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James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. [3]Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". [4]
Hitler's decision not to shake hands with American long-jump medal winner Jesse Owens has been widely interpreted as a snub of an African American; however some commentators have noted that Hitler missed all medal presentations after the first day as he only wished to shake hands with German victors.
No such invitation was made to the black athletes, such as Jesse Owens, who had won four gold medals. A widely believed myth about the 1936 games was that Hitler had snubbed Owens, an event that never occurred. Owens said that "Hitler didn't snub me—it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram". [57]
Jesse Owens and Luz Long's embrace has become a defining image of Olympic sportsmanship, but it came with consequences
The unexplained, last-minute decision to remove Glickman and Sam Stoller—a fellow Jewish American athlete—from the 100-meter relay at the 1936 Olympics, where they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, who easily won the gold medal, has been widely viewed as an American effort to avoid embarrassing or offending Adolf Hitler, then ...
Jesse Owens won gold in the long jump. An often-told story holds that Germany's Luz Long gave Owens some advice after he almost failed to qualify. The veracity of the story has been questioned, but it is known for certain that Owens and Long embraced in front of Hitler and became friends. [10] [11]
Hitler watched from his stadium balcony as Jesse Owens, the Black American athlete, won four gold medals to become the star of the Games, dealing a blow to Hitler's notions of racial superiority.
In the 2016 biographical film about Jesse Owens, Race, the filming at the Olympic Games is depicted with Riefenstahl constantly quarreling with Goebbels about her artistic decisions, especially over filming Jesse Owens, who is proving a politically embarrassing refutation of Nazi Germany's claims about Aryan athletic supremacy.