Jan Mostaert's portrait of a nobleman guest of the Queen of Austria (early 1500's)

Keeth Smart leads US fencing team to silver medal

American Keeth Smart led the U.S. fencing team to a silver medal in Beijing on Sunday, almost managing an impressive comeback against the defending champion, France.

Smart, 30, has been exposing the sport of fencing to African Americans, and was the first American of any race to achieve the #1 ranking in fencing.

But despite his accomplishments, his participation in the Olympics this year wasn't always a sure thing. Since leading the US team to a fourth place finish in Athens in 2004, his father passed away. Then four months ago, doctors told Smart he had a low platelet count and could die of severe internal bleeding within two days. After two weeks in intensive care, his mother died of cancer. Ironically, Smart's parents were the ones who had encouraged him to take up fencing in the first place.

Since April, Smart has overcome the rare blood disease that nearly killed him, and made his way onto the U.S. Olympic team. Now with a silver medal under his belt, he reflects on the highs and lows of the past year.

"This year has been one of the hardest years of my life as well as one of the greatest years of my life," Smart said in Beijing. "I've been on a rollercoaster," he said. "I'll probably take a deep breath and it will all hit me. I'm still on an emotional high."

Smart's performance gave the American men their first Olympic fencing medal since 1984 and only their second medal in men's team sabre in Olympic history. It was a big turnaround from the 2004 Olympics, where the U.S. just missed the bronze.

Smart was born in New York City and only took up fencing at the urging of his parents. Under the tutelage of Olympic sabre bronze-medalist Peter Westbrook, he mastered his skills and worked his way to the top of the sport while he was working for Verizon.

A graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School in 1996, he won the NCAA sabre champion in 1997 for St. John's University and became the first U.S. fencer ever to rank first in the world in March 2003 with a medal in World Cup competition in Athens, Greece.

Smart's sister, U.S. fencer Erinn Smart, is also a successful athlete, and she helped the women's team win a silver medal in Beijing as well.

Now that he's won a silver medal in the Olympics, what's the next trick up Smart's sleeve? He's getting ready to start business school at Columbia University.

Articles written by a Staff Reporter are unsigned reports from a member of the staff.

Faith and Steel

Faith and Steel

African Americans were active in fencing during the 1930s, when Young Men’s Christian Associations (YMCAs) and Young Women’s Christian Associations (YWCAs) provided basic instruction in the sport. But racial discrimination practiced by the AFLA severely curtailed their opportunities to compete at the local and national levels. A case in point is the experience of Violet Barker, who learned to fence at the Harlem YMCA under the tutelage of Alex Hern, a Jew who was teaching fencing in settlement and neighborhood houses throughout New York City. Barker won a recreational league championship sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, which earned her a membership card in the AFLA. But when she arrived at the New York Fencers Club for an AFLA open foil meet, she was barred from the competition because of her race; when she produced her AFLA membership card, an official tore it into little pieces. Hern and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People initiated a lawsuit against the AFLA but dropped the action when Barker refused to pursue the case. Hern welcomed blacks at his Foils Club on Fourteenth Street, which his enemies at the AFLA dubbed the “Abyssinian School of Fencing.” Another racial incident occurred in 1949, when Columbian University’s varsity fencing team withdrew from all meets sponsored by the AFLA because of pressure applied by that organization to withdraw its two black members from a competition at the New York Athletic Club. In the aftermath of the Columbia boycott the Board of Directors of the AFLA split over the issue of excluding blacks from its meets. Its president Miguel Angel deCapriles, supported desegregation, stating: “It is time to recognize that fencing has changed from the aristocratic sport that it was to the democratic sport that it is.”

By the 1950s African Americans were gaining acceptance by the AFLA and were winning fencing titles in intercollegiate meets. In the following decades several blacks captured prestigious national honors. Sophronia Pierce Stent was captain of the New York University team; in 1951 she became the first black woman to gain admission into the AFLA Collegiate champions include Bruce Davis of Wayne State University (Detroit); Tyrone Simmons of the University of Detroit; Peter Lewison of the City University of New York; and Peter Westbrook, Michael Lofton, and Ruth White of New York University. In 1969 White became the first black athlete to win a national fencing title, when she won the under-nineteen crown in foil. She was trained by several Hungarian coaches, including Bela de Csajaghy. Subsequent African Americans who have won national championships include Lewison, Westbrook, Lofton, Uriah Jones, Burt Freeman, Ed Ballinger, Terrence Lasker, Mark Smith, Erin Smart, Bob Cottingham, Nikki Tomlinson Franke, and Sharon Monplaisir, among others. Westbrook, who is half Japanese and half black, also took home a bronze medal in the saber at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. To a great extent these honors are the result of increased participation by African Americans at black fencing clubs in several cities.

Finally, since the 1930’s American fencing has exhibited an increasing multiethnic and multiracial character, as Hispanic and Asian athletes have become prominent as administrators and champions. The deCapriles brothers were men of great education, status, and wealth from Mexico who represented the older aristocratic tradition. Julia Castello, Hugo Martinez Castello, Natalia Clovis, Marcel Pasche, Maria Cerrn Tishman, and Henrique Santos were all of Spanish or Latin American heritage. Among Asians, Heizaboro Okawa of Japan won two titles in the 1960s and then settled in California, while Jennifer Yu of California won the women’s foil title in 1990.

Ruth White

Women's Foils, 1969
Los Angeles, California
17-year-old Ruth White was the youngest and first African-American woman to win the National Fencing Championship. She was selected to fence on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team.

VICENTE GUERRERO (1783-1831)

O

ne of the leaders of the independence movement and second president of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero was born into a poor peasant family in Tixtla, in what is today the state of Guerrero. A Mestizo with a strong African background, he had a little education and dedicated himself to farming the land. He started his military career under Hermenegildo Galeana in 1810.

As a captain, he was commissioned by José María Morelos to attack Taxco. He continued under Morelos’ command and fought in southern Puebla.

After the defeat in Puruarán, Michoacán, he was assigned to fight in the south, where he made his way with only one assistant. Guerrero and his peasant army, equipped only with clubs, fought against a vice-regal officer at the head of 700 troops. Guerrero defeated him, took 400 prisoners, and seized a large quantity of weapons. In all of the battles in which he took part, he showed extraordinary bravery; sometimes he received point-blank shots, and he fought with cold steel.

After Morelos’ death in late 1815, the rebel movement was weakened, and just a few leaders continued fighting. Guerrero was one of them. A number of leaders began asking for pardons. Viceroy Apodaca persuaded Guerrero’s father to try to convince his son to surrender, but the rebel refused, giving his oft-quoted answer, “My country comes first.”

With just a few troops, Vicente Guerrero continued fighting from his rebel base in the mountainous region of the state which now bears his name. When Iturbide put his plans to achieve the independence in action, he went southwards to fight Guerrero and Alquisiras, but he failed in his attempt, and the royalist forces were worse of it.

On January 10, 1821, Guerrero received an invitation from Iturbide to give a conference on the independence movement. They met in Acatempan, and the rebel leader agreed to fight with his former enemies and to accept a subordinate post.

Although Guerrero acknowledged Iturbide as the emperor, he and Nicolás Bravo soon turned against him. On January 23, in Almolongo, Guerrero fought the imperial forces commanded by Epitacio Sánchez, who died in action, although he was able to defeat his rivals.

Guerrero had been a division general since 1821. When Iturbide was overthrown, Guerrero became a member of the Supreme Executive Power from April 1 to October 10, 1824, until General Guadalupe Victoria became president of Mexico.

Vicente Guerrero was head of the Yorkean (popular) party, and he started to appear as the party’s frontrunner. When Nicolás Bravo, head of the Scottish party, took up arms against Guadalupe Victoria’s government, in 1828, Guerrero fought against him in Tulancingo.

Guerrero became a presidential candidate that same year. Although he had numerous followers, the state legislative bodies gave the presidency to Manuel Gómez Pedraza, who had influenced the elections from within the War Ministry, by an indirect vote of 11 to 9. A protest arose, the Parián was plundered, and Gómez Pedraza’s election was declared invalid.

Guerrero became President on April 1, 1829; General Anastasio Bustamante was appointed as vice-president.

Spanish forces led by General Isidro Barradas invaded Mexico, but were defeated. Bustamante, who was watching Guerrero from Xalapa, proclaimed the Plan of Xalapa, which refused to recognize Guerrero’s regime.

Vicente Guerrero gave up the presidency on December 16, 1829, when Congress declared him unfit to govern the country. He went south and started a new civil war. Armijo was sent to fight him, but Armijo was defeated and died in Texaca.

The war continued through all 1830. Bustamante’s government, through his minister José Antonio Facio, arranged for the Genoese sailor Francisco Picaluga to kill Guerrero. In January 1831, the Genoese invited Vicente Guerrero to lunch on his ship El Colombo. Once on board, Picaluga took him prisoner and sailed for Huatulco, on the Oaxaca coast.

Picaluga delivered his prisoner to Captain Miguel González, who took Guerrero to Oaxaca. A court-martial sentenced Guerrero to death, and he was executed in Villa de Cuilapan, on February 14, 1831.

A Mexican state now bears Vicente Guerrero’s name in his honor.