Jesse Owens, American Hero!

#390 - Jesse Owens was one of the greatest runners in history. He was a trail blazer, a leader a father, husband and a hero. He was everything America and the world needed at a time when everything seemed to be torn apart. He showed that talent was helpful in athleticism, but it was one's hard work and desire to win that made the difference. And he wasn't going to let any bully, no matter how intimidating, tell him otherwise. This week, I talk all about Owens, and why he's one of the best the world has ever seen. Also, I talk about something that's happening now and how it can help us move forward for a better future. 

Transcript

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Hidden West share stories you might not hear anywhere else. Want to know why the last chance grade might be the most dangerous bit of highway in California? Why did the Japanese drop bombs on the western part of the U.S.? And where is the state of Jefferson? All these stories and more about what makes the Western U.S. so great are here. There's a new story published every week. Check out Hidden West on YouTube. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health-oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi, and welcome to episode 390 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it each and every week. It's about time I cover this wonderful American hero. Jesse Owens is a name that should be known by every runner. But maybe not all of his achievements are known. Maybe you don't know everything that happened to him or everything that went through his life. So I thought I'd go over everything that I could and talk about him this episode. And stay tuned for the end because I want to talk about something that's been happening lately and that I think it's a really, really great thing and we can all learn from it. Owens had a natural talent in track and field and excellence in every event he attempted. But talent only takes you so far. He worked as hard or harder than anyone else in the field during his time, with a passion and determination that isn't seen every day. And we do see that in the truly greatest of athletes, don't we? They don't rely on what nature gave them, but they build on it to give them what seems like superhuman abilities. And these are the best of the best that do that. But there are so many runners I could put it in this category, Jim Thorpe, Greta Weiss, Ilya Kipchogi, Emil Zatopek. There's so many. Owens belongs in this list of the greatest runners in history. Some of us wander through life not knowing what we want to do until much later. It seems Jesse Owens knew exactly what he loved and what he wanted in his life at an early age. James Cleveland Owens was born in Alabama on September twelfth, nineteen thirteen to Henry and Emma Owens. While he was young, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. His first success on the track was in junior high at Fairmont Junior High School. He set a new junior high record by running the hundred yard dash in 11 seconds. But that wasn't his only event. He also set records in the long jump and high jump. At East Technical High School as a senior, Owens equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds for the 100 yard dash. And during that same year, he was elected president of the senior class and captain of the track team. Even before Owens enrolled at Ohio State University, he set a new world record in the 220-yard dash and tied the record of the 100-yard dash at the national championship in Chicago. At the Big Ten Conference Championships while competing for Ohio State in 1935, Owens broke three world records and tied a fourth in one hour, the only athlete to be able to record multiple world records in the same day. But his greatest fame came in the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympic Games where he won four gold records. So let's get into it. In nineteen thirty three, Hitler took control of Germany as Chancellor. He dreamed of using the nineteen thirty six Summer Games to show the world the dominance of his master race. His master race was to show what he considered the Aryan race, the uh Northern Europeans, even though Aryan came from Iran and that part of the world, he wanted to show their dominance in the world. His very twisted philosophy and twisted mentality. And it fortunately was defeated in the war, so that's a good thing. But the U.S. nearly boycotted the 1936 Olympics due to their discrimination policies. The AAU, the amateur athletic union, argued that Germany violated the Olympic rules by discriminating against Jewish and minority athletes. Forty-three percent of Americans supported a boycott at the time. And there were demonstrations and lots of people out uh protesting against this, against being in the Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brendage was very much against a boycott, claiming that mixing politics with sports was a bad idea. I have always thought that mixing sports with politics is a bad idea. Unfortunately, that's happened so much in our history. And he also felt that it was really a good thing for us to show that Hitler couldn't dominate the sports, that we had to have a good showing. There were also problems with the black athletes while dealing with the Nazi ideas of white supremacy while they were still living with discrimination at home. I mean, it wasn't like we were very nice to black Americans at that time. So there was this hypocrisy going on, this dual thing going on where they weren't treated very well in the US, and of course, in Germany, no one who wasn't the ideal Aryan figure was treated well. Ultimately, it crushed the Nazi ideal of white supremacy in sports, with Jesse Owens leading the way. He was not the only one, but he led the way. Now there needs to be some understanding that the majority of Germans were not Nazis. Most Germans did not support them, but you could never state that you didn't support the Nazis out loud to anyone, ever, for fear of being turned into the SS. They lived in fear of being found out. What happened was what was happening in Germany is that they would teach the children in school. They would brainwash the children into the Nazi ideology so that if if the parent even if the parents didn't believe in what the Nazis were doing, their own children could turn them in to the to the SS, which was their military police, basically. Your own children could turn you in if you didn't uh support what the Nazis were doing. It was a very fearful and horrible time in Germany. So that the majority of Germans didn't believe this, but they lived in total fear of their government. When the US team arrived in Berl in Berlin, the German people went crazy to see Jesse Owens. They shouted his name, they wildly cheered, asked for his autograph. They knew he was special. This shows you that they supported him and they didn't care what color he was. Jesse said that he received some of the loudest ovations of his career in Berlin. Hitler and the Nazis tried to use the games to show Aryan superiority, but Owens wasn't singled out. After Owens started winning gold medals, Hitler stopped seeing athletes singly so that he wouldn't be forced to speak with the Jewish and black athletes. However, it is noted that Owens was not snubbed entirely. Hitler and Owens exchanged congratulatory waves, so there was that at least. Owens and other black athletes were allowed to stay in the Olympic village, eat in the same restaurants, and sleep in the same lodges, which they weren't allowed to do in many places in the US. To us this seems strange, that I even have to say that, but this was in an age where it wasn't a given, and segregation happened not only in the US but all over the world. Owens made a special friend in the 1936 Games. He became friends with German athlete Les Long. Long publicly embraced Owens after he won the long jump. This did not please the Nazis officials, but they didn't care. They were friends until Long was unfortunately passed away in the uh in the German front in Russia. Owens won four gold medals, including a team gold for the four by one hundred meter sprint relay on August ninth. I'll go into the relay a little bit more later. The three he won singly were a hundred meter dash with a time of ten point three seconds on August third, the long jump of eight point six meters on August fourth, two hundred meter dash with a time of twenty point seven seconds on August fifth. The stories about Owens like to end here, saying how he defeated the Nazis, and he did, but his story continues on. It doesn't end with the Olympics. And in contrast though, when when Owens came home, he wasn't even invited to the White House to meet President Franklin Roosevelt, which I found shocking. I didn't even realize that. He sometimes had to use the freight elevator in buildings as well. Owens did not have an easy time of it when he returned home. He was forced to quit Ohio State because of his poor uh standings and his poor grades. He signed with a consolidated radio artist as a professional entertainer in nineteen thirty seven and tap danced with Bill Bojangles Robinson. It was the middle of the depression and not the best time to be looking for work, especially if you were black. Owen started a dry cleaning business in nineteen thirty eight, but that failed in nineteen thirty nine. During World War II, he was appointed the director of the National Fitness Program for Blacks by the US Office of Civilian Defense in nineteen forty two. He traveled around the country promoting physical fitness and supporting the war effort. In nineteen forty three, Owens joined the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan as assistant personal director for African American workers. He was put in charge of hiring and firing employees as well as settling disputes between workers and management. He rose to the position of personnel director but lost his job at the end of the war. When a sporting goods store he opened in Detroit failed, Owens went on the road to make money. He raced horses, running against horses is what that means, and toured with the Harlem Globetrotters and the Cincinnati Crescents, which is a baseball team. Owens and his family moved to Chicago in nineteen forty nine. He opened a public relations agency and held executive positions with the Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, the Illinois Athletic Commission, and the South Side Boys Club. In nineteen fifty three, the governor of Illinois, William G. Stratton, appointed Owens as Secretary of the Illinois Youth Commission, which oversaw recreational and educational programs for the state's youngsters. President Dwight D. Eisenhower enlisted Owens as a Goodwill ambassador in 1955 and sent the world renowned track star to India, the Philippines, and Malaysia to promote physical exercise as well as tout the cause of American freedom and economic opportunity to the developing world. He would continue his goodwill tours in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Although he lost his job with the Illinois Youth Commission in 1960, Owens continued his product endorsement work for corporations such as Quaker Oates, Sears and Roebuck, and Johnson ⁇ Johnson. In 1965, Atlanta Richfield Company sponsored the first Arco Jesse Owens Games, an annual track meet for children aged 10 to 15. The Ohio State University awarded Owens an honorary doctorate of athletic arts in 1972, and the U.S. Olympic Committee appointed him to the Board of Directors the following year. Two years after his induction to the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974, Owens received the Presidential Medal of Honor from President Gerald Ford. Owens was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 1990. The next part really surprised me. Of course, when we're young, we can do most anything and it won't hurt us or our performance, but it does catch up with us eventually. Owens was a lifetime smoker. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1979 and passed away in his home in Tucson, Arizona in 1980. The year Owens died in the city of Tucson, Owens opened a park, featuring a swimming pool, baseball fields, and a playground in his name on the east side off of Sarnoff Avenue. It's a complete understatement to say how much he influenced track and field. He transformed it not only by shedding racial biases, but he showed how strong one athlete can be. With all the walls in front of him, with all the distractions they tried to put there, he still got it done. He was in his prime in an era that probably wasn't quite ready for him, but maybe he is what needed to happen. There is always one person to start a movement against something so terrible like racial bias. Because without that one person saying they're not going to accept being treated like a second class citizen any longer, others won't start speaking up either. They need that one person to start, and then it just continues. He made friends with a German athlete during the Olympic Games, showing the world that it didn't have to be the way the Nazis wanted it to be. He wouldn't accept it when others in sports tried to exclude him. He would not take it when other people in the world wanted to shut him out. I'll talk about the movie. I'm going to give a movie review and I'll talk about it very shortly. The thing with sports is sports are supposed to bring people together. They are not supposed to there's not supposed to be division in sports, there's not supposed to be segregation in sports, it's supposed to bring bring people together as one, as we enjoy something without the political biases. And unfortunately, there are some types of sports that still have all the politics involved, and I wish they'd just take it out, because it doesn't belong there, in my opinion. That's my opinion. Now, I did watch a movie about Jesse Owens called Race. It came out in 2016. It was really good. I enjoyed it very much. I think if you like Jesse Owens and want to know more about him and want to watch a dramatized historic type movie about him, it's a really good one. It stars Stephen James as Jesse Owens, who did a really good job. And Jason Sidikis, I think that's how you pronounce his name. He was coach Larry Snyder, and if you remember him, he's in Ted Lasso, so that's a great show, and I always liked that show a lot. So if you liked him in that, you'd like him in this. Of course, it's not a comedy. He's much more dramatic and much more um intense in this. Like I said, I enjoyed it very much. A lot of it, I would say most of it was close to the true story. They embellished his personal relationships a lot, and that was not true. He fell in love in high school and stayed with the same woman his whole life. He didn't have any of the other extramarital affairs that they showed in the movie, but other than that, it was pretty close to the real thing. That's the only spoiler I'm gonna give. If you know a story, then you know what's going on. Everything else they stayed pretty close to it. The highlight of the film is the Olympic Games. Um whoever they got to play Goebbels was perfect. He was smarmy and slimy and everything you'd expect him to be. The two stars were really, really good. They just did just such a great job. It was just a great, terrific movie. It had a lot of drama in it, of course. And I think the scenes in the relay that I talked about, there's a great part in the movie where Avery Brendage, who had made the arrangement with the Nazis to have the track team participate. Anytime I believe that he had to talk to Goebbels, and Goebbels was so smarmy that he made it seem like he he had an arrangement with Goebbels. It's just he didn't really necessarily have an arrangement with the Goebbels. He's told Goebbels you can't show the uh the swastika anywhere during the games. Anyone we want to participate has to participate. And then Goebbels said, You have to take the Jewish runners out of the relay. He actually succumbed to that and he said, okay, he took them out, but he put in uh Jesse and the other black runner, uh Dave Al Al Britton, I think the his name is, and that was uh Owen's best friend and another black runner. Um, but it's a really, really good scene, and um of course the two Jewish runners were very upset over it, but watch the movie. It's r it does a really good job at showing it. It's it's one of the highlights of the film, I think. It's a great scene, and it shows that Goebbels might have gotten his way getting the uh the Jewish runners replaced, but he didn't get his way in the end. Of course he did. Anyway, it's a really it's a wonderful movie, and I suggest watching it. Owens' story is just so inspirational. Yeah, it's frustrating because he was in a time where they, of course, didn't appreciate him, and he went through so much, but he went through it, and how much of an inspiration he is to the runners today. How many of these runners today can can say that they are where they are because of Jesse Owens? He led the way for so many, so many in this world. And yes, you have to work your butt off. It isn't about you can have all the talent you in the world, but if you don't take that talent and put it to use to something, it's nothing. It the talent melts away. It's it's not given, it's not a free gift. It's a gift that you have to use. So if you have the talent, put it to use. Sorry for my voice today. I my allergies are just kicking my butt. So if I sound if it sounds a little scratchy, I apologize. But that is Jesse Owens, and um I admire and respect him even more after I found up all this information about him. And I wanted to say a few words about something that's going on right now, and I hope it's m it's still going on while you're listening to the show. If not, maybe you watched a little bit of it. I've never been a big soccer fan or football fan, as you call it elsewhere outside of the US. I just not has not really interested me that much. But somehow the this World Cup has just brought me in, and I'm just so excited about it. And one of the things that has is really interesting is that the all the people from Europe and all over the world has come to the US and North America and Canada and Mexico, of course, and just how much they love it, and how much it is different from what their media has told them. They thought they would come over here and just everything would just be sucky and be just crime everywhere and be dump everywhere. And they love it. They love America, and they're finding how different it is from what the media has told them. They love ranch dressing, my goodness, ranch dressing, they love ranch dressing and air conditioning. I hear this also about California. Are there problems in California? Yes, of course. There are lots of problems, and I won't be retiring here next year. It's just too expensive. But when someone tells you the whole state is a dump, I know that they've never visited here. I know that they've never been to Sequoia or King's Canyon National Parks. I know that they've never been to Monterey. I know that they've never been to the northern part of the state, up by uh Craig's Canyon or Mount Shasta or or the Redwoods National Park or Crescent City or down San Diego or or uh Death Valley, for goodness sake, which is one of my favorite places in the whole world. They've never been to these places because if they had been to these places, they would never call it a dump. Yeah, they're terrible places. There are terrible neighborhoods anywhere. Where they live, I'm sure there are bad neighborhoods. They can't tell me where they live in Alabama or Iowa or Ohio, for goodness sakes, there aren't bad neighborhoods. There's neighbor bad neighborhoods everywhere. So there is just this bias that the news goes around and just talks about the bad things. Don't listen to the media. Don't listen to the news. If you want to experience a place, the only way you're going to experience a place is through travel and going to see it. If you want to see how a place is, you go to it and see how it is. I would say probably the only place that you know there are places you shouldn't travel to. I said don't visit Iran right now, obviously. There are a few places that you shouldn't go to. But if you want to find out what a place is like, visit. I was lucky when I was growing up in that I got to travel a lot because my dad worked for one of the airlines, so I traveled basically all over the world. So I got to experience places and I got to see what they were like in person. And you get a lot more education as a kid by visiting places in person than sitting in in a classroom hearing about it from someone who might be biased. That bias is not going to help you. You need to see it for yourself. So don't trust the talking heads. Well, the band you can trust. You can trust the band completely, but don't trust the talking heads in this in the media. They lie to you. Alright. Anyway, that is it, and that is all I have to say. And I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Because I enjoyed making it. It was fun. And it was fun researching it. And he just I my admiration for Jesse Owens is just unbounded. Alright, so that is it. And my email address email me is Martha Wordsworld at gmail.com. And on that note, let's type our shoelaces and go for a micro.