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.