Reference
- Jesse Owens (1913–1980)James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens was born on September 12, 1913, in Danville, Alabama, Jesse and his family moved to Ohio when he was still young; the name “Jesse” derived from the way a teacher pronounced his initials, “J. C.”
In 1932, while attending East Technical High School in Cleveland, Owens gained national fame with a 10.3 clocking in the 100-meter dash. Two years later Owens entered Ohio State University, and for the next four years he made track history, becoming universally known as “The Ebony Antelope.” While competing in the Big Ten Championships at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 25, 1935, Owens had what has been called “the greatest single day in the history of man's athletic achievements.” In the space of about forty-five minutes, he tied the world record for the 100-yard dash and surpassed the world record for the broad jump, the 220-yard low hurdles, and the 220-yard dash.
At the Berlin Olympics in 1936 Owens won four gold medals—at that time the most universally acclaimed feat in the history of the Games. When Adolf Hitler refused to present him with the medals he had won in the various competitions, Owens's fame became even more widespread as a result of the publicity. Although the track and field records set by Owens have all been eclipsed, his reputation as one of the first great athletes with the combined talents of a sprinter, low hurdler, and broad jumper has hardly diminished with the passage of time.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Perspectives
Jesse Owens
In an era far removed from the African American celebrity athletes of today, Olympic great Jesse Owens achieved fame by running faster and jumping farther than anyone in the world. Author Jacqueline Edmondson explores Owens' struggles and hard-earned accomplishments, as well as how he paved the way for future generations of athletes, including color-line shatterer Jackie Robinson. It is difficult to imagine a time when African Americans were not part of professional sports in the United States. So many admired and beloved African-American athletes are national heroes today: Michael Jordan, Venus and Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, Florence Griffin-Joyner, Shaquille O'Neal, Muhammad Ali, to name a few. No such celebrity athletes appeared on magazine covers when Jesse Owens was a boy in the 1920s, no African American stars for him to hope to emulate. As the first American in track and field to win four gold medals in a single Olympic Games, Owens' athletic accomplishments were achieved despite seemingly insurmountable odds. This insightful biography tells the life story of a boy who grew up in poverty in the Deep South, won Olympic gold in Hitler's Germany by running faster and jumping farther than anyone in the world, and achieved fame and sometimes fortune in the midst of the Great Depression and a nation deeply divided by race. Yet while Owens broke world records in track and gained attention from the general public, few athletes could understand his experiences, including the overt racial discrimination he faced-even fewer who understood the complexities his fame brought. Author Jacqueline Edmondson explores Owens' struggles and hard-earned accomplishments, as well as how he paved the way for future generations of athletes, including color line shatterer, Jackie Robinson. A timeline, photos, and extensive bibliography of print and electronic sources supplement this biography of one of the greatest Olympic athletes in American history.
Jesse Owens
From the time he was a young boy on a farm in Alabama until he received his fourth Olympic gold medal in Berlin in 1936, all Jesse Owens wanted to do was run. Overcoming sickness, poverty, and racial discrimination, Jesse worked hard, shattered many track and field records, and earned countless medals and trophies. But perhaps his greatest and most important accomplishment came when he stood up to the hatred of Adolf Hitler and proved that the belief in the superiority of German athletes was false. This beautifully illustrated and simply told biography tells the inspirational story of a man with strength of spirit and heart.
Jesse Owens
* Critically acclaimed biographies of history's most notable African-Americans * Straightforward and objective writing * Lavishly illustrated with photographs and memorabilia * Essential for multicultural studies
Politicizing the Games
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Athletes promote political ideologies in Berlin, Mexico City, Moscow, Los Angles, and Munich. Jesse James Owens wins four medals at the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany.
Persecution
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowHitler couldn't hide his anger as African American, Jesse Owens, won his fourth gold medal in the 1936 Olympica Games. The Nazi regime planned and organized campaigns of hatred and anger. We see German Jews being harassed and persecuted.
Hitler's Olympics
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
In 1931, the Olympics were awarded to Berlin. However the Germany hosting the event five years later would be a very different place. Adolf Hitler had come to power in the meantime and the Nazis eagerly grasped the propaganda opportunity the Olympics represented. The scale of the 1936 Games would amaze the world and begin Olympic traditions that remain to this day. Although some at the time tried to organise boycotts, all too few saw the rotting truth behind the slick facade. HITLER'S OLYMPICS tells the complete story of the Berlin games - the early plans, the Nazi takeover, the purge of Jews from German athletics and the grand spectacle itself.
Online Resources
- 'In Praise of Jesse Owens': Technical Beauty at the Berlin Olympics 1936Jesse Owens features at several key moments in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's In praise of athletic beauty. This article uses Gumbrecht's analysis of Owens as a spring-board to re-evaluate common interpretations of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, arguing for a new appreciation of their technical rather than much emphasised body component and pondering the problem of making aesthetic judgements on objects or events arising from morally dubious situations.
- The 'reel' Jesse Owens: visual rhetoric and the Berlin OlympicsThe story of Jesse Owens has become one of the dominant sports narratives of the twentieth century. The compelling visual record of his performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics has been used to argue for a number of political and social causes. What is particularly fascinating about the images of Owens's win is the ways in which it functioned for diametrically opposing ideological viewpoints. The story behind the footage reveals an interesting confluence of history and visual rhetoric. This essay considers how the Owens footage was put to work as both an example of American exceptionalism in one case and a transcendent appeal designed to mitigate the stigma of Nazi ideology in another. The principles of visual rhetoric elucidate the ways in which imagery like the Owens footage is purposefully packaged to portray these types of messages.
- Berlin 1936: The Creation of the “Myth” Jesse OwensThroughout the twentieth century, the sport has gained much importance in society and sparked interest from various sectors, including the political. Adolf Hitler used the XI 1936 Summer Olympic Games to show the world the strength of Nazi Germany and its rebirth after the defeat in World War I and the impositions of the Versailles Treaty. However, many of the facts historically reported on the 1936 Olympics are contested. The most famous and mythical case of these Olympic Games, and one of the most famous in the history of sport, relates to events that occurred between the American athlete Jesse Owens and the Nazi . The aim of this work is to try to show, as faithfully as possible, as some important facts occurred during this event (the contest between Owens and Long in the long jump; if Hitler snubbed Owens; etc.) that helped create the “myth” around Owens; and to present reports of the global media coverage, analyzing the perpetuation of these mythical reports in current media. As methodology was conducted an ample bibliographical research: reports taken from newspapers of the time and current, books, scientific papers, master's thesis, documentaries, etc. Without claiming to prove a single fact, it is intended to provide insight to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Olympia
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowThis video clip contains footage of Jesse Owens in competition (7/5/36, Princeton, New Jersey) and curling (2/2/33, Loch Leven, Scotland).