Jesse Owens was born in poverty in Alabama and moved to Ohio as a child. He became a successful runner in school and college, setting world records and winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Despite his success, he faced racial discrimination upon his return to the US and had to work hard to make a living. Owens wrote books and gave speeches about racial issues and won numerous awards before his death in 1980.
Jesse Owens was born James Cleveland Owens in 1913, on a small farm in Oakville, Alabama. His grandparents had been slaves and his parents were sharecroppers. They lived in a small uninsulated shack, but freezing in the winter and extremely hot in the summer.
Jesse Owens was not very healthy and often had pneumonia, or what his family called the “devil’s cold”. They had no money for medicine or doctors, so his parents resorted to methods such as wrapping him in blankets in front of the fire to “break” his fever and cutting a lump on Owens’ leg with a hot kitchen knife.
When Jesse Owens was nine, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. His teacher mistook his initials, JC, as the name “Jesse” and he began to be known as “Jesse Owens.” The whole family worked to earn money, even the children.
At fourteen, Jesse Owens entered middle school. Track coach, Charles Riley saw the potential in him and asked Owens to train for the track team. He had to train in the morning, as he worked every day after school, to help his family. Coach Riley inspired Jesse Owens to train for the future and be the best runner possible.
In middle and high school, Owens earned a reputation as a graceful and lightning-fast runner. He started being called a “floating wonder” and started breaking records in the long jump; he called the long jump at the moment, the high jump and the 220-yard dash.
Attending Ohio State University, Jesse Owens joined the track team. At the Big Ten Championship meet in 1935, he set an incredible three world records, tying a fourth, in under an hour. Shortly thereafter, he married Minnie Solomon and later had three daughters.
Jesse Owens qualified for the United States track and field team at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany when Hitler was in power. Owens won four gold medals, equaled the Olympic record for the 100m, was part of the record-breaking 400m relay, set an Olympic record for the long jump, and set a world record for 20.7 seconds for the 200-meter race.
An iconic photograph was taken of Jesse Owens and Lutz Long, the German long jumper who won the silver medal, shaking hands. This photo of a white German and a black American has been used to demonstrate how sport conquered, for a moment, racial hatred and prejudice in Nazi Germany in 1936.
When Jesse Owens returned to the United States, although he was hero enough to lead a teletype parade for the Olympic team, he still wasn’t able to ride in the front of the bus or enter the same restaurants as white Americans. He had to work hard to make a living in every possible way: working as a playground manager, appearing on radio shows, giving speeches, and running a dry cleaning business. He also continued to run in exhibition races to earn money. He said that he felt like a show but that “it was an honest life. I had to eat.”
Jesse Owens was popular with the audience, who loved listening to his speeches. He wrote an autobiography and two books: Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man and I Have Changed, he discussed the issues facing black Americans. His thinking evolved between the two books, from blaming “the Negro” for his own inability to becoming more aware of American prejudice and showing sympathy for those who were fighting for racial equality.
Known for many years as “The World’s Fastest Human,” he won numerous awards, including the Associated Press’s greatest track and field award of all time, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Living Legends Award. He died in 1980 of lung cancer, but his inspiration from him as the son of a poor sharecropper to a world-record athlete lives on.
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