Jesse Owens and the 1936 “Nazi Olympics”

“Hitler didn’t snub me. It was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
— Jesse Owens, in Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics (Jeremy Schaap, Mariner Books, 2018)

James Cleveland (“J.C.”/“Jesse”) Owens (1913-1980) was born near Oakville, Alabama (southwest of Huntsville) on September 12, 1913. J.C. was only nine years old when Henry and Emma Owens moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio to seek a better life.

Jesse Owens (center) during his gold medal award ceremony for the long jump, amidst a sea of Nazi salutes in Berlin. PHOTO: Bundesarchiv

Owens is best known for his victories at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals. The American track and field champ first drew national attention as a student at East Technical High School in Cleveland when he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9-½ inches at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.

Owens later attended Ohio State University, where he was affectionately known as the “Buckeye Bullet.” In 1935 and 1936 he won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four in each year. At the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 25, 1935, Owens set three world records and tied a fourth. But as a Black man, Owens was not permitted to live on campus at Ohio State, just one of many forms of discrimination that he and other Black people experienced in the US of the 1930s.

That same year, Jesse Owens married his high school sweetheart, Minnie Ruth Solomon. Ruth had given birth to their first daughter, Gloria, in 1932. They would have two more daughters: Marlene (1939) and Beverly (1940).

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Seven Days in Berlin

Jesse Owens’ lasting international fame is the result of his athletic achievements in Berlin over a period of just seven days in the summer of 1936. Between August 3 and 9 the Afro-American athlete won four gold medals, one each for the 100-meter dash, the long jump, the 200-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay. Owens’ four track and field victories were an achievement not equaled until 1984, when Carl Lewis, another African-American, did the same at the 1984 Summer Olympics. (Lewis was often called the “second Jesse Owens” before he got his negative doping image.)

OLYMPIC VICTORS: Jesse Owens’ name appears three times on this list at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. His fourth gold medal was for the 4 x 100 m relay (Staffellauf, USA). The name of his fellow Black US team gold winner, Archie Williams, is on the third line. PHOTO: Hyde Flippo

Many myths have developed around Owens’ victories in 1936. One of the most persistent erroneous stories is the “Hitler snub” myth. We’ll discuss that one a bit later, but first we’ll look at another Berlin Olympics myth.

The fact that there were American athletes competing in the 1936 Olympics at all is still considered by many to be a blotch on the history of the US Olympic Committee. Germany’s open discrimination against Jews and other “non-Aryans” was already public knowledge when many Americans opposed US participation in the “Nazi Olympics.” The opponents of US participation included the American ambassadors to Germany and Austria. But those who warned that Hitler and the Nazis would use the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin for propaganda purposes lost the battle to have the US boycott the Berlin Olympiade.

Which brings us to our first Olympic myth. It is often stated that Jesse Owens’ four gold medals humiliated Hitler by proving to the world that Nazi claims of Aryan superiority were a lie. But Hitler and the Nazis were far from unhappy with the Olympic results. Not only did Germany win far more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics, but the Nazis had pulled off the huge public relations coup that Olympic opponents had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis, falsely, in a positive light. The Nazis were also successful in forcing the US team to drop two Jewish athletes from the 4 x 100 m relay race, replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, both Black. Although Hitler was not pleased about the success of the US Black athletes, in the long run, Owens’ victories turned out to be only a minor embarrassment for Nazi Germany.

But Jesse Owens’ reception by the German public and the spectators in the Olympic stadium was warm. There were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers to the point that he complained about all the attention. He later claimed that his reception in Berlin was greater than any other he had ever experienced, and he had been quite popular even before the Olympics.

Back in the USA

With his victories and medals behind him, Owens was looking forward to reaping some rewards. But after being stripped of his amateur status by the pro-Nazi president of the United States Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, for leaving a European tour early, potential sponsors backed out. That, and the racial discrimination of the day in his native land, prevented him from enjoying anything close to the huge financial benefits that African American athletes can expect today. When Owens came home from his success in Nazi Germany, he faced barriers that he would not have faced today. In fact, Owens had encountered far less discrimination in Germany than he did back in his own country. For a post-Olympic reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, the world-famous Black athlete was forced to use the freight elevator! That is just one example of the humiliating discrimination that even a Black man as famous as Owens confronted in those days.

Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. PHOTO: Library of Congress

After the ticker-tape parades, Owens received no Hollywood offers, no endorsement contracts, and no ad deals. His face didn’t appear on cereal boxes. Three years after his victories in Berlin, a failed business deal forced Owens to declare bankruptcy. He made a modest living from his own sports promotions, including racing against a thoroughbred horse. After moving to Chicago in 1949, he started a successful public relations firm. Owens was also a popular jazz disc jockey for many years in the “Windy City.”

The Hitler-Snub Myth
Adolf Hitler did shun a Black American athlete at the 1936 Games, but it wasn’t Jesse Owens. On the first day of the Olympics, just before Cornelius Johnson, an African-American athlete who won the first gold medal for the US that day, was to receive his award, Hitler left the stadium early. (The Nazis later claimed it was a previously scheduled departure.) Prior to his departure, Hitler had received a number of German winners, but Olympic officials informed the German leader that in the future he must receive all of the winners or none at all. After the first day, he opted to acknowledge none. Jesse Owens had his victories on the second day and later, when Hitler was no longer greeting any of the athletes.

The false narrative of the Hitler snub even made it into the 2012 PBS television documentary about Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics that was rebroadcasted during the 2020 Tokyo Games in August 2021. In the 1930s some American newspapers helped spread the myth. On the second day of the 1936 Games, the first day that Owens competed in qualifying events, Hitler did not publicly receive or congratulate any of the medal winners. Nevertheless, the communist New York City newspaper the Daily Worker claimed Hitler received all of the track winners except Cornelius Johnson, and left the stadium as a “deliberate snub” after watching Johnson’s winning jump. Hitler was subsequently accused of failing to acknowledge Owens (who won gold medals on August 3, 4 (two), and 9) or shake his hand. Even after many decades, the snub myth just won’t die, probably because it serves to make Hitler and the Nazis look bad, even though the actual facts also do that.

The FDR Snub
Ironically, the real snub of Owens came from his own president. Even after ticker-tape parades for Owens in New York City and Cleveland, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens’ record-breaking achievements. Owens was never invited to the White House and never even received a letter of congratulations from the president. (As a staunch Republican, Owens endorsed Alf Landon, Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in the 1936 presidential race.) The later Truman administration did no better than FDR. Almost two decades passed before an American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, honored Owens by naming him “Ambassador of Sports” — in 1955. Owens appeared on national TV in a CBS interview with Edward R. Murrow prior to embarking on a tour of several countries.

This US postage stamp was issued in honor of Jesse Owens in 1998. PHOTO: USPS

Later US presidents also honored Owens. In 1976 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Gold Medal.

The Owens Legacy
The many tributes to Owens since his death in 1980 include two US postage stamps (in 1990 and 1998, see photo left). In Berlin a street near the Olympic Stadium in Berlin was renamed Jesse-Owens-Allee (boulevard/avenue) in 1984. The Jesse-Owens-Realschule (a secondary school) in the Lichtenberg district of Berlin also honors his name. The Berlin Olympic Village building in which Owens stayed is still standing, with a sign about the US track athlete. Owens was able to spend his Olympic days in Berlin without the segregation that was so common in the US. In 2001 Ohio State University dedicated its Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium for track and field events.

Jesse Owens, a longtime smoker, died of lung cancer in Tucson, Arizona on March 31, 1980. In Phoenix, where he had spent his retired life, his body lay in state in the Arizona capitol rotunda. He is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

“When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?” – Jesse Owens, quoted in his New York Times obituary (April 1, 1980)

On June 29, 1996, in conjunction with the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Owens’ hometown of Oakville, Alabama dedicated the new 20-acre Jesse Owens Memorial Park in Danville and unveiled the new visitors center, memorial museum, and a replica of the Owens home. As part of a nationwide torch relay, the Olympic Torch passed through Cleveland, Ohio (June 9) and Oakville (June 29), 60 years after Owens’ 1936 Olympic triumph in Berlin. Stuart Owens Rankin, Jesse Owens’ grandson, was one of the torch bearers. (Ironically, the very first modern Olympic Torch relay was inaugurated by the Nazis for the 1936 Games.)

In October 2005, with help from the Hampton Inn Corporation’s Save-A-Landmark Program, volunteers revitalized the Jesse Owens Memorial Park, which features a bronze statue of the athlete and a replica of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Torch. Jesse’s widow Ruth lit the torch’s eternal flame as part of the 1996 ceremonies.

Next | American Black History and Germany

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AT THE GERMAN WAY

• American Black History and Germany – More African Americans with German connections
• Martin Luther King, Jr. in Berlin – In 1964 King visited both West and East Berlin, against the wishes of the US Department of State.
• Leni Riefenstahl is renowned for her groundbreaking cinematic coverage of the 1936 Olympics.
• Mini Bios A-Z – More brief biographies of notable people from the German-speaking world
• Featured Biographies – More detailed bios of notable people from the German-speaking world
• Notable Germans, Austrians and Swiss – More bios
• Notable Women from Austria, Germany, Switzerland
• Famous Graves – The graves and cemeteries of the famous

ON THE WEB

• BOOK: Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics (2018) by Jeremy Schaap – from Amazon.com
• The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936 – US Holocaust Memorial Museum – “Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship scored a huge propaganda success as host of the Summer Olympics in Berlin.” – with videos
• JesseOwens.com – official site
• Jesse Owens Museum at the Memorial Park in Danville, Alabama

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