Olympic Hero Jesse Owens
By February 11, 2022
Born James Cleveland Owens in Oakville, Alabama on September 12, 1913, Jesse Owens was the youngest of 10 children, and as the son of a sharecropper, money was always tight. Food and clothes were not a guarantee, and medical care was too much to afford. In fact, Owens later told reporters that his mother had to use a kitchen knife to cut a tumor out of his chest as a child. Owens began working afternoons while he was still in middle school but was lucky enough to have a track and field coach who allowed him to train in the mornings, as running was his true passion. During the Ohio Interscholastic Finals, he won 75 out of 79 events and later tied the world record for the 100-yard dash.
Because of his excellence as an athlete, he made his way onto the track and field team at Ohio State University, and though he won no fewer than eight individual N.C.A.A. championships there, he was never awarded a scholarship. On May 25, 1935, Owens made his first real mark on the sport during a Big Ten Conference, where he set four (yes, four) world records within a 45-minute span. It was clear to everybody that Owens was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of athlete.
With talent like that, participating in the upcoming Olympic Games should have been a no-brainer, but the International Olympic Committee had already chosen Berlin to host the 1936 games two years before Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. The Nazis banned all "non-Aryans" from participating in organized sports in 1933, but they decided inexplicably to uphold their commitment to host an event whose main mission is to bring athletes from all over the world together. In fact, Hitler hoped to use the Olympics to prove his belief that Aryans were physically superior to other peoples.
As you can imagine, things were tense for Olympians of color, but Owens was determined to prove he could handle it. Where he lived, he still had to stay in black-only hotels and eat in black-only restaurants, so he was well-versed in navigating racist territory. He participated in the 100-meter, 200-meter, long jump, and 4X10 relay and scored gold in every single one while also setting a world record. So much for Hitler's theory.
