New York Herald Tribune Sunday January 31, 1960

Jesse Owens, America’s Mr. Olympics of ‘36, Still a Champion

by Al Laney

During the summer of 1951 the United States High Command in German arranged a show in the stadium where Adolf Hitler had made a Nazi festival of the Olympic Games of 1936. Park of the show was put on by the Harlem Globe Trotters and part of the Trotters was Jesse Owens, the wonderful Negro athlete from Ohio State who had won four gold medals in this area.

A crowd of 75,000 turned out. No doubt many of them had been present for the Games and certainly many came from Soviet-occupied East Berlin. It was Owens’ job to conduct the between-halves show on the Trotter tour but on this occasion he came onto the platform along in a sweat suit such as he had won between his thrilling performances in 1936 when he had left those deeds to speak for him.

Now, fifteen years later, he took the microphone and spoke to the great crowd. Choosing carefully the words because they were unrehearsed, he addressed them as follows:

Special Words

"Words often fail on occasions like this. But I remember the fighting spirit and sportsmanship shown by German athletes, especially Lutz Long, the man I managed to beat the broad jump on my last jump.

"Hitler stood right up in that box. But I believe the real spirit of Germany, a great nation, was exemplified down here on the field by athletes like Lutz.

"I want to say to the young people here to be like those athletes. I want to say to all of you to stand fast with us and let us all work together to stay free and God Almighty will help us in our struggle. This is what the United States stands for and I know you are with us. God bless you all."

When he had finished he received from that German crowd the thunderous ovation so long overdue, a roaring salute surpassing anything they had given their own back in the Nazi days. The noise finally died down and Walter Schreiber, the mayor of Free West Berlin advanced toward Owens and said for all to hear:

"Hitler refused to shake your hand. But I give you both hands."

Again the crowd roared.

Enduring Myth

It is not irrelevant to recall this dramatic scene although there lies in Herr Schreiber’s words a myth that no doubt will endure. Hitler and all the big Nazi figures did attend the games and they did wear an excess of arrogance on their faces, much more than was needed for the occasion. But truth impels on to recall that Hitler did not offer insults to what Joseph Goebbels called "the Black Auxiliaries" and he did not refuse to shake hands. There was, in fact, no occasion when he might have done so.

The report of the insult was at best a misunderstanding and at worst a deliberate distortion for the sake of a headline. It is pertinent to recall these events nearly a quarter century after because of what is happening today but more because of the way in which the principal actor in the drama speaks about them. Jesse Owens sat and talked long on these and related matters.

"Of course I’ve know all along that there was nothing in that story about Hitler," he said. "But for years every time I’d meet a stranger he’d asked about it. It was taken for granted everywhere and finally I got tired of denying it.

"May Do Good"

"And you know, when I visited that stadium again, remembering all that really did happen the first time and having to speak to the new crowd full of young people, I suddenly thought what a good thing it might be that the error had become fact. I seemed to feel that it might be wrong to destroy the myth now. Let it stand, I told myself. Let people believe it and it may do some good."

They are the remarks of a sensitive and thoughtful man who has not come hurriedly to the beliefs he holds. And, to give him the understanding he deserves, it would be good to sketch in the background.

Jesse Owens was born in Alabama; he was old enough to have learned what it meant to be a Negro in the South. Then he also learned somewhat the opposite, or how easy things can be for one favored by fortune. He was brilliant and famous high school athlete and even more brilliant and famous when he got into college.

He was one of the most thrilling performers ever seen on a running track, and there were several occasions when he was sensational. There that day at Ann Arbor in 1935 when he made three world records - 220 (20.3); 200 low hurdles (22.6); broad jump (26-81/4) a mark which still stands - and tied another, the 100 in 9.4.

And then on the world stage at Berlin, the greatest possible moment for a track athlete came for him before that huge Nazi crowd of 110,000. There Owens had the marvelous experience of maintaining an absolute peace in the most important week of this life to that time. The wonderful picture of him in those days remains forever in the mind, a sepia streak running with a faultless style so smooth and silken as to suggest flight through the air. 4 Olympic Medals

For example, his Olympic victories - 10.3 in the 100 meters, 20.7 In the 200 meters, 26-51/4 in the broad jump, and a share in the 440-meter relay - which brought him four gold medals.

These flawless performances and publicity of the supposed insult made Jesse Owens name known everywhere and when he returned from Europe he decided to gather a few material rewards for himself. For nearly 20 years then he led a varied and unusually interesting life.

He joined with Bill Robinson , the beloved Bojangles, for exhibitions. He ran races against horses, motorcycles and appeared in ball parks, traveled with a jazz band, sold insurance, was a newscaster and sports commentator, went back to Ohio State to do graduate work, recruited a basketball tem in Cleveland and took it on tour.

Then as war approached Owens was called by the government to join its physical fitness program first in Philadelphia and then in Detroit where, eventually he became a personnel director for the Ford Motor Company. During one of his basketball tours before the war he had met up with Abe Saperstein in Seattle at a time when neither Owens’ tour nor that of the Trotters was prospering sensationally. So they joined forces with Owens taking charge of the show between games of the double headers.

This had been a very good deal for Owens and after the war he rejoined the Trotters. So at last he came to that dramatic moment before the microphone in the Berlin stadium. That association with the Trotters also led him indirectly to the work in which he is now engaged and in which he believes so completely.

First, Owens was approached during a stop in Chicago by a big clothing merchant who wanted to do something for underprivileged youngsters and incidentally also to sell more clothes. Jesse took this job because it revealed to him suddenly what it really was he ought to do and wanted to do. That is, he felt that now he was especially prepared to work with young people.

Aid to Youth

After a while he left the clothing store to take over the South Side Boys Club in Chicago and was so successful with this work that he was sent for by William G. Stratton, the present governor of Illinois, who was only hoping to be at that time. With an eye on the South Side vote the governor offered Jesse a job campaigning and Jesse agreed on condition that Mr. Stratton should write into his platform that, if elected, he would do something about helping the youth of Illinois.

That is how the Illinois Youth Commission as set up modeled after those in New York and California and how Jesse Owens, one of four commissioners, came finally to the work he will sit all night to tell you about if you have time and the will to listen.

Jesse makes this work sound immensely important since it helps keep kids of all races and creeds out of mischief and active at constructive things. He works patiently at rehabilitation with those who have got into trouble. He makes himself sound thoroughly dedicated to it and he is completely convincing.

Jesse is 46 now. He getting just a little bald and just a little bulgy here and there as befits a man who has recently become a grandfather. He has three daughters but no son. One teaches in a Chicago elementary school and is married to a teacher. One is a teller in a Chicago bank and she is the mother of the first grandchild. And the third daughter is in her last year at Jesse’s alma mater, Ohio State.

A clear thinker and a fluent talker, Owens seem to feel that all he had done up to his 42d year, all his athletic triumphs, barnstorming, and personnel work, merely was preparation for what he now is doing. He is, in common with most of us, a sentimentalist, but he has no sentimental talk about life having been good to him and his duty to pay it back.

It is the individual who counts most in this age, he says, not racial or religious groups or nationalities. To work with and try to help develop the individual is the important thing for Jesse Owens and what remains of his life will be devoted to that.