not have the opportunity to duplicate her wins in the outdoor long jump because in the 1950s, women only competed in the

standing long jump The standing long jump, also known as the standing broad jump, is an athletics event. It was an Olympic event until 1912. It is one of three standing variants of track and field jumping events, which also include the standing high jump an ...

. Through her career she competed for the Chicago CYO as their only member initially. Her notoriety encouraged the all-white Hurricanes to want to join her, creating one of the first integrated track teams. She attended

DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from ...

on an academic scholarship before spending a career as a teacher. At age 16, on her way to the 1949

National Championships A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or competition, contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the be ...

Odessa, Texas Odessa () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Ector County, Texas, Ector County with portions extending into Midland County, Texas, Midland County. Odessa's population was 114,428 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...

, her coach purchased a sleeping compartment for the star athlete to rest. At 6 a.m. she was awakened by the engineer ""Get out. We just crossed the

Mason–Dixon line The Mason–Dixon line, sometimes referred to as Mason and Dixon's Line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia. It was Surveying, surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason ...

. You have to get up front with the other coloreds." The incident led to a successful

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...

lawsuit by the CYO against the

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, ...

Post-career

She was selected into the

Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame The Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, located in the Hawthorne Race Course, in Stickney/Cicero, near Chicago, honors sports greats associated with the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded in 1979 as a trailer owned by the Olympia Brewing Compa ...

. In 2008, she was presented with the DePaul University letterman's jacket. She never competed for her alma mater because at the time they did not have a track team for women, a common situation in that era. Landry died after a long battle with cancer on February 20, 2025, at the age of 92.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Landry, Mabel 1932 births 2025 deaths Track and field athletes from Chicago American female long jumpers American female sprinters African-American track and field athletes Olympic track and field athletes for the United States Athletes (track and field) at the 1952 Summer Olympics USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships winners USA Indoor Track and Field Championships winners Athletes (track and field) at the 1955 Pan American Games Medalists at the 1955 Pan American Games Pan American Games gold medalists for the United States in athletics (track and field) Pan American Games bronze medalists for the United States in athletics (track and field) 21st-century African-American sportswomen 21st-century American sportswomen 20th-century African-American sportswomen 20th-century American sportswomen