PEOPLE IN AMERICA -June 9, 2002: Jesse Owens
By Barbara Dash
Anncr:
People in America -- a Special English program about people who were important in the history of the United
States. Today Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe tell the story of athlete Jesse Owens. He once was the fastest runner
in the world.
(Theme)
VOICE 1:
In the summer of nineteen-thirty-six, people all over the world heard the name of
Jesse Owens. That summer, Jesse joined the best athletes from fifty nations to
compete in the Olympic games. They met in Germany, in the city of Berlin.
There was special interest in the Olympic games that year.
Adolf Hitler was ruler of Germany. Hitler and his Nazi party believed that white people
-- especially German people -- were the best race of people on earth. They believed that
other races of people -- especially those with dark skin -- were almost less than human.
In the summer of nineteen thirty-six, Hitler wanted to prove his beliefs to the world. He
wanted to show that German athletes could win every important competition. After all,
only a few weeks before the Olympics, German boxer Max Schmeling had defeated the
great American heavyweight Joe Louis, a black man.
VOICE 2:
Jesse Owens was black, too. Until nineteen-thirty-six, very few black athletes had competed in the Olympics for
the United States. Jesse was proud to be on the team. He was very sure of his ability.
Jesse spent one week competing in four different Olympic track and field events in Berlin. During that time, he
did not think much about the color of his skin, or about Adolf Hitler.
He said later: "I was looking only at the finish line. I thought of all the years of practice and competition, and of
all who believed in me."
VOICE 1:
We do not know what Hitler thought of Jesse Owens. No one recorded what he said about this black man who
ran faster and jumped farther than any man of any color at the Olympic Games. But we can still see Jesse Owens
as Hitler saw him. For at Hitler's request, motion pictures were made of the Berlin Olympic games.
The films show Jesse Owens as a thin, but powerfully built young man with smooth brown skin and short hair.
When he ran, he seemed to move without effort. When he jumped, as one observer said, he seemed to jump clear
out of Germany.
Jesse Owens won the highest award -- the gold medal -- in all four of the Olympic competitions he entered. In the
one-hundred meter run, he equaled the fasted time ever run in that Olympic event. In the long jump and the two-
hundred meter run, he set new Olympic records. And as part of a four-man team, he helped set a new world
record for the four-hundred meter relay race.
VOICE 2:
Jesse's Olympic victories made him a hero. He returned home to parades in New York
City and Columbus, Ohio, where he attended the state university. Businessmen paid him
for the right to use his name on their stores. No one, however, offered him a permanent
job.
For many years after the nineteen-thirty-six Olympic games, Jesse Owens survived as
best he could. He worked at small jobs. He even used his athletic abilities, but in a sad
way. He earned money by running races against horses. He and his wife and three
daughters saw both good times and bad times.
VOICE 1:
Poverty was not new to Jesse. He was born in nineteen-thirteen on a farm in the southern state of Alabama. He
was the youngest of thirteen children. His parents did not own the farm, and earned little money. Jesse
remembered that there was rarely enough food to eat. And there was not enough fuel to heat the house in winter.
Some of Jesse's brothers and sisters died while still young. Jesse, himself, was a sickly child. Partly because of
this, and partly because of the racial hatred they saw around them, Jesse's parents decided to leave the south.
They moved north, to Cleveland, Ohio, when Jesse was about ten years old.
The large family lived in a few small rooms in a part of the city that was neither friendly nor pleasant to look at.
Jesse's father was no longer young or strong. He was unable to find a good job. Most of the time, no one would
give him any work at all. But Jesse's older brothers were able to get jobs in factories. So life was a little better
than it had been in the south.
VOICE 2:
Jesse, especially, was lucky. He entered a school where one white teacher, Charles Riley, took a special interest
in him. Jesse looked thin and unhealthy, and Riley wanted to make him stronger. Through the years that Jesse
remained in school, Riley brought him food in the morning. He often invited the boy to eat with his family in the
evening. And every day before school, he taught Jesse how to run like an athlete.
At first, the idea was only to make the boy stronger. But soon Riley saw that Jesse was a champion. By the time
Jesse had completed high school, his name was known across the nation. Ohio State University wanted him to
attend there. So it offered him a free education. While at Ohio State, he set new world records in several track and
field events. And he was accepted as a member of the United States Olympic team.
VOICE 1:
Jesse always remembered the white man who helped change his life. Charles Riley did not seem to care what
color a person's skin was. Jesse learned to think the same way.
Later in life, Jesse put all his energy into working with young people. He wanted to tell them some of the things
he had learned about life, work and success. That it is important to choose a goal and always work toward it. That
there are good people in the world who will help you to reach your goal. That if you try again and again, you will
succeed.
People who heard Jesse's speeches say he spoke almost as well as he ran.
Jesse received awards for his work with boys and girls. The United States government sent him around the world
as a kind of sports ambassador. The International Olympic Committee asked for his advice.
VOICE 2:
In about nineteen-seventy, Jesse Owens wrote a book in which he told about his life. It was called "Blackthink."
In the book, Jesse denounced young black militants who blamed society for their troubles. He said young black
people had the same chance to succeed in the United States as white people.
Many black civil rights activists reacted angrily. They said what Jesse had written was not true for everyone.
Jesse later admitted that he had been wrong. He saw that not all blacks were given the same chances and help that
he had been given. In a second book, Jesse tried to explain what he had meant in his first book. He called it I have
changed. Jesse said that, in his earlier book, he did not write about life as it was for everyone ... But about life as
it was for him.
He said he truly wanted to believe that if you think you can succeed--- and you really try -- then you have a
chance. If you do not think you have a chance, then you probably will fail. He said these beliefs had worked for
him. And he wanted all young people to believe them, too.
VOICE 1:
These were the same beliefs he tried to express when he spoke around the world about being an Olympic athlete.
"The road to the Olympics," he said, "leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow,
ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads -- in the end -- to the best within us."
Jesse Owens died of cancer in nineteen-eighty.
(Theme)
Anncr:
This program was written by Barbara Dash. Your narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. This is Shirley
Griffith. Listen again next week at this same time for another People in America program in Special English on
the Voice of America.
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