Jesse Owens

Source

• Born: 12 September 1913
• Birthplace: Oakville, Alabama
• Died: 31 March 1980 (cancer)
• Best Known As: The black sprinter who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics

Name at birth: James Cleveland Owens

Jesse Owens is remembered for one stunning week in 1936, when he won four track and field gold medals at a single Olympics. The Summer Games that year were held in Berlin, where Nazi leader Adolf Hitler seemed determined to display the superiority of the German "Aryan" race. Owens, an African-American, put that notion to rest with victories in the 100- and 200-meter dash, the broad jump and the 4x100-meter relay. The performance made him both an Olympic hero and a lasting symbol of black pride. In 1976, President Gerald Ford awarded Owens the prestigious Medal of Freedom.

Owens got the name "Jesse" when a teacher misunderstood his initials, J.C... He was the first American to win four track and field medals in one Olympics... His father was a sharecropper and his grandfather a slave... Owens was a star sprinter at Ohio State University... The 1936 Olympics also featured a more controversial Ohioan, Stella Walsh.

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For more information on Jesse Owens, visit Britannica.com.

American track star Jesse Owens (1913-1980) became the hero of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, as his series of victories scored a moral victory for black athletes.

James Cleveland Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama, on Sept. 12, 1913, the son of a sharecropper. He was a sickly child, often too frail to help his father and brothers in the fields. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921. There was little improvement in their life, but the move did enable young Owens to enter public school, where a teacher accidently wrote down his name as "Jesse" instead of J.C. The name stuck for the rest of his life.

When Jesse was in the fifth grade, the athletic supervisor asked him to go out for track. From a spindly boy he developed into a strong runner. 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. 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 college was 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 after officials found employment for his father. In addition to his studies and participating in track, Owens worked three jobs to pay his tuition. He experienced racism while a student at Ohio State, but the incidents merely strengthened his resolve to succeed. At the "Big Ten" 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 25 years.

Owens was a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team competing in Berlin. The African-American members of the squad faced the challenges not only of competition but also of Hitler's boasts of Aryan supremacy. Owens won a total of four gold medals at the Olympic games. As a stunned Hitler angrily left the stadium, German athletes embraced Owens and the spectators chanted his name. He returned to America to a hero's welcome, honored at a ticker tape parade in New York. However, within months, he was unable to find work to finance his senior year of college. Owens took work as a playground supervisor, but was soon approached by promoters who wanted to pit him against race horses and cars. With the money from these exhibitions, he was able to finish school.

In 1937 Owens lent his name to a chain of cleaning shops. They prospered until 1939, when the partners fled, leaving Owens a bankrupt business and heavy debts. He found employment with the Office of Civilian Defense in Philadelphia (1940-1942) as national director of physical education for African-Americans. From 1942 to 1946 he was director of minority employment at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He later became a sales executive for a Chicago sporting goods company.

In 1951 Owens accompanied the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team to Berlin at the invitation of the U.S. High Commission and the Army. He was appointed secretary of the Illinois Athletic Commission (1952-1955), and was sent on a global goodwill tour as ambassador of sport for the United States. Also in 1955, he was appointed to the Illinois Youth Commission. In 1956 he organized the Junior Olympic Games for youngsters in Chicago between the ages of 12 and 17. Owens and his friend Joe Louis were active in helping black youth.

Owens headed his own public relations firm in Chicago and for several years had a jazz program on Chicago radio. He traveled throughout America and abroad, lecturing youth groups. Ideologically moderate, Owens admired Martin Luther King, Jr. Owens and his childhood sweetheart whom he had married in 1931, had three daughters.

Forty years after he won his gold medals, Owens was finally invited to the White House to accept a Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford. The following year, the Jesse Owens International Trophy for amateur athletes was established. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter honored Owens with a Living Legend Award.

In the 1970s Owens moved his business from Chicago to Phoenix, but as time progressed, his health deteriorated. He died of cancer on March 31, 1980, after a lengthy stay in a Phoenix hospital. He was buried in Chicago several days later.

The highest honor Owens received came a full ten years after his death. Congressman Louis Stokes from Cleveland lobbied tirelessly to earn Owens a Congressional Gold Medal. The award was finally given to Owens's widow by President Bush in 1990. During the ceremony, President Bush called Owens "an Olympic hero and an American hero every day of his life."

Owens's fabled career as a runner again caught public attention in the 1996 Olympic Games, and 60th anniversary of his Berlin triumph, as entrepreneurs hawked everything from Jesse Owens gambling chips (Sports Illustrated August 5, 1996) to commemorative oak tree seedlings (American Forests Spring, 1996) reminiscent of one he was awarded as a Gold Medalist in Berlin (Sports Illustrated February 20, 1995).

Racism at home had denied Owens the financial fruits of his victory after the 1936 games, but his triumph in what has been called "the most important sports story of the century," continued to be an inspiration for modern day Olympians such as track stars Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis. In Jet magazine (August 1996), Johnson credited Owens for paving the way for his and other black athletes' victories.

Further Reading

Owens's ideology and much important biographical information can be found in his own book, Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man (1970). John Kieran and Arthur Daley, The Story of the Olympic Games, 776 B.C. to 1968 (1936; rev. ed. 1969), and Richard Mandell, The Nazi Olympics (1971), describe Owens's heroic efforts in 1936. See also Jack Olsen, The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story - The Myth of Integration in American Sport (1968). Articles of interest can be found in Sports Illustrated (August 5, 1996 and February 20, 1995); Ebony (April 1996); and Jet (August 26, 1996 and August 15, 1994). An official Jesse Owens Website can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.cmgww.com/sports/owens/owens.html (July 29, 1997).

olympic athlete; businessperson

Personal Information

Born James Cleveland Owens, September 12, 1913, in Danville, AL; died of lung cancer, March 31, 1980, in Phoenix, AZ; son of Henry (a sharecropper) and Emma (Alexander) Owens; married Ruth Solomon, 1931; children: Gloria, Beverly, Marlene.
Education: Ohio State University, B.A., 1937.

Career

Amateur athlete, 1927-36; held world records in 100-yard dash, broad jump (now called long jump), 220-yard dash, and 220-yard low hurdles. Won Olympic gold medals, 1936, in 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, broad jump, and 400- meter relay.

Worked as playground janitor and raced against horses, cars, trucks, and motorcycles, 1936-37. Partner in dry cleaning business in Cleveland, OH, 1937-39; worked with Office of Civilian Defense, Philadelphia, PA, 1940-42; director for minority employment for Ford Motor Company, Detroit, MI, 1942- 1946; with Leo Rose Sporting Goods Co., 1946-52; member of board of directors of South Side Boys Club, Chicago, IL, 1950-52; served as secretary of the Illinois Athletic Commission, 1952-55; served as ambassador for sports for U.S. State Department, 1955; president and owner of Jesse Owens & Associates public relations firm, Chicago, 1955-80.

Life's Work

More than a decade after his death, Jesse Owens remains enshrined in memory as one of the greatest athletes--and perhaps the greatest track star--ever to compete in the Olympic Games. Owens's phenomenal four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin held meaning far beyond mere sports trophies. The 22-year-old sprinter made a mockery of Adolf Hitler's Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy, scoring a political victory for the United States and a moral victory for black people worldwide.

In Ebony magazine, Lerone Bennett, Jr., wrote that the tableau of the 1936 Olympics "would become a legend and would be passed on from generation to generation, growing in the telling, the story of an incredible moment of truth when the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves temporarily derailed the Nazi juggernaut and gave the lie to Hitler's theories on Aryan (read White) supremacy.... [Owens's] story, which will be told as long as men and women celebrate grace and courage, was more than a sports story. It was politics, history even, played out on an international stage with big stakes riding on every contest."

According to Pete Axthelm in Newsweek, Jesse Owens "made a mockery of the Fuhrer's [Hitler's] words--and the Aryan `master race' philosophy. His medals could not divert the dark propaganda wave that was sweeping Germany at the time.... But he did lift American spirits to giddy heights, and he seemed to embody the Olympic dream that sportsmen can reach across political and military lines in a noble quest for friendship and glory."

Owens's triumphs are even more remarkable when viewed from the perspective of the time. He was born into a large, poverty-stricken family in the deep South, endured discrimination and double standards in the North, and worked his way through junior high school, high school, and college at Ohio State University without the benefit of a scholarship. As Bennett noted, Owens "had been running hard against the Hitlers of the world ever since he was sent to the cotton field to pick cotton at the age of seven." Nor did Owens's Olympic victories ensure him an easy life afterwards. He overcame numerous obstacles at home in the United States to become a respected businessman, public speaker, and mentor to young athletes.

Son of a Sharecropper

James Cleveland Owens was born in rural Alabama in 1913. The seventh of eleven children born to Henry and Emma Owens, he was sickly and thin, often too frail to help his older brothers and father in the cotton fields. Owens's father was a sharecropper. The family lived in a small, unheated house, and there were times when there was not enough food to feed them all. Owens's mother dreamed of a better life in the North, where blacks were finding jobs and a degree of prosperity. Finally, when Owens was seven, his father sold the family tools and the mules, and they moved to Cleveland, Ohio.

The family's circumstances did not improve much in Cleveland, but the move was very important for their gifted young son. Entering a city grade school, Owens gave his name as "J. C.," and the teacher wrote down "Jesse." The name stuck for the rest of his life. Owens went to school during the day and performed odd jobs in the afternoons and evenings. He had little spare time, but he managed to find moments to race with his friends on the schoolyard and through the alleys of his neighborhood. By twelve he had developed into a promising sprinter. "There was, even then, something unique about Jesse Owens," wrote Bennett. "He didn't run, he floated, seeming, as one of his coaches said later, `to caress the ground.' There was beauty, poetry even, in the fluid, effortless, `velvety smooth' glide which made him a formidable foe."

Charles Riley, the track coach at Fairview Junior High, was astounded when Owens ran the 100-yard dash in ten seconds flat. Riley took special interest in Owens, working with the youngster in the mornings before school. Coach and student became fast friends, and their relationship continued when Owens went on to East Technical High School in Cleveland. Throughout his junior high and high school years, Owens held part-time jobs to help his parents pay the bills. His talent blossomed in tough circumstances that might have discouraged many young men.

Set National Track Records

As a member of the East Technical track team, Owens set national records by running the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds and the 200-yard dash in 20.7 seconds. He also set a new broad jump (now called long jump) record with a leap of 24 feet, nine and five-eighths inches. A number of universities recruited him actively, but Owens felt that college was just a dream. He could not leave his struggling family and his own young wife--he married in 1931--when his paycheck was in such demand.

Finally, Charles Riley and the track coach at Ohio State University were able to entice Owens. The authorities at Ohio State used their influence to find steady work for Owens's father with the state of Ohio. Only then did Owens agree to enter Ohio State, where he paid his tuition by working three jobs in addition to his studies and track activities. "Unbelievable as it may seem now," Bennett noted, "he did not receive a scholarship and was forced to wait on tables and run elevators to pay his tuition."

Owens also became acquainted with Northern bigotry while a student at Ohio State. He lived in a house with the other black members of the track team and took most of his meals there. Black team members could not dine in restaurants or use the rest room facilities when the team stopped on the road while travelling to or from meets. On one occasion, an angry cook from a rural diner refused to serve the blacks even in their car. Such incidents were permanently burned into Owens's memory and gave him extra motivation to excel.

On May 25, 1935, Owens travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to take part in the annual Big Ten Track and Field Championships. At the time he was recovering from a painful back injury, and he and his coach talked about missing the meet. He could not practice for a week before the event, but when the hour approached for the 100-yard dash, he decided to try to participate. New York Times columnist Arthur Daley called Owens's performance at Ann Arbor "the greatest day in track history." Within a space of 45 minutes the young athlete tied the world record for the 100-yard dash, broke the world record with a long jump of more than 26 feet, broke the world record in the 220- yard dash, and broke yet another world record in the 220-yard low hurdles. With the Olympic Games only a year away, Americans began to pin their hopes for track and field victories on the star from Ohio State.

Star of 1936 Olympic Games

The 1936 Olympic Games were held in brand new facilities in Nazi Germany's capital, Berlin. Adolf Hitler made little effort to hide his views that the event would be a showcase for Aryan athletes such as track star Lutz Long. In his first event against Owens, Long set an Olympic record with his long jump. Owens, racked with nerves, missed on his first two jumps, but then he bested not only Long's new record but his own former records as well. His gold medal-winning long jump of 26 feet, five and a quarter inches stood as the world record for the next twenty-five years. As Hitler left the stadium in a huff Lutz Long embraced Owens while the mostly German crowd chanted the new champion's name as if he were the hometown hero.

Owens won a total of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics. He took gold in the 100-meter sprint, the 200-meter sprint, the jump, and the 400-meter relay. Ironically, he ran in the relay as a substitute for a Jewish runner. Axthelm wrote of Owens's feat: "He didn't merely run and jump to four gold- medal victories in the Berlin Games of 1936. He took flight, soaring far above a world of athletic competition, enlarging the possibilities of sport itself. [Owens remains] the most famous and symbolic hero of the modern Olympic games."

Olympic Glory Faded Fast

Symbol and reality began to clash when Owens returned to America. He was greeted by throngs at a ticker tape parade in New York, but within months he was unable to find a job in order to pay for the rest of his college work. Years later, Owens told Ebony: "I came back to my native country and I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted.... I wasn't invited up to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."

Owens was more or less forced to turn professional. He ran a series of races against horses, cars, and motorcycles, earning enough to pay for his last year at Ohio State. After graduation he became a partner in a Cleveland dry-cleaning business that proved lucrative at first but eventually went bankrupt. By 1940 Owens was deeply in debt and had three daughters to support. He worked briefly as the national director of physical education for Negroes, then, in 1942, he became personnel director for minority employment at Ford Motor Company.

Eventually Owens realized that he wanted to work more with children. He moved from Detroit to Chicago in 1950 and became a member of the board of directors of the South Side Boys Club. Also during this time he began to trade upon his celebrity, touring with the Harlem Globetrotters and making speeches on goodwill tours in America and abroad. In 1956 he organized the Junior Olympic Games for youngsters in Chicago between the ages of 12 and 17.

Later in his life Owens opened his own public relations firm, becoming a celebrated speaker at business and professional conventions. He came under fire in 1968 for opposing a black American boycott of the Olympics, and for a time was derided as an "Uncle Tom" and a toady to white people. The charges stung Owens. He attempted to defend himself in a 1970 biography, Blackthink, but two years later he became more militant and published another book, I Have Changed.

It is estimated that Owens earned around $100,000 per year in the 1970s, mostly from personal appearances and speeches. He moved his business from Chicago to Phoenix, but as the 1970s progressed his health deteriorated. A longtime cigarette smoker, he developed inoperable lung cancer. He died on March 31, 1980, after a long stay in a Phoenix hospital, and he was buried in Chicago several days later.

Contributions Officially Recognized

Forty years after he won his gold medals, Owens was finally invited to the White House to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter honored Owens two years later in 1979 with a Living Legend Award. The highest honor Owens ever received, however, came a full ten years after his death. Congressman Louis Stokes from Cleveland lobbied tirelessly to earn Owens a Congressional Gold Medal. The award was finally given to Owens's widow, Ruth, by President Bush in 1990. During the ceremony, Bush lauded Owens as "an Olympic hero and an American hero every day of his life."

The official recognition by three American presidents was a slight honor indeed compared to the warmth felt for Owens by blacks all over the world. His victory served as the most eloquent testimony against any sort of discrimination based on the idea of racial inferiority. As for Owens himself, he told the New York Times that his gold medals changed his life. "They have kept me alive over the years," he said. "Time has stood still for me. That golden moment dies hard." He added: "Any black who strives to achieve in this country should think in terms of not only himself but also how he can reach down and grab another black child and pull him to the top of the mountain where he is. This is what a gold medal does to you."

Awards

Recipient of numerous awards, including three conferred by the U.S. Government: Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1976; Living Legend Award, 1979; and the Congressional Gold Medal, 1990.

Works

Writings

• (With Paul G. Neimark) Blackthink: My Life as a Black Man and White Man, Morrow, 1970.
• (With Neimark) I Have Changed, Morrow, 1972.

Further Reading

Books

• Kaufman, Mervyn. Jesse Owens, Crowell, 1973.

Periodicals

• Ebony, September 1988.
• Jet, August 1, 1989; April 16, 1990.
• Newsweek, April 14, 1980.
• New York Times, July 6, 1954; April 1, 1980; April 5, 1980.

— Mark Kram

(1913-1980), track and field athlete. In three outstanding meets, Owens gained international fame by establishing long-standing world or Olympic records and challenging Adolf Hitler's conception of Aryan supremacy.

Owens was born in Alabama as the tenth child of sharecroppers and moved with his family to Cleveland in the 1920s as part of the massive migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North.

In junior high school, Owens was befriended by Charles Riley, a white teacher and coach, who saw talent in the small, slight black youth. He developed his sprinting, hurdling, and long-jump skills at Cleveland East Tech High School where he dominated Ohio high school track and field. Owens first came to national attention when he tied the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9 1/2 inches at the 1933 National High School Championship meet in Chicago. In college, Owens continued to excel in track and field, winning a record eight individual ncaa championships. His greatest collegiate performance occurred at the 1935 Big Ten Conference Championship where he tied or established world records in the 100-yard dash, long jump, 220-yard dash, and the 220-yard low hurdles.

Owens is most famous for his performance during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. Adolf Hitler had planned to use the games to showcase German prosperity amid the worldwide depression and to demonstrate Aryan physical supremacy by fielding a strong German team. Although Germany did win more medals than any other nation, Owens's brilliant individual performance overshadowed its achievement. He won four gold medals, tying the 100-meter dash record and establishing new Olympic records in the 200-meter dash, long jump, and 4 X 100-meter relay. His records in the relay and the 200-meter dash were not broken until the 1956 games, and the others stood until 1960.

Following the games, Owens returned to the United States and attempted to cash in on his newfound fame by exploiting the offers telegraphed to him in Berlin. He reportedly received ten thousand dollars for supporting Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon in 1936, but few of the other offers materialized. He was reduced to performing in exhibitions such as running races against horses and touring with a band and basketball and baseball teams. These appearances were lucrative, but a laundry he owned failed because of poor management. Owens was taken to court for not paying his income taxes, and he eventually declared bankruptcy.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, however, Owens prospered by working in public relations for major corporations. His modesty, patriotism, and sincerity made him an excellent public speaker, much in demand. He remained a hero to black Americans and was acceptable to white people because of his conservative position on race issues. Ironically, he was criticized by many black Americans because he was a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee during racial protests at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Nevertheless, he remained America's most popular and famous track and field athlete until his death from cancer in 1980.

Bibliography:

William J. Baker, Jesse Owens: An American Life (1986); Richard D. Mandell, The Nazi Olympics (1971); Jesse Owens, as told to Paul Neimark, The Jesse Owens Story (1970).

Author:

C. Robert Barnett

See also Spectator Sports.

Olympic Track and Field

The star of the 1936 Olympics, Jesse Owens, was born on this date in 1913. The black American track and field star won four gold medals at the Berlin Summer Olympics, at a time when German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was attempting to convince the world of the superiority of the Aryans as the master race. With his wins, Owens tied the 100-meter dash record and set new Olympic records in the 200-meter dash, long jump, and 4 X 100-meter relay; the records would remain unbroken for at least 20 years.

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From our Archives: Today's Highlights, September 12, 2005

Owens, Jesse, 1913-80, U.S. track star, b. Alabama. He was also called John Cleveland Owens, although his original name was said to be simply J. C. Owens. After his family moved to Cleveland he excelled at track and field events in high school. He won the broad-jump titles at the outdoor (1933-34) and indoor (1934-35) meets of the National Amateur Athletic Union, and while on the track team of Ohio State Univ., he broke (1935-36) several world records at broad jumping, hurdle racing, and flat racing. At the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Owens astounded the world and upset Hitler's "Aryan" theories by equaling the world mark (10.3 sec) in the 100-meter race, by breaking world records in the 200-meter race (20.7 sec) and in the broad jump (26 ft 5³/₈ in./8.07 m) and by winning also (along with Ralph Metcalfe and others) the 400-meter relay race. His records lasted for more than 20 years. Owens later participated in professional exhibitions and in various business enterprises. He was secretary of the Illinois Athletic commission until 1955 and later became active in the Illinois youth commission.

Bibliography

See his semiautobiographical Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man (1970).

An African-American athlete of the twentieth century. He won four gold medals in track and field events at the Olympic Games of 1936, held in Germany when Adolf Hitler was leader. His victories were a source of pride to the United States and also — because Owens was black — a blow to the Nazi notions of a master race.

Quotes:

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort."

"I always loved running -- it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs."

"People come out to see you perform and you've got to give them the best you have within you. The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds."

"Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust."

"To me, we must learn to spell the word RESPECT. We must respect the rights and properties of our fellowman. And then learn to play the game of life, as well as the game of athletics, according to the rules of society. If you can take that and put it into practice in the community in which you live, then, to me you have won the greatest championship."

"One chance is all you need."

See more famous quotes by Jesse Owens

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