Black History Heritage Profile: Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens
Olympic Medalist, Track

Jesse Owens was a track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. Known as “The Buckeye Bullet,” Jesse was born in Oakville, Alabama in 1913. He was the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves and was a frail child, who was often ill with chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia. By the age of seven he was picking up to 100 pounds of cotton a day to help support his family. When he was nine years old his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he set records in high school in the 100 and 200-yard dashes as well as the long jump.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were expected to be a German showcase and a statement for Aryan supremacy for Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler criticized the United States for including black athletes. But it was the African American participants who helped America’s success. Owens was the most dominate athlete to compete at the 1936 Olympic Games. He won four gold medals and broke two Olympic records. His record for the world broad jump lasted 25 years. Hitler stormed out of the stadium when Owens won the 100-meter event.

Owens later worked in public relations and marketing and spoke around the country. He wrote, "The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where it's at." Owens, who smoked cigarettes a good deal of his life, died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona in March of 1980.