Owens, "Jesse" (James C.)
Track and Field
b. Sept. 12, 1913, Danville, AL
d. March 31, 1980
The grandson of slaves, Owens was born into a share-cropping family and, when he was seven, he was expected to pick 100 pounds of cotton a day. At nine, his family moved to Cleveland. When he entered school a teacher asked his name and he responded "J. C.," which is what his family called him. The teacher thought he'd said "Jesse," and that name stuck for the rest of his life.
After setting national interscholastic records in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the long jump, Owens attended Ohio State University. Although Owens is best known for winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, his most incredible performance came in the 1935 Big Ten meet, where he broke four world records and tied another in a single afternoon.
After tying the record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash, he made a single attempt at the long jump and set a new world record of 26 feet, 81/4 inches. In the 220-yard dash, he set another record of 20.3 seconds, which was also accepted as a world record for the 200-meter. Owens then rested while the 2-mile run was taking place and ran a record 22.6 in the 220-yard low hurdles.
Owens broke or tied Olympic records nine times at the 1936 Berlin Games, often known as the "Nazi Olympics." He won gold medals in the 100-meter, the 200-meter, the long jump, and as the anchor runner on the 4 by 100-meter relay team.
After the Olympics, he revealed his secret to a British journalist: "I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up. My foot is only a fraction of the time on the track."
Owens won the male athlete of the year award from the Associated Press, but was irked at not winning the Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete of the year; that went to Glenn Morris, the Olympic decathlon champion.
Shortly after the Olympics, Owens was suspended by the AAU for not competing in a Swedish meet that he'd never agreed to enter. That effectively ended his competitive career. Owens made a living for a time by going on barnstorming tours, racing against dogs, horses, and motorcycles. He worked as a paid campaigner for presidential candidate Alf Landon in 1940 and then became a playground instructor in Cleveland.
During the 1950s, Owens went into public relations and came under fire for not supporting the civil rights movement strongly enough. One black writer, William Oscar Johnson, referred to him as "a professional good example."
Owens opposed the militant black athletes who threatened to boycott the 1968 Olympics, and in 1970 he wrote a book, Blackthink, which criticized militancy. Two years later, however, he retracted many of his earlier views in another book, I Have Changed.
An incessant smoker for thirty-five years, he died of lung cancer at his retirement home in Tucson, Arizona.