Biography
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field star who secured four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Owens excelled in sprinting and long jump, earning recognition during his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history." At the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he set three world records and tied another in under an hour—a feat unmatched since and hailed as "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport."
He gained worldwide acclaim at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning gold in the 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. Owens was the Games' most successful competitor and, as a Black American, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy."
The Jesse Owens Award represents USA Track and Field's highest honor for the nation's top track and field athlete annually. ESPN ranked Owens as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highest in his discipline. In 1999, he was among six finalists for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century.
Born J.C. Owens, he was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) 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 age nine, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, seeking better prospects during the Great Migration (1910–40), when 1.6 million African Americans left the segregated rural South for the urban North. When a teacher asked for his name, he said "J.C.," but her perception of his strong Southern accent led her to record it as "Jesse," a name that stuck for life.
As a youth, Owens held various low-paying jobs, including delivering groceries, loading freight cars, and working in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother labored in a steel mill. During this time, he discovered his passion for running. Owens credited much of his athletic success to Charles Riley, his junior high track coach at Fairmount Junior High School, who allowed Owens to practice before school due to his after-school work commitments.
Owens met Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated throughout high school. Their first daughter, Gloria, was born in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters: Marlene in 1937 and Beverly in 1940. They remained married until Owens's death in 1980.
Owens first gained national recognition as a student at East Technical High School in Cleveland, where he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9½ inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.
