Jesse Owens

It was a contest between a great athlete and a master race. What Jesse Owens achieved in a week in Berlin Olympics was ahead of dreams.The four gold medals by Jesse Owens in the Olympic's of 1936 was an achievement beyond the track and field. It was a statement against the dictator and his myth of Aryan supremacy.

Jesse Owens became an international sports star when the world was on the verge of the second Great War. Owens justified the equality of races in the chilling Nazi anthem Deutschland Uber Alles, Storm Troopers and the shades of red and black which covered the Berlin of 1936.

This Afro-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves became a nemesis of Adolf Hitler as he single-handedly crushed Hitlers superior Aryan creed.

A great athlete, Owens was also a nice human being. He never boasted of what he achieved in Berlin. He knew fascism was evil, but also believed that there is a lot that his country has to do when it comes to racism.

Back home he was not treated as a hero. His financial instability continued. It was shameful for the America of that time. Owens was not offered any endorsement just because he was black. He never found his name on the cereal tins. He was not allowed to in the front seats of the bus, neither could he live where he wanted to. While in Berlin, he was not invited to shake hands with Hitler, but wasnt either invited to the White House. This great athlete never complained about these things, but aspired for a nation which will be different from the America of that time.

James didnt have a great childhood. When seven, he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. Born James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1923 in Oakville, Ala, he became Jesse at the age of nine when one of his teachers at Cleveland misunderstood his intro J.C as Jesse.

Holding the reputation of a not so good student in academics, he was the smoothest on track. Owens set the records of 100 and 220 yard dashes and long jump records in juniors.

While playing a prank with his roommates two weeks before the Big Ten Championship in 1935, Owens slipped on water and injured his tailbone. He was so badly hurt that he couldnt even bend to touch his knees. But as the legend settled for the first race, pain just disappeared. In his junior year at Ohio State, he competed in 42 events and won all, including four Big Ten, four NCAA and two AAU championships.

Though the Nazis portrayed Afro-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the USA for sending black people to the competition, the people of Berlin had other views. Owens was famous even before the games started in 1936. People used to take autographs and pictures of him whenever he walked on the streets of the host city.

In long Jump, the toughest competition for Jesse Owens was from Luz Long, a tall, blue-eyed, blonde German, who later became his best friend. If Long would not have been there, Owens might not have qualified for the finals. Owens fouled twice in the first two jumps. It was the valuable suggestion of Long which saved him from disqualification. On that very afternoon, Owens won the gold over Luz Long. And, the first person who congratulated and embraced Owens was Long, that too in front of Hitler.

His life saw improvement after the 1950s, when he opened a public relations firm. In 1976, the then American President R Ford Gerald presented him the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the US. Jesse Owens died of lung cancer at the age of 66 on March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Ariz. Four years after his death, a street in Berlin was named to honor this great athlete.

Article Source: http://www.go-see.info

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