Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens

An African American champion

Race

After the Olympics

After a whirlwind of post-Olympic promotional activities and a brief return to Ohio State University in 1940, Owens settled into a life of nearly constant travel. Whether it was encouraging physical fitness among African Americans during World War II or promoting the Olympic ideals during the Winter and Summer Games, Owens was often on the road. He spent a lot of time working with charity groups, mostly serving as a role model for youngsters through his work with Boys’ Clubs of America and through his association with the ARCO Jesse Owens Games. Along the way, he was showered with statues, plaques and other mementoes to honor him. Four years before his death, in 1976, President Gerald Ford presented Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. government.

Back to the US

In following years, Jesse Owens’s record-setting performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin would be celebrated as a powerful rebuke of Adolf Hitler. A black man’s incredible success in a crucible of hate served as the ultimate rejection of the idea of white supremacy. Yet at that time the performance of these black athletes didn’t change those who believed in white supremacy, in either Germany or the United States. In their minds, there was no way for black people to win; the truth didn’t matter. Stereotypes and hate were so deeply ingrained that any fact or fiction could be used to confirm them. If black people performed poorly, that “proved” white people were superior. If black people were victorious, that “proved” they had unfair advantages as a subhuman race. There actually had been 18 African American members in the U.S. team who earned 14 medals in Berlin, eight of them gold, one-fourth of the U.S. medal count. The entire African American contingent, not just Owens, took the world by storm. Perpetuating the idea that Owens alone shined not only robs others of their due, but leaves the impression that African American greatness at the ’36 Games was an exception rather than the rule.

Encoutenring people in Germany

"I was in for a surprise. When the time came for the broad-jump trials, I was startled to see a tall boy hitting the pit at almost 7.9 metres on his practice leaps! He turned out to be a German named Luz Long. I was told that Hitler had kept him under wraps, evidently hoping to win the jump with him. I guessed that if Long won, it would add some support to the Nazis’ Aryan-superiority theory. After all, I am Black. A little hot under the collar about Hitler’s ways, I determined to go out there and really show der Führer and his master race who was superior and who wasn’t. An angry athlete is an athlete who will make mistakes, as any coach will tell you. I was no exception. Walking a few yards from the pit, I kicked at the dirt in disgust. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look into the friendly blue eyes of the tall German broad jumper. He had easily qualified for the finals on his first attempt. He offered me a firm handshake. “Jesse Owens, I’m Luz Long. I don’t think we’ve met.”

breaking records

In junior high school he set a record for the 100-yard dash. In high school in 1933 he won the 100-yard dash, the 200-yard dash, and the broad jump in the National Interscholastic Championships. The nickname "Buckeye Bullet" was bestowed upon him. At the Big Ten Conference track and field championships at the University of Michigan in 1935, he broke three world records and tied another. His 26 foot 8 1/4-inch broad jump set a record that was not broken for twenty-five years. At the 1936 Berlin Games, Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records.

Olympics

From sickness to sprinting

Living in a segretated country

Owens had experienced segregation all his life, from his impoverished Alabama childhood to his growing success as an athlete at university. Though he was the first black captain of the Ohio State University athletics team, he had to live off campus, shower separately, eat at designated black-only restaurants and stay in black-only hotels while travelling. The racist incidents he encountered merely strengthened his desire to succeed.

Who was he?

James Cleveland Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913, the son of a sharecropper, a farmer who rents land. He was from a poor family, a slave descendant and was a sickly child, often too frail to help his father and brothers in the cotton fields. Yet under the name Jesse Owens, he is remembered as a Gold Medal champion, despite his being an African American growing under segregation...

He spoke English well, though with a German twist. “Glad to meet you,” I said. Then, trying to hide my nervousness, I added, “How are you?” “I’m fine. The question is: how are you?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Something must be eating you,” he said. “You should be able to qualify with your eyes closed.” “Believe me, I know it,” I told him—and it felt good to say that to someone. For the next few minutes, we talked. I didn’t tell Luz what was “eating” me, but he seemed to under
stand my anger, and he took pains to reassure me.Finally, seeing that I had calmed down somewhat, he pointed to the takeoff board. “Why don’t you draw a line a few centimetres in back of the board and make your takeoff from there?” he said. “You’ll be sure not to foul, 
and you certainly ought 
to jump far enough to qualify. What does it matter if you’re not first in the trials? Tomorrow is what counts.” The tension seemed to ebb out of my body as the truth of what he said hit me. Confidently, I drew a line a full 30 centimetres behind the board and proceeded to jump from there. I qualified."

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In 1970, his memoir, Blackthink: My Life as a Black Man and White Man, his message was that anyone could achieve his dream through hard work and perseverance. Owens had many fans, even those who were far too young to remember the 1936 Berlin Games. Many had been inspired by Owens’ achievements. In a mailgram decorated with teddy bears and dated Dec. 17, 1977, Andy Monfried of East Brunswick, New Jersey, told Owens: “Every time I go running I always think of you. When I come home from school I pretend I am you. … I have you in a Picture autograph in the safest place in the house. When I get older I will show my children and say one time this man was the best athlete in the world. It is a honor to have Jesse Owen (sic) Picture Autograph. Someday I will do what you did. And you’ll be proud of me.”

His Olympic triumph built Jesse Owens his own legend. He was well aware of its symbolic power at that time over the Aryan theories of Hitler. He later wrote: “My whole life was wrapped up, summed up – and stopped up – by a single incident: my confrontation with the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, in the 1936 Olympics. The Germans were […] coming to represent everything that free people have always feared.” In fact, US President Franklin D Roosevelt inflected the worst blow to Jesse: he received no telegram of congratulations for his record-breaking haul of medals, he was not invited to the White House to shake hands with him: that honour was reserved for white Olympians. He had to attend a non-presidential reception in his honour. In 1936, more than 70 years after Abraham Lincoln had declared emancipation of the slaves who had fought for freedom on the Union side in the Civil War, American society was still rife with racial discrimination. After confounding Nazi racial theories at the Berlin Olympic stadium, it was hurtful to return to his homeland and find clear signs of similar attitudes. Yet he did not seem surprised: he said of the experience: “I'd spent my whole life watching my father and mother and older brothers and sisters trying to escape their own kind of Hitler, first in Alabama and then in Cleveland, and all I wanted now was my chance to run as fast and jump as far as I could so I'd never have to look back.

After the Olympics ended, stories claiming that Owens had been “snubbed” by Hitler circulated widely. As the most common variant of the story goes, after Owens won his first medal, Hitler, not wanting to acknowledge a non-Aryan athlete’s ability, left the stadium. It is true that Hitler did not shake hands with Owens. In fact, he did not congratulate any gold medalists after the first day of competition on August 2, 1936. On the first day, Hitler met and shook hands with all the German gold medalists. (He also shook hands with a few Finnish athletes.) That night, Hitler left the stadium before African American high jumper Cornelius Johnson won his first gold medal; Hitler’s staff maintained that he had a pre-scheduled appointment. Hitler was reprimanded, and the head of the IOC, Henri de Baillet-Latour, told him that he could either congratulate all the gold medalists or none. Hitler chose to honour no one. The next day—August 3, 1936—Owens won his first gold medal in the 100-meter dash. Hitler did not meet or shake hands with Owens but Owens was led below the honor box, where Hitler gave him a friendly little Nazi salute. A month after the Olympic Games, Owens told a crowd, “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

Who was he? ___________________________________________________________

The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, for better work opportunities. There was little improvement in their life, but the move did enable young Owens to enter public school, where a teacher accidentally wrote down his name as "Jesse" instead of J. C. He carried the name with him for the rest of his life. When Owens was in the fifth grade, the athletic supervisor asked him to join the track team. From a skinny boy he developed into a strong runner. Owens was such a complete athlete, a coach said he seemed to float over the ground when he ran. A number of universities actively recruited Owens, but he felt that college was only a dream. He felt he could not leave his struggling family and young wife when a paycheck needed to be earned. Owens finally agreed to enter Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, after officials found employment for his father. In addition to his studies and participation in track, Owens worked three jobs to pay his tuition. He experienced racism (the idea that one race is superior to others) while a student at Ohio State, but the incidents merely strengthened his desire to succeed.