U.S. sports official, university chancellor, educator, and track coach, LeRoy Tashreau Walker (born 1918) became the first African American elected to serve as president and chief executive officer of the United States Olympic Committee in 1992. As such he directed U.S. participation in the 1996 Olympic Centennial Games held in Atlanta, Georgia.

LeRoy Walker was born on June 14, 1918, in Atlanta, Georgia, the grandson of slaves and the youngest of 13 children in a close-knit family. His mother, Mary, always told him not to worry about the difficulties and to just keep pushing and honing his talents; recognition by others would follow. After his father, a fireman on the railroad, died when LeRoy was nine, his older brother, Joe, chose the littlest Walker to live with him in Harlem. But Walker returned to Georgia for his senior year of high school.

As a youth he worked in the family's barbecue restaurant...