Dan Snow's History Hit - Jesse Owens

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Jesse Owens' victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics made him an international sports hero, and a symbol of the civil rights movement. His friendship with the German long jumper Carl 'Luz' Long also stood as an outward act of defiance against Adolf Hitler, and fuelled condemnation of the racial ideology of the Third Reich. However, his life away from the Olympics is less widely understood, as are the challenges that he faced back in the United States.Today we're joined by David Lee Morgan Jr., a sportswriter and author of the children's book series 'Black Trailblazers in Sports'. Dan and David outline the context of Owens' storied Olympic wins and ask why a man received as a hero abroad was treated like a second-class citizen at home.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about one of the greatest Olympians of all time, Jesse Owens. In 1936, at the Berlin Summer Olympics, in front of Adolf Hitler, who decided to host the Olympics because he wanted to project the image of Nazi German exceptionalism, of Aryan racial supremacy. At that Olympic Games, Jesse Owens ran riot. On the 3rd of August, Owens won the 100-metre dash. 10.3 seconds.

On the 4th of August, he won the long jump with a jump just short of his own world record. And in doing so, made a lifelong friend of the man who got silver. The German Karl Ludwig Lutz Long, who you'll be hearing more about in a second. And on the 5th, he won the 200-metre sprint, narrowly defeating his teammate, who was the older brother of another iconic black sportsman, Jackie Robinson. On August the 9th, Owens won his fourth gold medal in the 4x100m sprint relay.

It was an astonishing achievement. A black American whose family had been sharecroppers in the Deep South but had moved to Ohio in search of a better future. I should say, funny story about that Olympics. In the opening ceremony, they released 25,000 pigeons into the sky. The heavens were crowded with pigeons. And then apparently they shot a big cannon, and that scared the poop out of the pigeons, according to an American athlete who witnessed it. And we had straw hats, flat straw hats. You could hear the pitter-patter on our straw hats. But we felt sorry for the women.

They got it in their hair. And I mean, there were a mass of droppings. And I say, it was so funny. So that was the entirely predictable result of firing a giant cannon into thousands of pigeons. But at that Olympic Games, Jesse Owens, wearing new Adidas shoes, given to him by Adidasler,

making him the first African-American athlete ever to be sponsored by a sporting goods company. Interestingly, Hitler did not snub him. Hitler, whilst being very rude and racist about him in private, acknowledged him in person, and there are claims he actually shook his hand. Jesse Owens said, in fact, he felt it had been the American government, not, amazingly, Hitler, that snubbed him after his success. So on this podcast, we're going to talk more about Jesse Owens. We're going to talk about actually the day that almost throws the Olympics into the shade, the so-called Day of Days,

one of the greatest sporting days in history. It's actually May 25th, 1935, where he established four world records in the span of just 45 minutes. He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash. He broke 10 seconds on that. That's not 100-meter dash, 100-yard dash. And he set world records in the long jump, in the 220-yard sprint, and the 220-yard low hurdles. It does seem like his time meant that he would have got the 200-meter flat and hurdles world records as well. He really was one of the most exceptional athletes in our history. So this is the story of Jesse Owens. It's also the story of his extraordinary friendship

with the man he defeated, the German he defeated, in the long jump that fateful day in August 1936, Karl Lutzlong. They walked arm in arm around the stadium, and Owens later said, it took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be worth a plating for the 24-carat friendship that I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. And their relationship, a man who would go on to fight for the German, the Nazi Wehrmacht and a black American athlete. Their friendship and the way

it's endured through the generations makes that moment in Berlin in 1936 truly one of the most remarkable sporting moments of all time. I've got a brilliant guest. He is David Lee Morgan Jr. He is a sports writer. He's an author. He's a teacher. He's written biographies of legends like LeBron and Marion Motley in a number of children's books called Black Trailblazers in Sport. And he's here now to tell us all about Jesse Owens. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. David, great to have you on the podcast. Hey, it's my pleasure and honor, Dan. I really appreciate this. Well, we appreciate you because you're going to tell us all about the great man himself. Now, who was Jesse Owens?

Where's he from? Jesse Owens was born in the South, but they moved up in the Great Northern Migration and he moved to Cleveland. It's an interesting story because his name was James Cleveland Owens. So when he moved up here, the teachers were asking him what his name was and he said, JC, JC.

And the teacher thought he was saying Jesse. So they ended up calling him Jesse Owens and that's how he got the name Jesse Owens. So he originally comes from grinding poverty in the South. You know, Jesse Owens, and that's how he got the name Jesse Owens. So originally, he comes from grinding poverty in the South. Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, they all moved from the South. Their families moved from there. They were sharecroppers. So they got a certain amount of land in the South, and they were able to farm that land.

And then whatever they made from that, they had to pay the landowners for the opportunity to share crop there. But that wasn't a great life for those people. So that's why, you know, you had the great Northern migration. A lot of those families moved up North because the segregation, the Jim Crow laws really affected every part of their lives. So that's why a lot of those black families moved up North. They're moving North looking for economic opportunity. They're moving away from the land to different kinds of jobs in the north, in the industrial Midwest. How does he find Cleveland?

Well, see, a lot of those families that moved up north, they moved in the Toledo, Ohio, Cleveland area because you had a lot of industrial steel mills. And he had family members who had already moved up into that area. So that's where they moved to that area because they had family there who were already working in either steel mills or they were working in other factories. So that's how his family made it up to Cleveland. And he's got nine brothers and sisters. Yes, yes. Nine brothers and sisters. When he was five, he was always sickly. So when he was five, he had a tumor and it kind of prevented him from breathing,

and they were afraid that it might stop him from breathing. So his mom, Emma, she took a kitchen knife, and she kind of just cut out the tumor. What? Yeah, she cut out the tumor in his chest, and he bled for days. I mean, they thought that he might bleed out and die, but he eventually recovered. His mom had to just take matters in her own hands and try to save him. Wow. And so he was a sickly kid. He had this extraordinary problem. But after that, how soon does it become clear he's got an astonishing natural ability? It wasn't until he

got to junior high school and he just excelled. Actually, he was out, I think it was recess or just gym class. And one of the track coaches who was also the gym coach realized that he was out, I think it was recess or just gym class. And one of the track coaches who was also, you know, the gym coach, realized that he was talented and was fast. He started running at his technical junior high school and then went to Cleveland East Tech High School. And that's where he excelled. In the South at this point, there was still, in a very real sense, segregation. Would the high schools he attended in Ohio, would they have been ethnically mixed? Would they have been predominantly white? Was he growing up in a multicultural, multiracial environment at this point?

It was mixed, but where he was from in East Cleveland, it wasn't racially mixed because you had a lot of different suburbs, cities outside of East Cleveland that were a lot more white. So the school he went to really was segregated. It was practically segregated because it was a black area. Okay. Yeah, it was a black area. Right. But it was a better life than living in the South. And that's why I think he was able to excel. He was in an environment that was a little bit more welcoming. And so I think that's really how he was able to be successful. And at that high school, he meets Minnie Ruth Solomon when they were both kids. Yeah, they were both kids. And it's funny how back then, I mean, if you look at some of these

other people like Jackie Robinson, they all kind of met their high school sweethearts there and they were together the rest of their lives. But yeah, he met his future wife there and they had their family. And they remained married until he died in 1980. They were married. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, another interesting thing that I kind of researched was the fact that he was a pack a day smoker for 35 years. And he didn't start smoking until he was 32. Okay. After his athletics. Oh yeah. Okay. I was going to say, hang he was 32. Okay. After his athletics. Oh, yeah. Okay.

I was going to say, hang on a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. So he took up smoking. Okay. So he's at high school. He's setting records in this high school.

How did you make that transition to the kind of national stage? Well, I think what really helped him was he went from high school to the Ohio State University in Columbus. And that's a big school, obviously. And, you know, there's a lot of competition there. And the fact that he was an outstanding runner and was able to go to Ohio State and become a captain and be one of the stars on the team. I mean, you could just already see there was a trajectory that he was on as far as how good of a sprinter and athlete he was. Especially in so many different events. I mean, he ran the 100, the 200. He was in the 4x1s, the 4x2s.

He also long jumped, which was really his weakest event. But being at Ohio State and competing at that level really helped him. Because he was competing against the best in the country because Ohio State was one of the best schools as far as athletics all around in almost every sport. You would think that in Ohio, especially in Columbus, that you wouldn't really have as much segregation like you did in the South. But he couldn't stay on campus. He had to live off campus. He wasn't on scholarship. They didn't give him a scholarship. He had to work and he couldn't eat with his other white teammates. And I thought that was interesting being from Ohio.

I always thought that those kinds of things didn't happen like they did in the South, but obviously they did for him. So that's crazy. So he is on the track and field team and he's allowed to be at the university, but he's not allowed to be in the dorm and eat alongside his teammates. Right. Exactly. So him and his wife would eat off campus or they would stay home and have dinner at home. But yeah, that's kind of interesting to me as an Ohioan thinking that some of those laws, and maybe that's just me being naive, but I just always thought that once you were up north, you would have some racial issues, but not like that. Wow. And as you say, Ohio is so famous because obviously Kentucky, West Virginia to the south had formerly enslaved people would get to Ohio and they think they'd reach freedom.

And it turns out that things were not so rosy. Did he get on with his white teammates? Did the sport help kind of break down those barriers? Did he have friendships? Yeah, there were friendships. His teammates understood that he was, to a certain degree, just like them. I think it was just society and just living in the moment. That's what it was. And so it was normal.

There must have been something for black people. You just get on the track and run. You don't need a sort of complex web of gatekeepers. You just turn up, you lace up your boots and you run. And that must have been incredibly empowering. Yeah, I think so too, because like you said, you had teammates obviously, but at the end of the day, it was, what can you do? What are you going to do on the track? Those athletes controlled everything about the outcome of that contest. So it wasn't like, you know, if I'm playing football, I've got to throw a ball, you've got to catch it. It's, I'm here, line it up, and the outcome is going to be, I'm going to control the outcome. And the stopwatch doesn't lie.

Yeah, and the stopwatch doesn't lie. Absolutely. Because obviously, you know, the issue around people of color being quarterbacks in football took a long time because there's a lot of coaching intervention, a lot of pressure. Whereas on the track, if you're hitting the numbers, you're hitting the numbers, right? Oh, absolutely. And that's a whole other issue we could talk about in the NFL

because, you know, there's this thing, I'm going to just go off for a second. You know, they called this thing in the NFL back in the day, they called stacking. And white owners and white players thought that black players weren't smart enough to play in the middle of the field. Quarterback, running back, center, middle linebacker, safety. So white players were all played in the middle.

They thought blacks aren't smart enough to play in the middle of the field. With track and field, not necessarily talking about the intellectual part of it, but it's just you didn't have to worry about any of that. Nobody controlled it except you. You got on the track, you laced up your shoes, and it's like, okay, let's go. I'm going to control the outcome, and the clock is going to tell us who won. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Jesse Owens. More coming up. Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit,

wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we're at the 1935 big 10 championships in ann arbor michigan so is this a college sport meet yes so you know we were talking about him running at ohio state and how that kind of prepared him in ann arbor that's where the university of michigan is and if you know college sports ohio state mich Michigan is the big college football rivalry. So in Ann Arbor, you had the big meat of college track for that time. And again, it's him running, controlling the outcomes. And that's really where he excelled. And you could see that he had the potential to be one of the best,

not just in the country, but in the world on the eve of the 36 Olympics. So he set three world records and tied another world record in less than an hour. Yeah. Again, it tells you how the confidence, it speaks to not having to worry about any teammates or anything like that. It's just, I know the talent and I know what I'm capable of. And all I need to do is just get on the track and do what I've done since junior high school. And that's what he did. And that's what's phenomenal. And for an Ohioan to do that just north in Michigan must be doing it in particular pleasure.

Okay, so we've got the 1936 Olympic Games. So we have Nazi Germany, a famously racist place. What are his impressions of Germany? From what I understand, Jesse Owens felt that the people of Germany were very welcoming, for the most part. I mean, I would imagine that they had heard about this Jesse Owens, For the most part. I mean, I would imagine that they had heard about this Jesse Owens and with Nazi Germany and with Hitler and Aryan race and all of that. I would have just imagined that they were just interested to see what this man had, what he was, how good is he? Can he beat our people? I just think that it was probably something exciting that they couldn't wait to watch because obviously they've never seen a black man compete. So I

think this was a perfect stage for Jesse Owens to just say, here I am, this is what I do. And just watch this show that I'm going to put on. Run me through, like, how does Owens do at the Olympics? In his sprint events, the 100 and 200, he dominated. In the 4x1 and 4x2, there were two Jewish athletes. They were on the both of those relay teams two there were two jewish athletes they were on the both of those relay teams leading up to i mean they were on those teams that qualified for the olympics but once they got to germany the coach took both of those jewish players off and replaced them with other runners and jesse owens he told the coach you know no they need to be on but the coach said you just i'm the coach you mind your own no, they need to be on. But the coach said, you just, I'm the coach, you mind your own business. So I thought that was interesting. It showed kind of like Jesse Owens

was a team player to say, hey, we got here with these guys and they need to be on. And they ended up not being on those teams that won. So you've got Carl Ludwig Long, who's known as Lutz. So Lutz is their European long jump record holder. He helps Jesse Owens with a little bit of advice, and then Jesse Owens goes and blows the doors off and wins the Olympic gold on the last jump. And then the first person to congratulate him is Lutz. He runs over, they embrace, and it's the beginning of something.

The story is that he was helped by Long because Jesse Owens would always foul because it wasn't really his sport. So every time, you know, you had three jumps and he would always foul on the first jump. He would either go past the board, hit the board or foul on that jump. He had a second jump. And then the story is that Long kind of noticed something that Owens wasn't doing. And he told him to kind of take your jump, like maybe a yard before the board so you don't foul, so at least you score. And so on his last jump, that was the jump that

helped him win the gold medal. Now, that's a story that I researched. Some say that's fabricated, but it's a great story. The two men, they became friends. They stayed friends long after the Olympics. And that was kind of interesting because it all goes back to humanity and sportsmanship and everything else was thrown out of the window. It didn't matter what race you were or where you came from or your background. It was just that was what the Olympics were all about. But another story is prior to the Olympics, Jesse Owens was really the second guy. There was a guy, Ulyss Peacock, he was from Temple University, and he routinely beat Jesse Owens in the long jump because that was his specialty. But the summer before the Olympics, the year before, Peacock pulled his

hamstring, and then the April before the Olympics, he tore his hamstring. So he didn't compete at all. So that kind of opened the door for Jesse Owens. Because if that Ulysses Peacock had competed, Jesse Owens probably wouldn't have won the long jump because he was always behind Peacock. And so he wins. The two of them walk arm in arm around the stadium. Very public show of friendship for this man of color. And then Long, Lutz, they write, they correspond, right?

And then eventually Lutz is serving in the Wehrmacht, the German army during World War II, and he's wounded in July 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily. And he dies very shortly after in a British military hospital. But that's not the end of the story. British military hospital. So, but that's not the end of the story. No, his relatives, even the grandkids of both men, they kind of corresponded with each other. And I think they understood the moment that their grandfathers were in and how important that moment was in history and how it was important for them to kind of stay connected. Yeah. I saw that I was watching a documentary and Owens returned to meet Lutz's son and was like best man at his wedding or something. I mean, it's just a beautiful story. like Wilma Rudolph and even Bill Russell and a lot of these, you know, when their playing days were over, it was all about, okay, how could I make humanity better? What can I do? What kind

of social issues could I take on? And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that they were from the South and they understood that sports was important, but advancing what Black people wanted, their freedoms and all of that was the most important thing for them to do and that's what i really loved about a lot of these like a like a jesse owens and jackie robinson the sad thing is when their careers were over the united states didn't give them opportunities like like jesse owens had in germany that's an interesting point so people talk about keeping sports out of politics today, but for those early black pioneers in sport, it was all about the politics, was it? It was all about the activism. It was all about the general improvement of the condition of people like them.

Yeah. I mean, you look at Jesse Owens, after he wins four gold medals, and then he comes back to the United States and they have a ticker tape parade for him in New York City. He stays at the Waldorf Astoria and they have a dinner for him, but he's not allowed to go through the front doors of the hotel. He has to go around the back and go up the freight elevator. He couldn't find any work. He raced against racehorses because he couldn't make any money. Those were the things that he came back to in the United States when you think that he's this world figure, one of the most famous figures in sports at the time.

And he comes back to the United States and he can't find any work. He's not invited to the White House. He's not sent a congratulatory telegram from Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying, hey, great job, although the white great job. Although the white athletes did, and the white athletes were invited to the White House. None of the black athletes were. And so that's what they were facing when they came back. And no sweet coaching jobs at any of these college track programs like the ones that he'd been through. Oh, no, absolutely not. For the most part, even in the North, even in Ohio, where you still had segregation, you still had somewhat of Jim Crow laws. So there was no way. The only coaching that,

this is interesting, Jesse Owens was a coach. I think it was in 1965. He was a running base coach for the New York Mets. No way. Yeah, for one year, which makes no sense. I mean, they know how to run bases. You're not going to improve their speed. I mean, what are you going to teach them? And so I think that was more of a gesture of, Hey, let's, we've got a big name. We've got Jesse Owens. Who's our running coach for baseball, which made no sense. But other than that, there was no coaching jobs out there for any of those athletes. I guess you're going to make the opposition picture kind of fidgety thinking everyone's going to be stealing bases.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think that. Exactly. But that's about it. So he stayed married. He had his relationship. He made a living, not as good a living as he certainly deserved. And then you're telling me he smoked a pack a day until 1980 when he died.

Yeah, that's very peculiar because you would think that an athlete, somebody like Jesse Owens, who was just such an amazing athlete, why he would start smoking, who knows? He was 32, but he won those four gold medals when he was 22. So in those 10 years, what was his life like? He couldn't really work. What happened was after the Olympics, the AAU, the Amateur Athletic Union, they wanted to go on a European tour and take those athletes and compete. But Jesse Owens declined because those players weren't getting paid because they were amateurs. And so he decided to go home and try to make money. So the AAU banned him. So basically, he had to just start finding work. And he couldn't find

anything. He worked as a janitor, as a gas station attendant. He had to race horses at fairs. And he couldn't find anything. He worked as a janitor, as a gas station attendant. He had to race horses at fairs. And so when you're 22 and you're on top of the world, then you come back to the United States and you're considered just another black man and you can't find any work. And you're 22, 23, 24. I mean, I couldn't even imagine what that's like. And so when he was 32, he's a regular guy now. So in 1980, he died of lung cancer. And yet now he's one of the most famous men of the 20th century. Yeah.

And you know what's cool is even when I was growing up, I'm 58, I'll be 59 in December. But it's kind of cool because growing up, elementary school, our teachers would take us into the library and they say, pick out a book. There was always Jesse Owens or Jackie Robinson. Those were the people that looked like me, I learned about. And it's funny, even decades later, people know who Jesse Owens was. They know Jackie Robinson. And that's cool to see. Decades later, I was at a book festival a couple of weeks ago and I had my book series out. And the two books that sold out out of the eight were Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson. Teachers, media specialists, parents, they picked it up and they bought it for their kids. White,

black, it didn't matter. Those people were important parts of American history. And they want their children to know who they are. And I think that was awesome. I think so too. Thank you very much, David Lee Morgan, for coming on to the podcast, talking all about it. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. This was really fun.