. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics
in Berlin, Germany
, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics, a victory more poignant and often noted because Adolf Hitler
had intended the 1936 games to showcase his Aryan
ideals and prowess.
He has the Jesse Owens Award
accolade named after him in honor of his significant career.
James Cleveland Owens was born the seventh of eleven children of Henry and Mary Emma Owens in Oakville
, Alabama
on September 12, 1913.
Another old friend gone!
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that's where it's at.
When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.
I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.
Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.
We used to have a lot of fun. We never had any problems. We always ate. The fact that we didn't have steak? Who had steak?