Field Placement: Archie Williams High School

"Late Olympic gold medalist Archie Williams, a former teacher and coach at Sir Francis Drake High School, has been chosen as the embattled school’s new namesake after a historic racial reckoning triggered by last year’s murder of George Floyd and the aftermath of social injustice protests.

After more than nine months of controversy, the Drake Leadership Council voted 13-0 Thursday, with one abstention, in favor of recommending Archie Williams’ name to grace the school instead of Drake, a 16th century English explorer whose early voyages were linked to the slave trade.

Williams, a Black man who died in 1993 at the age of 78, won the gold medal for 400-meter run in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Later, he was one of the first Black pilots in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman fighter pilot. In the second part of his life, he lived in Fairfax and was a math teacher and a coach at Drake, where he taught for 21 years until his retirement at age 72.

In an 1981 interview with the Oakland Tribune, Williams was asked about how it was when he returned to U.S. after the 1936 Olympics:

“When I came home, somebody asked me, ‘How did those dirty Nazis treat you?’” Williams said. 'I replied that I didn’t see any dirty Nazis, just a lot of nice German people. And I didn’t have to ride in the back of the bus over there.'"

Brenner, K. (2021, May 9). Marin Panel Taps Olympic Gold Medalist, Tuskegee Airman Archie Willams for New High School Name. San Jose Mercury News, online edition.