Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. He was born in Alabama in 1913 and died in 1980. His victories made him one of the most famous athletes of the twentieth century. They also embarrassed Adolf Hitler in front of the whole world.

Owens was the youngest of ten children in a poor farming family. His grandparents had been enslaved. When he was nine, his family moved north to Cleveland, Ohio, looking for a better life. A teacher asked the boy his name. He said "J.C.," but she heard "Jesse." The name stuck for the rest of his life.

He started running track in junior high. By college, he was the best in the country. On May 25, 1935, while running for Ohio State University, Owens had what many people still call the greatest 45 minutes in sports history. He broke three world records and tied a fourth, all in less than an hour. He did it with a sore back.

The next year came the Berlin Olympics. Hitler had built the games to show off Nazi Germany. Nazi leaders taught that white people of European background were better than everyone else. Hitler expected German athletes to prove him right. Instead, Owens, a Black American, won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump, and the 4x100-meter relay. No track athlete had ever won four golds at a single Olympics. It would not happen again for 48 years.

Coming home should have been a triumph. It was not. The United States was still ruled by Jim Crow laws, and Black Americans faced segregation everywhere. President Franklin Roosevelt did not invite Owens to the White House. Owens later said it was not Hitler who snubbed him, but his own president. To pay the bills, he raced against horses, motorcycles, and cars at fairs. The greatest sprinter alive was running for tip money.

In his later years, Owens became a public speaker who talked to young people about hard work and fair play. In 1976, President Gerald Ford gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. He died of lung cancer four years later.

Today his name is on schools, stadiums, and a major track and field award. The story of a Black man from Alabama outrunning the Nazi machine has become one of the most powerful moments in sports. Owens once said that the battles that count are the ones inside yourself.