Jesse Owens, the son of Alabama sharecroppers, won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, a rebuke to the racial ideology of the Nazi regime that was staging them. He came home to a country that still segregated him, was barred from amateur competition within weeks, and spent years scraping a living before winning belated national recognition as an athlete and public speaker.
At a Glance
- Born
- 12 September 1913, Oakville, Lawrence County, Alabama
- Died
- 31 March 1980, Tucson, Arizona
- Birth name
- James Cleveland Owens
- Known for
- Five world records and one equaled in forty-five minutes, Ann Arbor (25 May 1935); four Olympic gold medals, Berlin (1936); Blackthink (1970) and I Have Changed (1972)
- Fields
- Sport
- Era
- Letters, Arts & Sciences
Early Life
James Cleveland Owens was born on 12 September 1913 in Oakville, Lawrence County, Alabama, the son of Henry and Emma Alexander Owens, sharecroppers. In 1922, when he was nine, the family joined the Great Migration and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. At school there, a teacher misheard the initials “J.C.” as “Jesse,” and the name stayed with him.
At Cleveland’s Fairmount Junior High School, Owens was spotted by the track coach Charles Riley, who became his most important early mentor, training him before school each morning. He entered East Technical High School in 1930 and in June 1933, at the National Interscholastic Championships in Chicago, led East Tech to the team title, equaling the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and running the 220-yard dash in 20.7 seconds.
That autumn he enrolled at Ohio State University. Competing for the Buckeyes, he became known as the “Buckeye Bullet.” In 1935 he married Minnie Ruth Solomon.
Life and Work
On 25 May 1935, at the Big Ten championships at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens produced the most famous afternoon in the history of track and field. Between 3:15 and 4:00 p.m. he equaled the world record in the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds), set a world record in the long jump (8.13 meters, or 26 feet 8¼ inches), and set world records in the 220-yard dash (20.3 seconds) and the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds); because the 220-yard times also bettered the records for the slightly shorter 200 meters, he was credited with five world records and one equaled record in about forty-five minutes. His long-jump mark stood for twenty-five years, until 1960.
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were a showcase for the Nazi regime and its claims of “Aryan” supremacy. Owens was one of eighteen Black athletes on the U.S. squad. Between 3 and 9 August 1936 he won four gold medals: the 100 meters on 3 August; the long jump on 4 August, after fouling his first two qualifying attempts, in a contest in which the German Luz Long, with whom Owens formed a lasting friendship, took silver; the 200 meters on 5 August, in an Olympic record of 20.7 seconds, ahead of Mack Robinson, the older brother of Jackie Robinson; and the 4 × 100-meter relay on 9 August, in which he ran the first leg. He was the first American track and field athlete to win four gold medals at a single Olympics. A leading Nazi newspaper disparaged the Black American athletes as “auxiliaries.”
The story that Adolf Hitler deliberately snubbed Owens has been told in many versions; the snub Owens himself emphasized was at home. “Hitler didn’t snub me — it was our president who snubbed me,” he later said. “The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” Franklin D. Roosevelt did not invite him to the White House. Immediately after the Games, the Amateur Athletic Union and the American Olympic Committee required Owens to join an exhausting exhibition tour for which the athletes received no pay. When he refused to continue, the AAU suspended him from amateur competition in August 1936, ending his amateur career at twenty-two.
Barred from amateur competition, Owens had to find other ways to support his family. He ran exhibition races, including races against horses, and tried a series of business ventures. During the Second World War he worked for the federal Office of Civilian Defense (1942) and then for the Ford Motor Company (1943). He moved to Chicago in 1949, and in 1953 the Republican governor of Illinois appointed him to head the Illinois Youth Commission. He worked with youth programs including the Chicago Boys’ Club and built a career as a public speaker. His memoir Blackthink (1970), written with Paul Neimark, rejected the militant politics of the late 1960s; two years later, in I Have Changed (1972), he revised those views and described a deeper understanding of American racism.
Legacy
Recognition came late. Ohio State awarded Owens an honorary doctorate in 1972, and he was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. On 5 August 1976, in the White House’s Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, President Gerald R. Ford presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter gave him a Living Legend Award. Owens was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1979 and died in Tucson, Arizona, on 31 March 1980, at the age of sixty-six. He is buried in Chicago.
On 28 March 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Ohio State dedicated the Jesse Owens Memorial Plaza outside Ohio Stadium in 1984, and the Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum stands in Oakville, Alabama. Owens’s career captures a central contradiction of American history between the wars: a Black athlete celebrated abroad as proof against racial supremacy returned to a country that segregated him, denied him a living from his fame, and honored him only decades later.
Jesse Owens’s victories in Nazi Berlin exposed a contradiction: a Black athlete celebrated as proof against racial supremacy returned to a country that still segregated him. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 12 September 1913 Born in Oakville, Lawrence County, Alabama.
- 1922 Family moves to Cleveland, Ohio.
- June 1933 Equals the world record in the 100-yard dash at the National Interscholastic Championships in Chicago.
- 25 May 1935 Sets five world records and equals a sixth in forty-five minutes at Ann Arbor.
- 3–9 August 1936 Wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.
- August 1936 Suspended by the Amateur Athletic Union after leaving a post-Olympic exhibition tour.
- 1953 Appointed head of the Illinois Youth Commission.
- 5 August 1976 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Gerald R. Ford.
- 31 March 1980 Dies of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona.
- 28 March 1990 Posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
Sources and Further Reading
- Encyclopedia of Alabama, “Jesse Owens.” Link
- Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Case Western Reserve University, “Owens, Jesse.” Link
- World Athletics, “85th Anniversary of Jesse Owens’ Unmatched World Record Spree.” Link
- White House Historical Association, “Running Against the World.” Link
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Jesse Owens Competes in Olympic Games,” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Link
- Jesse Owens with Paul Neimark, Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man (New York: William Morrow, 1970).
- The Ohio State University Libraries, Jesse Owens Collection Guide. Link
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- Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Jesse Owens. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/people/jesse-owens/
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- Black-History.com Editors. “Jesse Owens.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/people/jesse-owens/.
By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.