Every Wednesday in February, JWS celebrates Black History Month by spotlighting a prominent Black figure in women's sports history.
Team USA skier Bonnie St. John broke barriers in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1984, when she became the first-ever African-American athlete to win a Paralympic medal at the Winter Games.
A one-legged amputee from childhood, St. John taught herself to ski at 15 years old using photocopied instructions and donated gear, going on to train at Vermont's Burke Mountain Academy and later qualifying for the 1984 Games with the US Paralympic Ski Team.
There, the San Diego product took bronze in both the slalom and giant slalom races before winning silver for overall performance across the three alpine skiing disciplines — making her the world's second fastest woman on one leg that year.
Following her athletic career, St. John graduated from Harvard and became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, then later served as director for the National Economic Council under President Clinton and launched a career in corporate leadership.
"I'm not only just a role model to say, 'See what I did, you can do it, too,' but to actually give people the tools and the techniques and the research to understand how to break through those barriers," St. John said. "I love that I get to do that."
