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Benita Fitzgerald-Brown

American hurdler (born 1961)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ268767 ↗
Source-derived summary

Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, née Benita Fitzgerald, formerly Benita Fitzgerald-Brown, (July 6, 1961) is a retired American athlete, who mainly competed in the women's 100 metres hurdles event. Currently, Benita is a CEO of the company Multiplying Good with their mission being "to inspire greatness through service to others."

Early life

A native of Warrenton, Virginia, she grew up in nearby Dale City where at an early age, she began to excel in athletics and academics. After graduating from Gar-Field High School, she attended the University of Tennessee on a full athletic scholarship, where she earned a B.S. in industrial engineering. While at Tennessee, she was a fifteen-time All-American and won 4 NCAA titles, including three 100-meter outdoor hurdles championships.

Olympics

Benita Fitzgerald qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic track and field team but did not compete due to the U.S. Olympic Committee's boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia. She was one of 461 athletes to receive a Congressional Gold Medal instead.

She competed for the United States in the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, where she won the Olympic Gold medal in a time of 12.84 seconds, beating favorite Shirley Strong by 0.04 seconds. Fitzgerald is only the second U.S. woman, after Babe Didrikson, and the first African-American woman, to win a gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles. She was also an alternate for the 1988 United States Olympic team.

In 1996, Fitzgerald was honored as one of eight U.S. Olympians to carry the Olympic flag into the stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Benita Fitzgerald-Brown” as american hurdler (born 1961). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961, 1980, 1984, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-07-06. The account is most persuasive where Benita, Fitzgerald-Brown and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american hurdler (born 1961). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q268767. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1980, 1984 and 1988.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Benita Fitzgerald-Brown” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.