Jesse Owens

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 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 He set three world records and tied another all in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor Michigana feat that has never been equaled and has been called the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin Germany by winning four gold medals 100 meters long jump 200 meters and 4 100meter relay He was the most successful athlete at the Games and as a black American man was credited with singlehandedly crushing Hitlers myth of Aryan supremacy The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track and Fields highest accolade for the years best track and field athlete Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highestranked in his sport In 1999 he was on the sixman shortlist for the BBCs Sports Personality of the Century Jesse Owens originally known as JC was the youngest of ten children three girls and seven boys born to Henry Cleveland Owens a sharecropper and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville Alabama on September 12 1913 He was the grandson of a slave At the age of nine he and his family moved to Cleveland Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration 191040 when 16 million African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book he said JC but because of his strong Southern accent she thought he said Jesse The name stuck and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life As a youth Owens took different menial jobs in his spare time he delivered groceries loaded freight cars and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill During this period Owens realized that he had a passion for running Throughout his life Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley his junior high school track coach at Fairmount Junior High School Since Owens worked after school Riley allowed him to practice before school instead Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon 19152001 met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13 They dated steadily through high school Ruth gave birth to their first daughter Gloria in 1932 They married on July 5 1935 and had two more daughters together Marlene born in 1937 and Beverly born in 1940 They remained married until his death in 1980 Owens first came to national attention when he was a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland he equaled the world record of 94 seconds in the 100 yards 91 m dash and longjumped 24 feet 912 inches 756 m at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago Source Article Jesse Owens from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30