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JESSE OWENS - Coggle Diagram
JESSE OWENS
1936 OLYMPICS
For Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were exected to be a German showcase an a way to demostrate Aryan superiority
The American and German authorities made an agreement so that Black athletes could partecipate in the Olympic Games, too
The USA won 11 gold medals and six of them by Black athletes. Owens won four gold medals and broke two Olympic records along the way.
One popular tale that arose from Owen's victories was that of the "snub". In fact after Owens' victory in 100-meter, Hitler stormed out of the stadium, though some reports indicate that Hitler later congratulated the athlete on his success.
So Hitler refused to shake hands with Owens because he was African American. By the second day of competitioon, Hitler had decided to no longer publicly congratulate any of the athletes, despite the fact that the previous day, before leaving the stadium because the German were eliminated from day's final event, he had publicly congratulated a few German and Finnish winners.
For this reason the Internetional Olympic Comitee president insisted that Hitler congratulate all or none of the victors.
LATER YEARS
Then Owens retired from athletics and started to earn money for his physical talents: he raced against cars and horses and for a time played with Harlem Globetrotters
He died of lung cancer in Arizona on March 1980. He smoked up to a pack of cigarettes a day for a good deal of his life
He married Ruth Owens, who was the chairwoman of the Jesse Owens Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting the development of young people. Ruth died in 2001 of heart failure and the couple had 3 daughters: Gloria. Beverly and Marlene.
WHO WAS JESSE OWENS?
Jesse Owens, also known as "The Buckeye Bullet", was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals and broke two world records at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin
Owen's athletic career began in high school when he won three track and fied events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships.
In 1935 he competed for Ohio State University at the Big Ten Championships at the University of Michigan: he equaled one world record and broke three others before qualifying and competing in the 1936 lympics
FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE
James Cleveland Owens was born on September 1913, in Oakville, Alabama. The son of a sharecropper, Owens was a frail child who was often sick of chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia
At the age of 7 he was picking up 100 pounds of cotton a day to help his family put food on the table
At the age of 9 Owens' family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Jesse discovered a world far different than the life he had known
School was one of the bigger changes and here Owens earned the nickname that would remain with him for the rest of his life. One of the instructors, unable to understand his southern accent, belived the athlete said his name was "Jesse" when he said "J.C."
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JESSE OWENS AND RACISM
President Franklin D. Roosvelt failed to meet with Owens and congratuate him, as was typical for champions and he wouldn'br propely recognized until 1976 when President Gerald Ford awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
He explained that he wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but he wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either
MOVIE
The 2016 movie "Race" depicts Jesse Owens in college through his wins at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
This film was made in consultation with Owens' dauthers and it stars Stephan James as Owens and Jason Sudeikis as Larry Snyder, Owens' coach at Ohio State University