Jesse Owens in Berlin: Four Gold Medals, 1936
1936 · event
In the first days of August 1936 an athlete from Ohio ran and jumped his way through the Olympic Games in Berlin and won four gold medals, in the hundred metres, the long jump, the two hundred metres and the sprint relay. Jesse Owens was the grandson of people born into slavery and the son of a sharecropper, and he competed in a stadium built by a state that had made racial hierarchy its official doctrine. The crowd of a hundred thousand cheered him anyway.
The Games had been awarded to Berlin before the change of government and were used as a stage for a political message. Anti Jewish signs were taken down for the duration, foreign visitors were welcomed, and the whole event was filmed for the world. Owens simply won. In the long jump he fouled twice in qualification, and the German jumper Luz Long, his closest rival, suggested he take off well behind the board. Owens qualified, then beat Long for the gold, and the two left the stadium arm in arm. They stayed in contact until Long was killed in the war.
Owens returned to a country where his victories did not open the doors of a hotel. There was no official reception, no state honour, and to make a living he took part in exhibition races and stunts. Recognition came slowly, and much later, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded in 1976.
His four medals are remembered as a quiet and complete answer given in the only language the occasion allowed. Owens himself resisted being turned into a symbol and spoke instead about the everyday dignity he was still denied at home. The 1936 Games are studied today as a warning about sport used for politics, and Jesse Owens is the reason they are also remembered as something better.