Throughout history, black athletes have made the African-American community proud. James Cleveland Owens, also known as Jesse Owens, was one of these remarkable athletes.Jesse was born in 1913 and was the youngest of 10 children in Oakville, Alabama. At the age of 9, his family moved to Ohio to escape the racial segregation in Alabama that had been put in place by the Jim Crow laws.
In Ohio, Jesse discovered that he had a passion for athletics, more specifically sprinting. In high school Jesse broke the world record 100-yard dash of 9.4 seconds. He was also a gifted long jumper. Jesse attended Ohio State University where he went on to win 8 individual NCAA championships from 1935 to 1936. He was also successful in during the Big Ten competition in 1935. Despite his athletic achievements, Jesse had to contend with racial segregation and had to work his way through school due to the lack of scholarship opportunities.
Despite his remarkable achievements in U.S athletics, Jesse Owens legacy as a black athlete became immortalized during the 1936 Olympics in Germany. This Olympics were held during the resurgence of Germany and Hitler wanted to use this global stage to further his Nazi propaganda on Aryan racial superiority. Jesse Owens went on to win four gold medals in a dominant display in both the 100m sprint, the long jump, the 200m sprint, and the 4×100 relay. In doing so, Jesse Owens was the most dominant athlete in Berlin Olympics and his records were only broken 50 years later by Carl Lewis in the 1984 Olympics.