Filipino-Americans have often been called the “invisible minority”. Despite being the second largest Asian-American community in America – and the first Asians to come to America in 1587 – they are regularly left out of the AAPI conversation. Along with the discrimination that many commonly “visible” AAPIs face, like Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans must additionally contend with being invisible to the American cultural consciousness.
And despite the contributions of Filipino-Americans to such important change like the farm labor movement, many Americans (and AAPIs) are unaware of how they have impacted American society.
One such Filipino-American who is virtually unknown to the greater American public is Olympic diver Victoria Manalo Draves.
Born in the South-of-Market (SOMA) district of San Francisco in 1924, Manalo Draves’ family faced discrimination even before her birth. With a Filipino father, Teofilo Manalo, and English mother, Gertrude Taylor, her parents’ interracial marriage was “frowned upon”, adding layers to the racism she and her family encountered.
Though her parents’ 1924 marriage was legal – an 1880 anti-miscegenation law made the intermarrying of whites and “Mongolians”, “Malays” not included, illegal – that did not make their union socially acceptable. To worsen matters, in 1932 the “California Legislature amended the law to include members of the Malay race’.”
Manalo Draves’ aunt, also married to a Filipino man, encountered harassment at her job at the St. Francis Hotel. When she refused to cave to pressure to divorce her husband, she became the victim of an “accident” that left her dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
Originally wanting to study ballet, Manalo Draves’ family was unable to afford the expensive lessons. So at the age of “9 or 10” Manalo Draves learned to swim “at what they called the nickel baths in the Mission District.” At 16 Manalo Draves learned to dive.
Showing talent as a diver, Manalo Draves was encouraged to pursue the sport. She was introduced to swimming coach Phil Patterson of the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club, but despite her promise the club denied her entrance due to her race. Patterson refused to train her.
After a time, Patterson was persuaded to train Manalo Draves, but he would only allow her to train in his school if she went by her mother’s maiden name, Taylor. The choice to change her name was not an easy one for Manalo Draves, who agreed to it, but also wondered what her father thought of her decision. He never spoke of it.
But Patterson’s decision was not an entirely progressive one. While he agreed to train her, he did so through a “special” school her formed for her, called The Patterson School of Swimming and Diving.
Said Manalo Draves, “I think he was a prejudiced man. It wasn’t special for me. It was his way of separating me from the others.”
At one point after her admittance to the Fairmont Hotel’s club, she was interviewed by a newspaper and she accidentally stated her name as “Victoria Manalo”. “I received a chewing out from Phil Patterson,” she recounted.
But Manalo Draves learned quickly and thrived, until her training was put on hold by the war in 1941. She stopped diving for a year until she took up training with Jimmy Hughes at Crystal Plunge. Under Hughes’ tutelage, 19-year-old Manalo Draves took third place on the 3-meter board at her first national diving competition.
At her next national competition, she met a coach named Lyle Draves. Because Hughes could not “advance her to the next level” Manalo Draves asked Draves to become her coach. He agreed, beginning a new era in Manalo Draves’ training.
Manalo Draves learned to platform dive with Draves, and advanced to the point where she could qualify to compete at a competition held at the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club. However, now competing under the name “Vicki Manalo” not “Vickie Taylor”, the club refused to allow her to compete.
Shortly after this, Manalo Draves and Draves left San Francisco for Los Angeles and were married in July of 1946.
In 1946, 1947, and 1948 Manalo Draves won the US National Diving Championships in platform diving and springboard diving.
Manalo Draves made the US Olympic team in 1948. When it came time for Manalo Draves to be announced at the games in London, it was intended to announce her as “Mrs. Draves”. However, perhaps unable to further stand the erasure of her father and her Filipino identity, she boldly insisted on being named as “Victoria Manalo Draves”.
Manalo Draves went on to become the first Asian-American Olympic gold medalist, winning in the 3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform. At the same games, Korea-American Sammy Lee won the gold medal in the men’s 10-meter platform. Manalo Draves and Bob Mathias, a decathlete, were honored as the top US athletes at those games.
Said Manalo Draves of her Olympic experience, “I remember sitting by Sammy, and I was so nervous that I would shake between each dive as though I was cold. I remember saying to Sammy, ‘I can’t do this, Sammy. I am not going to make it.’ He said, ‘You came all this distance and you are going to give up? Get up there and do what you are supposed to do.”
After the Olympics, Manalo Draves toured the world in water shows, gracing the cover of LIFE Magazine, and gaining popularity amongst both white Americans and AAPIs. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in December of 1969.
After performing regularly at hotels in Palm Springs and Palm Desert, Manalo Draves retired to run a swimming and diving school with her husband. She and Draves raised four sons – all divers. Victoria Manalo Draves died in April 2010 at the age of 85.
She was appointed the Most Outstanding Alumnus of City College of San Francisco of 2005, and in 2006 a park in San Francisco was named Victoria Manalo Draves Park. In 2015 a permanent plaque was installed at the park commemorating her life and achievements.
Yet, despite her hall of fame induction, magazine covers, awards, a park named after her, and a movie in production about her life, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (BASHOF) has still not inducted the Olympic gold medalist. Inductees include Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Rosie Casals, and Billie Jean King. Though she has been nominated, apparently writers and reporters in the Bay Area don’t see a reason to vote her in.
One hopes that someday soon, Victoria Manalo Draves’ country and hometown will give this Filipino-American hero the visibility and recognition she deserves.