Sport: Swanee Snow Bird

Ice skating is one of the few sports at which Negroes have not already equaled or surpassed white athletes. But this year a 19-year-old Harlem girl has turned up to skate figure eights around all but the top white performers.

Mabel Fairbanks is no carbon copy of Sonja Henie or Maribel Vinson. But experts rate her superior to most white amateurs and unquestionably the best skater of her race. Shy, timid and coal-black, she tried on her first pair of skates less than four years ago. Within six months she was mastering spirals, sit-down spins and stops —figures that spill many a...