77 Fun Facts About Jesse Owens

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

Berlin. Hitler meant the Games to prove Aryan supremacy, and the grandson of an enslaved man went home as their most successful athlete.

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

Four. He won both sprints and the long jump inside three days, then added a relay gold he had not been due to run for.

In which US state was Jesse Owens born?

Alabama. He was born in the farming hamlet of Oakville, which his family left for the North when he was nine; a memorial park and museum to him now stand there.

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

Cleveland. His father and older brothers found work in the steel mills there, while the boy delivered groceries and worked in a shoe repair shop.

How is Owens, known at home as J. C., said to have become Jesse?

A teacher misheard his initials. The story goes that he answered 'J. C.' in a Southern drawl on his first day at school in the North, and she wrote down Jesse.

Where did Jesse Owens enrol as a student in 1933?

Ohio State University. He agreed to go only once officials had found his father a job, and with no scholarship he waited tables and worked part-time to pay his own way.

In which event did Jesse Owens win the first of his gold medals at the 1936 Olympics?

100 metres. He won it on 3 August, the start of a week that ended with gold in a relay he had not been picked to run.

What illness caused Jesse Owens's death in 1980?

Lung cancer. The man who had once been the fastest sprinter alive smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 35 years.

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

Race. Montreal stood in for the American locations, and the film was made with the backing of Owens's family and the foundation that bears his name.

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

Horses. He later let on that the trick was to pick a jumpy thoroughbred, which the starter's gun would startle into a slow break, and said simply that he could not eat his medals.

Who finally matched Owens's haul of sprint, relay and long jump golds at a single Olympics?

Carl Lewis. He needed only one legal long jump in the final, and passed the rest of his attempts so as to save his legs for the sprints still to come.

Owens said in 1936 that it was 'our president who snubbed me'; which president did he mean?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. He never phoned, wired or invited Owens to the White House, and Owens said so from a rally platform weeks before that year's election.

The runner-up to Owens in the 1936 Olympic 200 m was the older brother of which sporting pioneer?

Jackie Robinson. Mack Robinson finished four-tenths of a second behind Owens for the silver, and eleven years later his kid 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?

Luz Long. He was the first to congratulate Owens and went arm in arm with him in front of Hitler, a friendship Owens said took real courage.

Months before his death, Owens spoke out against which president's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics?

Jimmy Carter. Owens held that sport should stand apart from politics, but the boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan went ahead.

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

Sharecropper. Henry Owens gave up the struggle when Jesse was nine and took the family north, where he and his older sons found work in a steel mill.

Which president awarded Jesse Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the 1970s?

Gerald Ford. He presented the medal at the White House in 1976, with the whole US team just back from the Montreal Olympics looking on.

Which president sent Jesse Owens on goodwill tours of Asia in the 1950s?

Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the Cold War his administration saw a use for Owens's fame abroad, and sent him out in 1955 to speak up for American freedom and opportunity.

What was Jesse Owens's real first name?

James. At home the name went unused: his family knew him as J. C., from the initials of his first and middle names.

Which US teammate finished a tenth of a second behind Owens in the 1936 Olympic 100 m final?

Ralph Metcalfe. He had beaten Owens when Owens was still a schoolboy, and days after this final the two shared a gold medal in the sprint relay.

Owens ran the 1936 relay after Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were dropped; what did the two men have in common?

Both were Jewish, the only Jews on the US track team. Glickman, later the radio voice of the New York Knicks, came to believe they were benched to spare Hitler embarrassment.

What kept Owens's 10.2-second 1936 Olympic 100 m heat out of the record books?

Following wind. The time would have equalled his own world record, and the breeze cost him again a day later, when his gold-medal run in the final could not count as a record either.

Which 1936 US Olympic teammate of Owens later survived 47 days adrift at sea and a Japanese prison camp?

Louis Zamperini. The 19-year-old ran the 5,000 metres at those Games and came eighth; his wartime ordeal later became the bestselling book and film Unbroken.

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

Ralph Boston. He took the record that August, and weeks later Owens was in the stands in Rome to watch his successor win the Olympic title.

Who broke the long jump world record by more than Owens did?

Bob Beamon alone, by 55 cm in 1968. Owens added 15 cm with the only jump he took all afternoon, and became the first man to clear eight metres.

At which 1935 meet did Owens shatter world records inside an hour?

The Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor. So many fans mobbed him afterwards that he had to slip out of the locker room through a window.

Owens set his 1935 world records while nursing an injury to which part of his body?

His back. He could not bend to touch his knees that morning, yet he said the pain vanished the moment he crouched for his first start.

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

100-yard dash. It came first, as a test of whether an injury would let him compete at all; satisfied, he went on to break the records in his other three events.

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

Adi Dassler. Accounts differ on whether Owens competed or only trained in them, but the link made the brothers' small firm famous, and Adi went on to found Adidas.

At his New York ticker-tape parade, a stranger handed Owens a paper bag containing what?

$10,000 in cash. He left the bag untouched until he got out of the car at the end of the parade, and his wife said he never learned who the giver was.

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

In the freight elevator. In his own country, he said later, he still could not ride at the front of the bus or live where he wanted, whatever he had won.

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

Alf Landon. The Republicans paid Owens to court Black voters for the Kansas governor, who went on to lose to the incumbent in a landslide.

Owens was banned for quitting a post-Olympic tour arranged under which president of the US Olympic Committee?

Avery Brundage. The tour was meant to raise money for the AAU, and when an exhausted, unpaid Owens went home instead, he was suspended at once and his amateur career was over.

Which comedy star plays Owens's coach in the 2016 biopic?

Jason Sudeikis. The real coach, Larry Snyder, came close to withdrawing Owens from his record-breaking 1935 meet, relenting only if they could review his condition after each event.

Owens worked every afternoon, so his junior high coach Charles Riley trained him at which time instead?

Before school. Riley often brought breakfast along for the underweight boy, and Owens said for the rest of his life that he owed his career to him.

During the Second World War, Owens worked in the personnel department of which carmaker?

Ford. The friend who brought him to Detroit, Willis Ward, was a sprinter who had beaten him on the track; Owens's job was to handle relations with the firm's Black workers.

In 1946 Owens co-founded a short-lived West Coast league and owned its Portland Rosebuds in which sport?

Baseball. With the major leagues still closed to Black players, the six-team Negro league gave the Pacific coast a circuit of its own, but it folded within months.

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

New York Mets. The young expansion club hired him to sharpen its running, but even with an Olympic sprint champion drilling them the Mets lost 112 games and finished last.

Which 1972 book by Owens withdrew his earlier attack on Black militancy?

I Have Changed. Two years after scolding Black militants in print, he gave the civil rights movement its due and admitted that racism still blocked equal opportunity.

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

George H. W. Bush. He handed it to Owens's widow at the White House, which had sent her husband no invitation when he came home a champion in 1936.

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 kind of object, found by a Czech astronomer days after Owens died in 1980, now bears his name?

An asteroid. Antonín Mrkos spotted minor planet 6758 Jesseowens from the Kleť Observatory that April, and a fellow astronomer later proposed naming it in the sprinter's memory.

What did the German organisers give each gold medallist at the 1936 Olympics, Owens included?

Oak saplings. Each victory earned one to plant at home, and a tree cloned from one of his now stands at the centre of a plaza named after him.

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

Rudy Steiner. Liesel's neighbour blackens himself with charcoal one night and runs the hundred metres at the local sports field, a stunt his street never lets him forget.

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

Get Out. Dean Armitage brags to a Black house guest about what an honour his father's defeat was, and the film makes the old grudge the seed of the family's body-snatching scheme.

In which 2019 satire does a boy's imaginary Hitler liken a fast-moving Jewish girl to Jesse Owens?

Jojo Rabbit. Taika Waititi wrote and directed it and cast himself as the imaginary Führer, who is alarmed at how quickly the girl hiding in the attic can move.

After his 1935 record spree, Owens joined which boxer as the best-known Black athlete in America?

Joe Louis. The two became national names within weeks of each other in 1935, and each was later cast as America's answer to Nazi Germany, one on the track and one in the ring.

Which Nazi minister's memoirs recall Hitler being 'highly annoyed' by Owens's string of victories?

Albert Speer. His memoir has Hitler shrugging that Black athletes had an unfair physical advantage and ought to be shut out of future Games.

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

East Technical. He chose the vocational school hoping a trade would guarantee him work, and left it with national schoolboy records and a city parade in his honour.

What was Owens's wife's name?

Ruth. For years after his death she chaired the foundation set up in his name, which helps talented young people who could not otherwise afford college.

As a boy in the rural South, Owens was expected to pick 100 pounds a day of which crop?

Cotton. He was seven and often ill with chest trouble when he worked the fields, and two years later his family left farming for the factories of the North.

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

A jazz band. He stood in front of twelve musicians with a baton for a two-month tour, never got the hang of it and gave it up as unfulfilling.

Owens at first opposed the raised-fist protest by which two 1968 Olympic sprinters?

Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Owens told them a black fist meant something only 'when there's money inside'; in 1972 he wrote that he had been wrong.

The first Jesse Owens Olympic Spirit Award was given posthumously in 2016 to which boxing great?

Muhammad Ali. The US Olympic Committee created the prize for people who inspire society beyond sport, and chose the 1960 Olympic champion a few months after his death.

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

Wounded in Sicily in 1943. A lawyer drafted into an anti-aircraft unit, he was hit during the Allied landings and died within days, aged 30; the farewell letter he is said to have sent Owens is a myth.

In a 1960s documentary, Owens revisited the Olympic stadium with which relative of his late German long jump rival?

His son. Kai had been a toddler when his father was killed in the war, and for the cameras he and Owens recreated a 1936 photograph of the two rivals stretched out beside the track.

Tinus Osendarp took bronze behind Owens in both 1936 Olympic sprints for which country?

Netherlands. Hailed in 1936 as the fastest white sprinter in the world, the Hague policeman joined the SS during the German occupation and was jailed after the war.

In the late 1930s Owens and his partners opened a business under his name that soon went bankrupt; what was it?

A dry cleaner's. He was bankrupt within a couple of years, having already spent much of his post-Olympic windfall on a house for his parents and a car for his old coach.

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

Edwin Moses. The 400 m hurdler was unbeaten at the time and stayed that way for years: his streak began in 1977 and reached 122 straight wins before he finally lost in 1987.

Owens sailed to the 1936 Games on a liner named after which New York City borough?

Manhattan. The SS Manhattan's crossing made headlines of its own when swimming champion Eleanor Holm was thrown off the team for a drinking party on board.

Which organisation's secretary, Walter White, drafted a letter urging Owens to boycott the 1936 Olympics?

The NAACP. White never posted the letter; Owens had briefly spoken up for a boycott himself, then thought again and sailed with the team.

Which New York mayor welcomed Owens home from the 1936 Olympics before his ticker-tape parade?

Fiorello La Guardia. Cities honoured Owens with parades, but no telegram or invitation came from the White House that year.

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

Olympia. Commissioned to glorify the Nazi Games, it nonetheless lingers on Owens's long jump duel with the German runner-up.

Between college terms in the 1930s, Owens earned money as an attendant at what kind of business?

A gas station. Term time brought night shifts on top of training, because he was already supporting a daughter born in his last year of high school.

For what offence was Owens successfully prosecuted in 1966?

Tax evasion. He had gone years without filing returns, and the court fined him $3,000 on top of the unpaid taxes he owed.

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

Eulace Peacock. His wins over Owens at the 1935 national meet had the New York Times forecasting an Olympic duel, until a hamstring injury ended his hopes.

Which West African country named its US embassy's street Rue Jesse Owens?

Ivory Coast. The street is in Abidjan and was named while Owens travelled the world as a goodwill envoy for his country, and the US embassy kept the address for decades.

After the war, Owens tried a short-lived retail venture in Detroit selling what?

Sporting goods. The venture soon folded and he returned to the road as a paid attraction, and it was the 1950s before a public-relations firm made him secure.

The state park dedicated to Owens in 2018 sits on what kind of site near Zanesville?

Reclaimed coal-mine land. A power company strip-mined these hills for decades from 1947, then regraded and replanted them before they opened to the public as parkland.

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

Cornelius Johnson. Hitler had received that day's earlier victors in his box, then left once the Germans were out of the high jump, so the walkout the papers pinned on Owens really happened to him.

Both sprinters retained for the 1936 relay team had trained at USC under which US assistant coach?

Dean Cromwell. The coaches said the Germans were hiding fast men for the relay, yet in the event the hosts finished third, far behind the Americans.

Owens's granddaughter carried the torch into the stadium at which Olympics?

Los Angeles, in 1984. Gina Hemphill ran a lap of the Coliseum track and handed the flame to a former Olympic decathlon champion, who climbed the steps to light the cauldron.

In which Arizona city did Jesse Owens die in 1980?

Tucson. He and his wife had retired to Arizona in 1972, and in the year he died the city opened a park in his name, complete with a swimming pool and ballfields.

ESPN ranked Owens sixth among the 20th century's North American athletes; who came first?

Michael Jordan. Owens was the highest-placed track athlete on the list, even though his time at the top of the sport had lasted little more than a year.

Early in the Second World War, the US government put Owens in charge of a programme promoting what among Black Americans?

Physical fitness. He toured the country running exercise clinics for the Office of Civilian Defense until a carmaker hired him away to handle relations with its Black workers.

Which Game of Thrones actress plays filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in the 2016 biopic about Owens?

Carice van Houten. Her Riefenstahl spends much of the film in a battle of wills with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who is overseeing her documentary of the Games.

The Jesse Owens Games, first held in 1965, were an annual track meet for which competitors?

Schoolchildren. An oil company paid for the playground meets, open to youngsters up to fifteen, part of the work with poor children that filled Owens's later years.