Jesse Owens, byname of James Cleveland Owens, (born September 12, 1913, Oakville, Alabama, U.S.—died March 31, 1980, Phoenix, Arizona), American track-and-field athlete who set a world record in the running broad jump (also called long jump) that stood for 25 years and who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His four Olympic victories were a blow to Adolf Hitler’s intention to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan superiority.
Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". He set three world records and tied another, all in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan—a feat that has never been equaled and has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport". He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy", although he "wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either".
Owens was the youngest of ten children, three girls and seven boys, born to Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913. J.C., as he was called, was nine years old when the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, for better opportunities, as part of the Great Migration, when 1.5 million African Americans left the segregated South. When his new teacher asked his name (to enter in her roll book), he said "J.C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.
As a youth, Owens took different jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens realized that he had a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior high track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked in a shoe repair shop after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.
Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935 and had two more daughters together — Marlene, born in 1937, and Beverly, born in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1980.
Here are the 11 things you may not have known about this legend;
(1) Owens captured four gold medals at a single Olympiad.
Although Adolf Hitler intended the 1936 Berlin Games to be a showcase for the Nazi ideology of Aryan racial supremacy, it was a black man who left the biggest imprint on that year’s Games. In one of the greatest performances in Olympic history, Owens captured gold in the 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters and 4×100 meter relay, a feat that would not be matched until American Carl Lewis did the same at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
(2) Owens was aided by a German who later became his friend by advising him to place a towel meters away from the take off board after being disqualified twice intentionally.
Despite the politically charged atmosphere of the Berlin Games, Owens was adored by the German public, and it was German long jumper Carl Ludwig (“Luz”) Long who aided Owens through a bad start in the long jump competition. Owens was flustered to learn that what he had thought was a practice jump had been counted as his first attempt. Unsettled, he foot-faulted the second attempt. Before Owens’s last jump, Long suggested that the American place a towel in front of the take-off board. Leaping from that point, Owens qualified for the finals, eventually beating Long (later his close friend) for the gold.
(3) Owens said President Franklin D. Roosevelt, not Hitler, snubbed him.
In the immediate aftermath of the Berlin Games, a myth arose that Hitler, enraged at the triumph of an African American, refused to congratulate Owens on his victories because he failed to shake his hand. However, the press reported that the German leader gave the American sprinter a “friendly little Nazi salute,” and Owens said that the two exchanged congratulatory waves. In fact, it was the conduct of Roosevelt– who never invited Owens to the White House or acknowledged his triumphs–that disappointed the Olympic champion. “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was our president who snubbed me,” he said months after the Games. “The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
(4) Owens ran to gold in German-made track shoes handcrafted by the founder of Adidas.
German shoemaker Adolf “Adi” Dassler didn’t view the Berlin Games as a vehicle for Nazi propaganda but as a chance to launch his humble athletic shoe business. He successfully lobbied not only German athletes, but Owens as well, to wear his personally handcrafted leather track shoes with extra long spikes. The American’s triumph helped to launch his business, and a decade later Dassler would start his own company—Adidas.
(5) A teacher’s mispronunciation led to a name change.
Born James Cleveland Owens, the track star was called “J.C.” by his family. On his first day at Bolton Elementary School after moving to Cleveland at age 9, the teacher misheard his Alabama drawl and thought he said his name was “Jesse” instead of “J.C.” Owens was too shy to correct his new teacher in front of his new classmates, and he was called “Jesse” for the rest of his life.
(6) His mother performed makeshift surgery on him with a knife.
Owens, the 10th and last child of a pair of poor sharecroppers, was a sickly child. The day after his 5th birthday, he developed a large fibrous bump on his chest that began to painfully press against his lungs. Unable to afford a doctor to remove it, his parents decided to perform the surgery on their own. As Owens bit down hard on a leather strap, his mother used a sterilized kitchen knife to carve into her son’s chest and remove a golf-ball sized growth. Owens suffered a great loss of blood but survived.
(7) Owens was nicknamed the “Buckeye Bullet.”
After developing into a track and field star at a Cleveland high school, Owens enrolled at The Ohio State University. While smashing records for the Ohio State Buckeyes track team, he became known as the “Buckeye Bullet.” Although he was the first black man elected captain of an Ohio State varsity team, Owens was barred from living in the on-campus dormitory because of the color of his skin.
(8) In college Owens set three world records and tied a fourth within the span of 45 minutes.
At the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 25, 1935, the sophomore speedster turned in a remarkable performance in spite of a severely injured tailbone that prevented him from even bending over to touch his knees. Owens began the meet tying the world record in the 100-yard dash. Fifteen minutes later he smashed the world long jump record by nearly six inches. Within the next half-hour, he also set world bests in the 220-yard dash and 220-yard low hurdles.
(9) Owens raced against horses for money.
In spite of his fame on his return from Berlin, Owens struggled for money and began to participate in stunt races against dogs, motorcycles and even horses during halftime of soccer matches and between doubleheaders of Negro League baseball games. Owens would start 40 yards ahead of his equine competitors before sprinting for 100 yards, and he would often win by a nose. “People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse,” Owens said, “but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.”
(10) The New York Mets baseball team hired Owens as a running coach.
In 1965, the downtrodden New York Mets hired Owens as a spring training running instructor to improve the players’ base-running techniques and foot speed. Not even an Olympic champion, though, could help the 1965 Mets, who stole only 28 bases while being caught stealing 42 times on their way to a last-place finish.
(11) There are enduring memorials to Owens in Berlin.
In 1984, a street outside Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, where Owens shot to fame, was rechristened Jesse-Owens-Allee, and the section of the Olympic Village in which the sprinter stayed during the 1936 Summer Olympics features displays about the American champion.
Below is a video of the highlight of Jesse Owens legendary moments at the 1936 Olympics which took place in Berlin, Germany.
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