James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete. He made history at the 1936 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals, setting individual Olympic records in each event, plus another as a member of the 400-meter relay. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in track and field history.
Owens excelled in short sprints and the long jump and was lauded in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". Earlier he won four events, set five world records, and tied another—all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and was called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport". He won four NCAA titles in both 1935 and 1936, bringing his total to eight—an unparalleled achievement still unmatched.
He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited by ESPN with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".
The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field's accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Owens was voted the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century. In 1999, he made the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. That same year, ESPN ranked him sixth-greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport.
Jesse Owens, originally known as J. C., on September 12, 1913. He was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) born to Henry Cleveland Owens (1881–1942), a sharecropper, and Mary Emma Fitzgerald (1876–1940) in Oakville, Alabama. He was the grandson of a slave. At age nine, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration (1910–70) when millions of African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North. When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book, he said "J. C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens thereafter.
In his younger years, Owens took menial jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens developed a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked after class, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.
Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters together: Marlene (1937), and Beverly (1940). They remained married until his death in 1980.
Owens gained national attention as a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard (91 m) dash, broke the national high school record with 20.7 seconds in the 220-yard (200 m) dash, and long-jumped 24 feet 9+1⁄2 inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago. His 100-yard dash remained the national high school record until 1967, while his 200-yard dash remained the national record for 20 years.
Owens entered Ohio State University in 1933 after his father found employment, which supported the family. Affectionately known as the "Buckeye Bullet" and under the coaching of Larry Snyder, Owens won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four each in 1935 and 1936. His career total of eight individual NCAA titles remains the most, despite only two years of varsity competition—which included an undefeated junior year in 1936 where he won all 42 events he entered. Though Owens enjoyed athletic success, he was forced to live off campus with other African-American athletes. When he traveled with the team, Owens was restricted to ordering carry-out or eating at "blacks-only" restaurants and had to stay at "blacks-only" hotels. Owens did not receive a scholarship, so he continued to work part-time jobs to pay for school. Owens struggled as a student at Ohio State, and was placed on academic probation in 1936 and 1940. He dropped out in 1941 without earning a degree.
On May 25, 1935, Owens won four events and established six world records in athletics at the Big Ten Championships. On that day, Owens battled through a lower back injury, set five world records, and tied a sixth in 45 minutes from 3:15–4 p.m. during the Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds), and set world records in the long jump (26 feet 8+1⁄4 inches or 8.13 metres, a world record that lasted for 25 years); 220-yard (201.2 m) sprint (20.3 seconds); and 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds, the first to break 23 seconds). Both 220-yard records had smashed the metric records for 200 meters (flat and hurdles), which counted as two additional world records from the same performances.
At the 1936 Big Ten Championships, Owens dominated, winning the long jump, 100-yard dash, 220-yard dash, and 100-yard low hurdles. With these victories, he concluded his Big Ten Championship career undefeated—winning nine titles in nine events.
USA Track and Field Championships
At the 1934 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, Owens captured the long jump gold with a world-record leap of 25 ft 3+1⁄8 in (7.699 m). Two years later, at his final appearance at the Outdoor Championships in 1936, he again shattered the long jump world record with a leap of 26 feet, 8¼ inches. He also set a championship record in the 100 meters, clocking 10.4 seconds. Over the course of his career at these championships, Owens amassed six gold medals—five in the long jump and one in the 100 meters.
In the months prior to the Games, a movement gained momentum in favor of boycotting them given their racist attitudes towards Africans. The NAACP Owens convinced to declare "If there are minorities in Germany who are being discriminated against, the United States should withdraw from the 1936 Olympics." Yet he and others eventually took part after Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee branded them "un-American agitators".
In 1936, Owens and his US teammates sailed on the SS Manhattan to the Games. Just before the competitions, Adidas athletic shoe company founder Adi Dassler visited Owens in the Olympic village and persuaded him to wear Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik shoes; this was the first sponsorship for a male African American athlete.
On August 3, Owens won the 100 m dash with a time of 10.3 seconds, defeating teammate and college friend Ralph Metcalfe by one tenth of a second and Tinus Osendarp of the Netherlands by two-tenths.
On August 4, he won the long jump with a leap of 8.06 metres (26 ft 5 in) (3¼ inches short of his own world record). He initially credited this achievement to the technical advice that he received from Luz Long, the German competitor whom he defeated, but later admitted that this was not true, as he and Long did not meet until after the competition.
On August 5, he won the 200-meter sprint with a time of 20.7 seconds, defeating fellow American teammate Mack Robinson (Jackie Robinson's older brother).