A Philadelphia street was renamed Friday to honor America's oldest living Olympic medalist, Herb Douglas.
"If you had told me when I was born that a street would be named after me, I could never fathom that, but here it is," Douglas said.
Douglas earned the bronze medal in the 1948 Summer Olympics, competing in the high jump. He missed silver to Australia's Theo Bruce by just .5 an inch. "I was born 59-years after slavery," Douglas said Friday. "I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and ‘the ugly’ is Jim Crow." Douglas, who turned 100-years-old in March, was a liquor executive with Hennessy and helped elevate Dom Perignon and other brands at a time when he wasn't allowed to touch white accounts. It was here where he made a lifetime friend in NFL Hall of Famer Franco Harris.
Douglas said his father proved that he could do anything by becoming the first Black man in Pittsburgh to use a seeing-eye dog to battle vision loss.
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