80 Fun Facts About Jesse Owens

In which city did Jesse Owens win his Olympic gold medals in 1936?

The host nation still topped the medal table with 101 medals, but Owens was the most successful individual athlete of the Games.

How many gold medals did Jesse Owens win at the 1936 Games?

He set an Olympic record in every individual event he entered, and a world record in the relay.

In which US state was Jesse Owens born?

His birthplace, the tiny community of Oakville, opened a memorial park and museum in his honour in 1996.

When Owens was nine, his family joined the Great Migration north and settled in which city?

His father and older brother found work in a steel mill, while young Jesse delivered groceries and worked in a shoe repair shop.

How did the boy known as J. C. end up being called 'Jesse'?

His thick Southern accent did the trick on his first day at a new school in the North, and the name stuck for life.

Where did Jesse Owens enrol as a student in 1933?

He had to live off campus with the other Black athletes and eat at segregated restaurants when the team travelled.

By what nickname was Owens affectionately known during his college career?

He won a record haul of NCAA titles in just two seasons of varsity competition.

What illness caused Jesse Owens's death in 1980?

He had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 35 years, having started at age 32.

What is the title of the 2016 biopic in which Stephan James plays Owens?

Its one-word title is a deliberate double meaning, and the film was shot largely in Montreal with support from the Owens family.

Short of money after the Games, Owens earned cash by racing against which animals?

His trick was to pick a high-strung Thoroughbred that would be spooked by the starter's shotgun and get a bad jump.

Who finally equalled Owens's feat of winning the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and sprint relay at one Games?

It took 48 years, and it happened at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

'It was our president who snubbed me,' Owens said in 1936. Who was in the White House?

Owens complained that the president never even sent him a telegram, and he was never invited to the White House after his triumph.

The runner-up to Owens in the 200 m was the older brother of which sporting pioneer?

Mack Robinson took silver in the 200 m eleven years before his younger brother broke the major leagues' colour line.

Which German finished second to Owens in the jumping pit and struck up a famous friendship with him?

He was the first to congratulate the winner, and the two walked arm-in-arm to the dressing room in front of the Nazi leadership.

Months before his death, Owens tried to talk which president out of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics?

He argued that the Games were meant to be a time-out from war and above politics; the boycott went ahead anyway.

What was the occupation of Owens's father, Henry?

Jesse was the youngest of the family's children and the grandson of an enslaved man.

Which president awarded Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976?

The same year he received the Silver Olympic Order for his 1936 victories and his defence of the ethics of sport.

Which president sent Owens abroad as a goodwill 'Ambassador of Sports' in 1955?

He was dispatched to India, the Philippines and Malaya to promote physical exercise and American ideals.

What was Jesse Owens's real first name?

His middle name, Cleveland, was also his father's middle name and, by coincidence, the name of the city he grew up in.

Which teammate and college friend finished a tenth of a second behind Owens in the 100 m final?

He had also taken silver in 1932, in a virtual dead heat he insisted to his dying day should have been a tie; he later served four terms in Congress.

Owens ran the sprint relay only after which two athletes were dropped that morning?

Both were Jewish Americans, and the decision has long been read as an attempt to spare the Nazi hosts embarrassment.

What world-record time, in seconds, did the US sprint relay team clock with Owens on the lead-off leg?

The mark stood for two decades until another US quartet ran 39.5 in 1956.

What was Owens's winning time, in seconds, in the 1936 Olympic 100 m final?

He actually matched his own world record of 10.2 in the quarter-finals, but a following wind kept it out of the record books.

How far, in metres, did Owens leap to win the Olympic long jump title?

It was a few inches short of his own world record, and the top two both beat the old Olympic record several times that afternoon.

Who finally broke Owens's long jump world record in 1960?

Owens was in the stands in Rome later that year to watch the new record-holder win Olympic gold.

For how many years did Owens's 1935 long jump world record survive?

He set it with an injured back, on a day when he broke or tied six world records in three-quarters of an hour.

At which meet did Owens set five world records and tie a sixth in under an hour?

A sports historian in 2005 named it the most impressive athletic achievement since 1850, and a plaque now marks the spot at Ferry Field.

On what date did Owens have his 'Day of Days', setting or tying six world records in 45 minutes?

He was nursing a lower back injury and competed between 3:15 and 4 p.m.

On his record-breaking day in 1935, which event did Owens merely tie the world record in?

His 9.4 that day matched a mark he had first equalled as a high-school senior; his two 220-yard times also counted as metric 200 m records.

Which shoemaker persuaded Jesse Owens to compete in his firm's spikes at the 1936 Olympics?

The Gebrüder Dassler firm later split into two rival brands run by the two brothers.

At his New York ticker-tape parade a stranger handed Owens a paper bag. What was inside?

He ignored the bag until the parade ended and never learned who the donor was; the sum would be worth over $200,000 adjusted for 21st-century inflation.

After his parade, how was Owens made to reach the reception in his honour at the Waldorf Astoria?

He was barred from the hotel's main doors, a bitter contrast with Germany, where he had stayed in the same hotels as white athletes.

Whom did Owens campaign for in the 1936 US presidential election?

A lifelong Republican, he was hired to do outreach for the Kansas governor among African American voters.

Who banned Owens from amateur competition for life after he quit a post-Olympic European exhibition tour?

The tour was organised to raise money for the AAU and the US Olympic Committee, both of which the same man led.

Who coached Owens at Ohio State?

In the 2016 biopic, Jason Sudeikis plays the coach as a former Olympic-level athlete who reworks Owens's technique.

Owens credited his whole career to the encouragement of which junior high school coach?

Because Jesse worked after school, the coach let him train before classes instead.

From 1942 to 1946, Owens worked in the personnel department of which company?

He replaced Willis Ward, a former Michigan rival, as liaison between Black and white workers in Detroit.

In 1946 Owens co-founded a short-lived West Coast league and owned its Portland Rosebuds. What sport was it?

His partner was Abe Saperstein, and the league folded after just two months; Owens ran exhibition sprints between doubleheaders.

In 1965 which Major League club hired Owens as a running instructor for spring training?

The club was only in its fourth season and would win the World Series four years later.

What was the title of Owens's 1972 book in which he reversed his earlier criticism of Black militancy?

He wrote that any Black man who was not a militant in 1970 was 'either blind or a coward'.

Which president posthumously presented Owens's Congressional Gold Medal in 1990?

Two US postage stamps followed, in 1990 and 1998.

In which city is Jesse Owens buried?

His grave beside the Lake of Memories at Oak Woods Cemetery is near where his children and extended family lived.

What did Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos name after Owens in 1980?

Object 6758 was discovered at the Kleť Observatory in the year Owens died.

What did the German Olympic Committee give each 1936 gold medallist, so Owens took home four?

A tree propagated from one of Owens's originals was planted in Cleveland's Rockefeller Park in 2021.

In The Book Thief, which character idolises Owens and paints himself black to imitate him?

The book is set in Nazi Germany, where admiring a Black American sprinter was itself a small act of defiance.

In which 2017 horror film did patriarch Roman Armitage lose an Olympic qualifying round to Owens?

That defeat is presented as the grievance that set the Armitage family's sinister research in motion.

In which 2019 satire does an imaginary Hitler call a Jewish girl 'a little female Jewish Jesse Owens'?

Director Taika Waititi played the imaginary Führer himself.

How many individual NCAA championships did Owens win, still the record?

He collected them in just two seasons and never received an athletic scholarship.

In his undefeated 1936 college season, how many events did Owens enter and win?

He was also on academic probation that year, and would eventually leave college in 1941 without a degree.

Owens first came to national attention as a student at which high school?

His high-school 100-yard mark stood as the national schoolboy record until 1967.

What was Owens's wife's name?

They met at junior high when he was 15 and she was 13, married in 1935 and stayed together until his death.

Owens was the youngest of how many children?

Three girls and seven boys were born to the family in the rural South.

Banned from amateur athletics, what did Owens briefly tour with in 1937?

The twelve-piece outfit was booked through Consolidated Artists, and he found the work unfulfilling.

Owens initially refused to support the raised-fist protest of which two sprinters at the 1968 Games?

He told them the black fist only had significance 'when there's money inside', a view he later publicly recanted.

How old was Jesse Owens when he died?

He died in Tucson with his wife and family at his bedside, on the last day of March 1980.

How did Owens's German long jump rival from 1936 die?

He died in a British military hospital and is buried in a war cemetery at Motta Sant'Anastasia; a much-repeated 'letter from the front' to Owens is almost certainly a myth.

What role did Owens later take at the wedding of his German rival's son?

He met Kai-Heinrich Long in the Olympic stadium for a 1966 documentary, and their families stayed in touch.

Which Dutch sprinter took bronze behind Owens in both the 100 m and the 200 m?

They were the Netherlands' first-ever medals in either event.

Which German beat Dave Sime in a photo finish for the 100 m at Rome 1960 and met Owens there?

He was the first man officially timed at 10.0 seconds for 100 m, weeks before the Games.

USA Track & Field's highest annual honour, the Jesse Owens Award, went first in 1981 to which athlete?

The hurdler was in the middle of a 122-race winning streak that lasted nearly a decade.

On which ship did Owens and the US team sail to Europe for the 1936 Games?

The Atlantic crossing took the better part of a week, with the athletes training on deck.

Which organisation persuaded Jesse Owens to say the US should withdraw from the 1936 Games over discrimination?

Its secretary Walter White drafted a letter urging him not to go, but never sent it; Owens competed after officials branded boycotters 'un-American agitators'.

For how many years did Owens's 100 m world record of 10.2 seconds stand?

Willie Williams finally ran 10.1 in 1956, in the very same stadium.

Owens's long jump victory is documented in which 1938 Leni Riefenstahl film?

Riefenstahl reportedly asked Owens to repeat his winning jump for her cameras.

What financial support did Owens receive from Ohio State for his athletics?

He was placed on academic probation twice and later blamed the lack of a scholarship for leaving him no time to study.

For what offence was Owens successfully prosecuted in 1966?

He had already filed for bankruptcy; his rehabilitation came through goodwill tours and corporate endorsements.

Which rival beat Owens several times in 1935 but missed the 1936 Games after pulling a hamstring?

He broke the national high-school long jump record the same day Owens beat it — 'I had that record for two hours.'

Which country renamed the street housing the US embassy 'Rue Jesse Owens' in 1971?

Streets in Germany, Ohio and his home state followed decades later.

Which British test pilot claimed in a 2014 BBC documentary to have seen Hitler shake Owens's hand in 1936?

A 1936 Baltimore Sun report also said Hitler sent Owens an inscribed cabinet photograph of himself.

Ohio's 75th state park, dedicated to Owens in 2018, sits on what kind of site near Zanesville?

The land was donated by the power company AEP after decades of coal mining.

Which IOC president told Hitler he must greet every medallist or none at all?

Hitler chose 'none', so he was never scheduled to greet Owens in the first place.

Which Black teammate of Owens won the high jump on the day Hitler left the stadium early, prompting 'snub' claims?

He cleared 2.03 m for an Olympic record; Owens did not race for gold until the following day.

Which assistant coach told a protesting Owens 'You'll do as you are told' about the relay?

He coached at USC, and the two sprinters he kept on the team were both his USC athletes.

How many daughters did Jesse and Ruth Owens have?

Gloria was born in 1932, before the couple married; Marlene followed in 1937 and Beverly in 1940.

In which Arizona city did Jesse Owens die in 1980?

He had been a pack-a-day smoker for 35 years and died of an aggressive lung cancer aged 66.

Where did ESPN rank Owens among North American athletes of the 20th century in 1999?

That made him the highest-ranked track and field athlete on the list.

Which three countries did Eisenhower send Owens to as a goodwill ambassador in 1955?

The tours promoted physical exercise and American ideals in the developing world and continued into the 1970s.

How many Black American athletes competed for the US at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

Their story is told in the documentary Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

In which Chicago cemetery is Owens buried, beside the Lake of Memories?

His children and extended family still lived nearby.

In which Cleveland junior high school did Owens meet his future wife Ruth?

He was 15 and she was 13; they dated steadily through high school.