Roller derby’s first black female skater
Darlene Anderson was raised to be a lady.
Growing up in Pasadena, her mother made her stop playing baseball because it was “too rough.” Her parents said she could take up ice skating instead, and regularly dropped her off at the local roller derby training center for lessons and practice. (They thought it was an ice rink; Darlene chose not to correct them.)
After practice on Saturdays, Darlene took streetcars to Olympic Auditorium to watch the pros go at it. A coach encouraged her to compete in the time trials there.
“It never dawned on me that I was trying out for a team,” Anderson told her friend Jim Greene. “All I wanted to do was skate in the (Olympic Auditorium) training center.”
When the time trials ended, they announced the winner: Her. She was 17 years old. It was 1957, and she was the first black woman to become a professional roller derby skater.
At her first game, her mother sat in the second row. Kids in the front row chanted for Darlene to knock down other players. Her mother wasn’t having it.
“Every time they would yell, my mother – now picture this small little lady about 90 pounds – reaching over the seats and slapping the kids trying to explain to them ‘No, Darlene is a lady, she isn’t to knock anyone down,’” Anderson recounted to Green for an interview on Derby Memories.
During her career, she skated for the Brooklyn Red Devils, the Los Angeles Braves, the San Francisco Bay Bombers, the Hawaii All Stars, and the New York Chiefs.
Anderson said even her mother came around: She became roller derby’s biggest fan.
If you’re interested in learning more about Darlene Anderson, you can visit the California African American Museum or some of these sources:
https://lasentinel.net/darlene-anderson-broke-roller-derby-color-barrier-in-1958.html
http://derbymemoirs.bankedtrack.info/Anderson_Darlene.html
http://www.examiner.com/article/darlene-anderson-first-afro-american-roller-derby
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