'Races' digs deep into sprinter Harry Jerome's disturbing family history

Races: The trials & triumphs of Canada's Fastest Family

by Valerie Jerome

Valerie Jerome's family history centres on sprinter Harry Jerome, the author's brother. The title is a double entendre: racial tension and running races receive just about equal attention.

Jerome started writing Races in 1984. She wrestled with the disturbing details for 39 years, and it shows. Most readers will understand that racism breeds inter-generational trauma. That does not lessen the shock at seeing this famous family riven by racial hatred. While three family members saw Olympic or world record success, generations of Jeromes suffered and perpetuated violent bigotry.

Harry Jerome's maternal grandfather, John Armstrong Howard, was born in Winnipeg in 1888. He was a Black man, and he was the fastest runner in Canada. He won the Canadian Olympic trials in 100- and 200-metres and went to the Stockholm Games in 1912. He was treated poorly by Walter Knox, the infamously racist coach of the Canadian athletes. The team stayed in a swanky Montreal hotel enroute the Olympics, while "Army" was left in a shack by the train station. There were attempts to disqualify him on grounds that he was not truly amateur. He fell ill during competition, and won neither of his Olympic events, though he dominated lesser competitions in later years.

"Army" married Edith, a white English woman, and had three kids, Elsie, Connie, and Kay. During their marriage, Edith had another child, Caroline, who was blue-eyed and blonde. When Army died in 1937, Caroline was the only daughter who Edith did not abandon. She re-married, this time to a white, racist piece of work named Happy Sumpton.

After Army's demise, Harry Vincent Jerome, a fellow CNR porter, came to visit the three cast-off daughters of his deceased work friend. The three sisters approached life in three very different ways. Aunt Connie, as Valerie Jerome knew her, denies her blackness. She chooses to 'pass' and lives in exclusively white neighborhoods in various American cities. Aunt Kay embraces her Black parentage, is active in her Black community, and goes on to work alongside the Reverend Jesse Jackson in Chicago.  

So while two of the three sisters go opposite ways, racially speaking, Valerie's mother Elsie marries Harry Vincent, a Black man, has Black children with him, and all the while insists that she herself is white. She denies having a Black father, despite stashing silver trophies bearing his name in cupboards around the house.

On Sept. 30, 1940, Harry Winston Jerome is born. Carolyn is born in 1942, Valerie in 1944, and little brother Barton in 1945. Louise, the youngest arrives in 1953.

Elsie is violent with her children. Mentally and physically terrorizing the whole family. In one early incident among many, Elsie hurls a pot of hot soup across the kitchen, hitting baby Barton in the forehead. When he returns from hospital, he is suffering seizures which continue the rest of his life. He is stalled intellectually, and the mother has him institutionalized, and sterilized.

Harry Jerome, like his siblings, is beset by racial animosity in the schoolyard, public spaces, busses, and cafes. The racist hatred is compounded, if not worse, by his own mom.

The family buys a home in North Vancouver, only to discover that neighbours have petitioned city hall to keep them out. Unlike most of Vancouver at the time, their block has no official covenants to bar Blacks, Asians and Jews from owning homes. The Jeromes move in, but the children are pelted with rocks and slurs on their way to the first day of school.

The family takes in a foster child who is darker skinned. Elsie Jerome beats him horribly. While she thrashes her own Black children at home, she also volunteers to lead a cub pack of all-white children, who she showers with sweetness and affection.

Somewhere around the age of 13, Harry races 100 yards at a camp outing for newspaper boys. He wins. That same year, he is taken by Elsie to visit his ailing grandmother and her husband, Happy Sumpton. Sumpton aims a gun and an unrepeatable racial slur at his grandson, and threatens murder if Harry steps another foot on his rural property.