Jesse+Owens



Jesse Owens was born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama. When he was nine, his family moved to Cleveland and it was there that he was given the name “Jesse” by a schoolteacher. When she asked him his name, he said “J.C.,” his first and middle initials, which she had mistaken for “Jesse.” The most influential figure of Owens’s career was Charles Riley, the track coach at his junior high school. He inspired Owens to run track.

As a teenager, Owens set or tied national high school records in the 100 and 220 yard dashes and the long jump. He went on to Ohio State University, gaining the nickname the “Buckeye Bullet” after breaking three world records and tying another in just 45 minutes at the 1935 Big Ten Championships. In the 100 yard dash, he tied the record with 9.4 seconds. In the long jump, he leapt 26’ 8 ¼, which lasted for 25 years. In the 220 yard dash, he broke the record with 20.3 seconds and in the 220 yard low hurdles, his 22.6 seconds made him the first person ever to break 23 seconds. In his junior year, Owens competed in 42 events and won all of them. This included four in the Big Ten Championships, four in the NCAA Championships, two in the AAU Championships, and three at the Olympic Trials. The [|1936 Olympics] were held in Germany, during in era reigned by Hitler. In Germany, the Nazis thought of African-Americans as inferior beings and ridiculed the United States for relying on “black auxiliaries.” The German people were different, though. They cheered for both Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, who was also African- American. Owens won the 100 meter dash with a 10.3. In the long jump, he leapt 26’ 3 ¾” and won the gold with a final jump of 26’ 5 ½”. In the 200 meter dash, Owens won an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds. He ran leadoff in the 4 x 100 relay team and they set a world record time of 39.8 seconds that would last 20 years. After a brief celebration in the United States, things went back to the way they had always been. “When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front bus and I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either,” Owens explained. Owens didn’t get any endorsements, so he became a sports promoter, promoting himself. He would hold 100 yard dash events against local sprinters and would give them a 10 to 20 yard head start and still beat them. Owens also ran against racehorses and dogs. “People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.” After that he became a jazz disc jockey in Chicago and wasn’t able to achieve financial security until his late 30’s/early 40’s when he became a public speaker for a corporation and opened a public-relations firm. In 1976, [|President Ford] presented Owens with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. can bestow upon a civilian.

Jesse Owens was a pack-a-day smoker for 35 years. He died of lung cancer at age 66 in Tucson, Arizona. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by [|George Bush] posthumously on March 28, 1990. In 1984, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor. Jesse Owens was the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves. By the time the 1936 Olympics were over, he had single-handedly crushed Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. A man of a race deemed inferior by a supposedly superior kind had defeated the master race. He had defeated the ideals of one of the most despised dictators in history, but unfortunately, Americans did not learn anything from this. Many at that time viewed his accomplishments as sport and nothing more. Many failed to recognize the Hitler within themselves. Jesse Owens pushed our society in the right direction, but it would be decades until Americans did realize their hypocrisy; in an effort that extended far beyond the ability of a humble athlete, but also one that owes great respect to his struggle.

Source: Blalock, John. "Who is Jesse Owens." __The Jesse Owens Foundation__. 1999. 