Person1913 – 1980

Jesse Owens

American sprinter and long jumper who won four gold medals (100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4 × 100 m relay) at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, an African American whose victories became a symbol against Nazi racism

Born to a sharecropping family in Alabama, he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. As a student at Ohio State University he set three world records and equalled a fourth within less than an hour at a single meet in 1935. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics he won the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4 × 100 m relay, making a mockery of Nazi racial propaganda, and struck up a friendship with his German long-jump rival Luz Long. Back home, however, racial discrimination made it hard for him to earn a living. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976.

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19361936 Berlin Olympicsparticipant
Games that Nazi Germany turned into a showcase for its regime. The first torch relay was held. The American Jesse Owens won four gold medals, and Sohn Kee-chung won the marathon for Japan.

People who appear alongside

Adolf Hitler1889 – 1945
Nazi leader and Führer of Germany (1934–1945) who started the Second World War and perpetrated the Holocaust; he killed himself as Berlin fell
Sohn Kee-chung1912 – 2002
Korean marathon runner under Japanese rule who won the 1936 Berlin Olympic marathon for Japan but bowed his head on the podium; the photograph led to the Japanese flag erasure incident

Themes this person appears in

Summer Olympics776 BC – 2024
From the ancient festival at Olympia to Paris 2024 — how the modern Games revived by Coubertin came through wars, boycotts and division