Who was Jesse Owens? You might give the quiz show answer: “He was the African American man who won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, thus embarrassing Hitler.” You would be wrong. Jesse Owens not only embarrassed Hitler, he also embarrassed an America that celebrated him abroad, but humiliated him at home. Yet, this is the type of rote, factoid “learning” many states now believe should be drilled into the minds of American kids, by law, and Donald Trump’s alarming new Executive Order on ending “racial indoctrination.”
In remembering Jesse Owens, we must not be forced to reduce his life and legacy to a single moment of sports glory divorced from the ugly social context in America at that time. We must not lie to our students and pretend that racism never existed in the USA.
Discussing historical racism does not create divisiveness, in fact, it helps develop empathy in children of all races. I once showed the movie 42 to a class of students in Shenzhen, China. They were deeply moved by Jackie Robinson’s story, feeling a strong sense of admiration and respect for him. Their response focused on condemning racism, rather than casting blame on any one group of people.
Many US states now require the quiz show approach to teaching about African Americans and have nearly rendered Black History Month irrelevant. Studies and surveys show that in banning Critical Race Theory, they have made teachers afraid of saying ANYTHING about the history of racism. This is the triumph of an ultra-nationalist, right-wing, White-supremacist approach to education. Let’s look at how lacking in depth the quiz show answer about Owens, now required by law, is by supplementing it with historical truth.
Owens almost did not even go to the Berlin Olympics. The 18 African American athletes were not sure it was right to represent a racially oppressive society in an Olympics run by another racially oppressive society. The presentation of Owens as a one-dimensional guy who pops up out of nowhere in 1936 to smite Hitler and then disappears again, negates the years of racial discrimination, financial exploitation and injustice he bravely endured. Mention this in a classroom now, in the USA, and you might get fired.
Instead of presenting the reality of Jesse Owens within the context of American racism during his life, he is to be presented like a “Jeopardy!” answer. This is an affront to the legacy of a man who loved his country, believed in his country but who suffered disrespect and abuse in his country because of his skin color. In regard to the African Americans celebrated during this month, we have to look at the often adverse forces that shaped their lives and the broader historical context in which they found ways to succeed against inhumane obstacles.
Did you know that Jesse wasn’t even his name? He was James Cleveland Owens. He liked calling himself J.C., which an elementary school teacher misheard as Jesse. The name stuck. It had to stick because that’s what the teacher chose to keep calling him. He set 5 track records in high school (each record lasted many years), but would not be given an athletic scholarship to The Ohio State University. Only football players received athletic scholarships. The excuse was that football generated money, but, at that time, there was not one Black football player in the entire Big Ten Conference.
Track teams had Black athletes, and they were on their own as far as tuition was concerned. Ohio State wanted Owens to promote itself and thus secured a job for him as an elevator operator at the State House in Columbus. Owens was grateful as he could pay his tuition and send money back home. Nonetheless, at The Ohio State University, he was not allowed housing on campus, nor could he eat in school dining rooms, because he was Black.
The irony of Owen’s winning 4 gold medals in the Berlin Olympics was that Owens had few rights and opportunities in the USA as a Black man. He was lionized for disproving Hitler’s master race concept, only to come back to the USA where he was treated as an inferior. This gave ammunition to the Nazi propaganda machine, which highlighted the hypocrisy of the United States sending African American athletes to win medals for their country while denying them human rights under Jim Crow laws at home.
As mentioned above, the African American athletes who went to Berlin had debated whether they should go. Ultimately, they went to demonstrate their excellence. In the quiz show answer about Mr. J.C. Owens, this is conveniently overlooked.
After the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens was paraded around Europe by the US Olympic Committee to compete in various meets to raise funds for the committee. Owens had not agreed contractually to this and was not remunerated. Exhausted and financially strained, Owens returned home to his wife. Having lost their cash cow, the US Olympic Committee maliciously banned him from all future amateur competitions. How dare this guy suddenly decide not to be exploited any more for his athletic gifts!
A great deal was made of the accusation that Hitler never shook Owen’s hand. Hitler was asked by Olympic officials not to shake anyone’s hand after the first day of competition. Franklin Roosevelt refused to shake Jesse Owen’s hand.
Owens and other Black athletes did not receive an invitation to the White House from President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the games. Roosevelt was seeking re-election and needed the support of Southern Democrats. America’s hero was not allowed in the White House. Thankfully, in 1976, the racial situation in the USA had changed enough that President Gerald Ford presented Owens with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 5 years before Owens died. In 2016, descendants of the African American Olympians were welcomed to the White House by President Barack Obama.
Owens once said, “After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals, it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.” He could not benefit from any endorsements as sponsors feared White consumers would shun a product endorsed by a Black athlete. Even in New York City he was not allowed to eat in hotel dining rooms and had to enter a hotel through a side door. He had hoped to be in some movies, but he only appeared in one film called “Charlie Chan Goes to the Olympics” for 10 seconds. A Black movie star in the 1930s? Preposterous.
To make money, the American Olympic champion, and the hero who disproved Hitler’s racial theories, found himself going to county fairs and racing against horses and other animals. Luckily, Owens and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson formed a friendship and Robinson helped Owens find some short-term work in the entertainment field. Owens briefly led a band and invested his earnings in a dry-cleaning business that went bankrupt. The City of Cleveland gave him a job cleaning playgrounds.
Owens really wanted to finish his degree so that he could take a teaching or coaching job. There was, however, a big problem. During his time initially at Ohio State, Owens was encouraged to take easy classes to focus on his athletic training. Even with easy classes his grades suffered due to his training regimen. He was recruited by Ohio State primarily to train and run, not to study.
When he later went back for his degree, he was not ready for and struggled with tougher college material and withdrew from the university in December 1941 due to academic difficulties. He never completed his degree. From this point on Owens, however, made himself available to charitable programs and created his own youth programs because he was unable to pursue a more secure career as a teacher/coach. He refused to allow doors to be closed to him as a coach and educator, and found other ways to be of service.
Owens served honorably in the military during World War II. In 1951 he made a triumphant return to the Berlin stadium where he had won 4 gold medals and spoke to a crowd of over 70,000 cheering German fans. He found a sympathetic agent, Abe Saperstein, the founder and coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein helped Owens secure speaking engagements and he began to make more money.
During the Civil Rights era things finally began to ease up for Owens. He eventually found a job with the government of Illinois, visiting schools across the state and sharing his experiences, knowledge and insights into physical education. Starting with President Eisenhower, he traveled around the globe as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. government. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower named Owens “Ambassador of Sports,” and asked him to represent the United States at the 1956 Olympics; Owens also traveled to Asia during the Cold War as a goodwill ambassador.
In, however, a last indignity, as Owens finally started to make money, in 1966 the Federal Government charged Owens with willfully refusing to pay his taxes for four years. The American hero, the guy who beat Hitler, the guy who had selflessly devoted himself to supporting and promoting any charity that came to him for help, the guy who had endured racial insult and discrimination despite being lauded by the American press, was now accused by the government of being a greedy tax cheat.
Jesse Owens was focused on being of service and had a hard time saying “no” to any charity that sought his help. Due to his tireless public service, he had inadvertently neglected his personal affairs. There was no willful intent in his actions.
There was a public outcry, and people flooded the judge with letters supporting Owens. As a result, although Owens was found guilty, he was not sent to jail and was ordered to pay a fine of a mere $3,000 plus his back taxes. It was, however, a disgrace that Owens was even brought to trial.
Critical Race Theory helps examine how laws and institutions have ensured racial inequalities. It’s a limited analytical tool. CRT is, in fact, mostly taught in law schools and universities, not K-12 classrooms. It is being officially used, however, as a type of catch phrase for anything which is not a quiz show factoid about the experience of folks of color in the USA. Banning CRT has been used as a pretext to censor even basic discussions of racism in history classes. What they are saying is: “I don’t like Critical Race Theory because it makes White folks look bad in history and, therefore, I am going to use banning this theory as a way to stop teachers from teaching about the racism that existed and exists in the USA.”
This is the situation we’re in now: Just as John Scopes was banned from teaching evolution in biology class, teachers today are being banned from teaching the reality of racism in American history. Now in history class we have to camouflage the history of racism in a country that destroyed indigenous cultures and enslaved humans with darker skin for almost 300 years.
We clearly have to find a way to challenge these laws. We need to find every non-violent means possible, perhaps even boycotting or striking, to make sure that the experiences of people like J. C. Owens are not obliterated from US history. J.C. Owens’ story isn’t just Black history—it’s American history, it’s human history. It does not divide, it unites in compassion. If we let them erase it, we let them erase something meaningful we can all learn from, and education in America becomes a meaningless joke.
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References:
https://time.com/6192708/critical-race-theory-teachers-racism/
Trump’s Executive Order to Ban Meaningful Discourse on Racism in Schools:
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Los Angeles Daily News
