Owens, Jesse

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Owens, Jesse

September 12, 1913
March 31, 1980

Born in 1913, the tenth surviving child of sharecroppers Henry and Emma Owens, in Oakville, Alabama, James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, for better economic and educational opportunities in the early 1920s. His athletic ability was first noticed by a junior high school teacher of physical education, Charles Riley, who coached him to break several inter-scholastic records and even to make a bold but futile attempt to win a place on the U.S. Olympic team. In 1933 Owens matriculated at Ohio State University on a work study arrangement and immediately began setting Big Ten records. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 25, 1935, he set new world records in the 220-yard sprint, the 220-yard hurdles, and the long jump and tied the world record in the 100-yard dash.

In the racially segregated sports world of 1936, Owens and boxer Joe Louis (1914–1981) were the most visible African-American athletes. In late June, however, Louis lost to German boxer Max Schmeling (1905–), making Owens's Olympic feats all the more dramatic. At Berlin in early August 1936, he stole the Olympic show with gold medal, record-setting performances in the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and relays. All this occurred against a backdrop of Nazi pageantry and German dictator Adolf Hitler's (1889–1945) daily presence and in an international scene of tension and fear. Out of that dramatic moment came one of the most enduring of all sports myths: Hitler's supposed "snub" in refusing to shake Owens's hand after the victories. (Morally satisfying but untrue, the yarn was largely created by American sportswriters. The truth is that by the time Owens won his first gold medal, Hitler was no longer personally congratulating any medal winners.)

Business and entertainment offers flooded Owens's way in the wake of the Berlin games, but he quickly found most of them were bogus. Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon paid him to stump for black votes in the autumn of 1936. After that futile effort, Owens bounced from one demeaning and low-paying job to another, including races against horses. He went bankrupt in a drycleaning business. By 1940, with a wife and three daughters to support (he had married Ruth Solomon in 1935), Owens returned to Ohio State to complete the degree he had abandoned in 1936. However, his grades were too low and his educational background too thin for him to graduate. For most of World War II (1939–45), Owens supervised the black labor force at Ford Motor Company in Detroit.

In the era of the cold war, Owens became a fervent American patriot, hailing the United States as the land of opportunity. Working out of Chicago, he frequently addressed interracial school and civic groups, linking patriotism and athletics. In 1955 the U.S. State Department sent him to conduct athletic clinics, make speeches, and grant interviews as a means of winning friends for America in India, Malaya, and the Philippines.

In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61) sent him to the Melbourne Olympics as one of the president's personal goodwill ambassadors. Refusing to join the civil rights movement, Owens became so politically conservative that angry young blacks denounced him as an "Uncle Tom" on the occasion of the famous Black Power salutes by Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at Mexico City in 1968. Before he died of lung cancer in 1980, however, Owens received two of the nation's highest awards: the Medal of Freedom Award in 1976, for his "inspirational" life, and the Living Legends Award in 1979, for his "dedicated but modest" example of greatness.

See also Louis, Joe; Olympians; Sports