Jesse Owens Biography

Jesse Owens, commonly called "The Buckeye Bullet," was an American track and field athlete who bagged four gold medals. In Berlin, he made two world records at the 1936 Olympic Games. Jesse Owens’ 1936 Olympics medals have amazed the world. He was the first field athlete and American track athlete to get four gold medals at a single Olympic Games, which had stunned the world. His journey started in high school, where he won three track and field events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships. Subsequently, after two years, he equalled one world record. He broke three others while competing for Ohio State University before qualifying and competing in the 1936 Olympics.

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Image: Jesse Owens

Birth and Childhood 

On September 12, 1913, Jesse Owens was born James Cleveland Owens in Oakville, Alabama. Jesse was the youngest of all the ten kids of Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald and had three elder sisters and six elder brothers. Owens was a weak child who was often struggling with pneumonia and other chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia. He was the grandson of a slave. As a part of the Great Migration, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, for better opportunities at the age of nine for better opportunities.

Despite being frail, he was expected to work at a very young age and support his family. He was not born as Jesse; instead, he was born as James Cleveland Owens. His school has given this name to him. When his new teacher in the school asked his name, he said "J.C.," she thought he said "Jesse" due to his strong Southern accent. The name stuck, and he was remembered as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life. He attributed the success of his athletic career to track coach at Fairmount Junior High school, Charles Riley. His couch was a significant influence on him, and he had given all his support to him while he was in school. He allowed him to practice before school as Owens needed to work in a shoe repair shop after school.

 Owens first grabbed national attention when he was studying in East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equalled the world record of long-jumped 24 feet 9+1⁄2 inches (7.56 m) and 9.4 seconds in the 100 yards (91 m) dash at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.

Career

Owens built a name for himself as a national sprinter, setting records in the 100 and 200-yard dashes along with the long jump at the East Technical High School. After his graduation, Owens enrolled at Ohio State University, where he continued to blossom as an athlete.

At the 1935 Big Ten Championships, he made a world record in the 100-yard —and also set an excellent long jump record of 26-8 ¼ that was valued for over 25 years. Owens also made new world marks in the 220-yard dash. His involvement at the Big Ten games was par for the course for that year, which saw him win four different events at the NCAA Championships. In AAU Championships, he won two events and three others at the Olympic trials. In total, Owens competed in 42 events that year, winning them all.

Even then, people knew that “Who is Jesse Owens” after the Olympics, Jesse Owens struggled to find work. He raced against horses for money and also worked as a gas station attendant. Jesse worked as a playground janitor and as a manager of a dry cleaning firm. He started to use his fame to his advantage and began working in public relations in the 1950s. Finally, in 1942, Wallis Ward brought him to Detroit to work at Ford Motor Company as Assistant Personnel Director by Willis Ward, a friend and former competitor from the University of Michigan. Further, Owens became a director, and he worked as a director until 1946.

After that, Owens joined Abe Saperstein in the formation of the West Coast Negro Baseball League. Owens was also the Vice-President and the owner of the Portland (Oregon) Rosebuds franchise. He also entertained the audience while travelling with Rosebuds in between doubleheader games by competing in races against horses. 

Owens also aids in the promotion of the exploitation film Mom and Dad in African American neighbourhoods. He was trying to make a living as a sports promoter. Owens said, "People say that it was demeaning for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what to do? I had four gold medals, which you can't eat. He felt that Everybody knows "Jesse Owens trophy is related to which sports" or " How many trophies Jesse Owens” have. But, even getting that fame didn't help him to earn well. On the lack of opportunities, Owens added, "As there was no television, no extensive advertising, no endorsements then which created a deficiency of options for me.

Racial Discrimination 

As Jesse Owens Olympic medals gave victory for the United States at the games, his homecoming was not as expected by his fanfare. President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to meet with Owens and congratulate him, which was the case for other champions.

The athlete wouldn't be adequately recognized until 1976. However, he was recognized when President Gerald Ford awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He did not seem surprised by his home country's hypocrisy. He claimed, "When I returned to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I wasn't allowed to ride in the front of the bus. "I was forced to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted to stay. I wasn't even invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to shake hands with the president in the White House, either."

His victories all over the world were serendipitous. Germany's leader, Adolf Hitler, openly anticipated Aryan athletic supremacy for the Olympics. Jesse Owens records had shown the Nazi dictator's racist theories wrong. While doing that, he had become not only an Olympic gold medalist but an American hero with his victories in field and track.

The president didn't even acknowledge his victory by sending any telegram." Roosevelt never publicly owned Owens's triumphs—or even the triumph of any of the 18 African Americans who competed at the Berlin Olympics. Unfortunately, Only white Olympians were invited to the White House in 1936 to celebrate their victory. Sadly, the black Olympians who competed in Berlin were not recognized by the White House until 2016. Barack Obama invited the athletes' relatives to an event to celebrate their lives and accomplishments.

Death 

Owens was a heavy smoker as he smoked a pack per day cigarette smoker for almost 35 years in his entire life. At the beginning of December 1979, he was erratically hospitalized with a highly aggressive and drug-resistant type of lung cancer which later became the cause of his death. He died at age 66 in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980, with his wife and other family members at his bedside. He was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

His life has seen all types of colours, even though he was born in an impoverished family. He never gave up, even when the times were so hard for him. It was unfortunate that even having this grand accomplishment and achievements, he cannot earn that kind of respect in society which he deserves. Finally, today we can see the immortality of this personality by his bronze statue at the hilltop on the 30-acre park in Oakville, Alabama. Owens’ three daughters returned to OSU in 2009 to validate at a field hearing before state lawmakers as they were considering their father, Olympic athlete, to be chosen for a statue.

We can also see the tribute being paid in Jesse Owens’ movie called Race, released in 2016, which is inspired by his life, and Jesse Ownes biography, which Jacqueline Edmondson writes.