Today while driving from Huntsville, AL to Birmingham, AL, I stopped for a few hours in the small town of Oakville, AL, the home town of Jesse Owens. I learned so much about Jesse Owens from the museum.
There was a 45 minute video about Jesse Owens there, narrated by the man himself. It is full of actual footage of the 1936 Olympics, which I had never seen before except for brief clips. In all of Jesse Owens's running events, he either wins by a huge margin or the only people who get close to him are other Americans. His 4th gold medal came in the relay. He was the first runner: by the time the 4th American runner crosses the finish line and wins, the USA is so far ahead that no other athletes are visible. We dominated those events. Only in the jump did the Germans get close to Owens.
Some Jesse Owens facts I learned:
- the silver medalist who Owens beat in the 200m was the older brother of Jackie Robinson
- during the ticker-tape parade in New York after the Olympics, a stranger handed Jesse Owens a paper bag. He thought it contained a sandwich. It turned out to contain $10,000 in cash. Owens never found out who gave him that.
- Despite the $10k in cash, Owens had to race against horses in exhibition races to raise money to pay his remaining tuition at Ohio State
- During World War II, Owens helped run a Ford factory in Detroit that was making vehicles for the war. He was the director of personnel and his duties included everything from mediating negotiations between labor and management to helping workers find housing
