Facts about Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens was never awarded a scholarship, so he continued to work part-time jobs to pay for school.
Jesse Owens was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976, by Gerald Ford and the Congressional Gold Medal (posthumously) by George H. W. Bush on March 28, 1990.
In 1984, a street in Berlin was renamed for him and the Jesse Owens Realschule/Oberschule (a secondary school) is in Berlin-Lichtenberg.
The Jesse Owens Foundation provides information, materials, and direction for research on the life and legend of Jesse Owens.
Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium was completed in 2001 on The Ohio State University campus.
Jesse entered the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany amidst the belief by Hitler that the Games would support his belief that the German "Aryan" people were the dominant race. Jesse had different plans, as he became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad.
At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story.
James Cleveland Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913, the son of a sharecropper, a farmer who rents land. He was a sickly child, often too frail to help his father and brothers in the fields. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, for better work opportunities.
In fact, it was the conduct of Roosevelt– who never invited Owens to the White House or acknowledged his triumphs–that disappointed the Olympic champion. “Hitler didn't snub me—it was our president who snubbed me,” he said months after the Games.Sep 12, 2013