Original subtitles

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

-I remember the '36 Olympics

and being so revolted in the behavior of Mr. Hitler.

How did all of this make you feel?

-Well, you know, I'll tell you, at that particular time,

not being interested in the political situation

as it was, until it was all over.

Then, I began to realize how repulsive some of the things

that were going on had happened.

[ Gunshot ]

-My whole life has been wrapped up,

summed up, and stopped up by a single incident --

my confrontation with Adolf Hitler

At the 1936 Olympics, the lines were drawn then

as they had never been drawn before or since.

With each passing day,

the Nazis were coming to represent everything

that free people have always feared.

And during the '36 games, Hitler found a new target --

the United States Olympic team.

-Thanks to the patriotic sportsmen of America,

we're off to Berlin with the largest and finest team

that we have ever sent abroad.

-Situate yourself in Germany in 1936.

The games are taking place 3 1/2 years

after the Nazis have come to power,

after Adolf Hitler has become chancellor,

and the regime has become progressively more extreme.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Hitler had this incredibly violent movement behind him,

but they also tried to create this image of the Nazi party

where Germany looked civilized and sane.

-Hitler arrives to preside at the opening ceremony.

-Hitler understood the propaganda potential

of the Olympic Games,

and they made the film "Olympia" that would showcase

the new Germany and Aryan superiority.

[ Crowd chanting ]

-Jesse is a clear threat to Hitler's Aryan ideology.

So, from the moment he steps off of the boat,

he has a target on his back.

-The stakes are huge for Jesse Owens,

because he is living in 1930s America,

where he is a second-class citizen.

But if he can shine in Berlin,

no one can take that away from him.

-The story of Jesse Owens versus Hitler,

it really the story of a hero versus a monster.

It's the age-old story of good versus evil.

-But when it really comes down to it,

it is the most simplistic thing -- "Who's faster?"

[ Gunshot ]

-But the thing about history is that it's messy.

And the Jesse Owens story is a lot more complicated.

-We were everything that Adolf Hitler hated,

and we wore it on our skin.

All I wanted now was my chance to run as fast

and jump as far as I could, so I'd never have to look back.

[ Panting ]

♪

-How long did you train to get ready for the Olympic?

-I had this dream when I was 13 years old.

So, it was eight years later that I was able

to realize this dream in Berlin.

But it was, um, climbing the ladder

of trying to get there is a lot of work,

and it's a lot of sacrifice on the part of the individual.

♪

-My real beginnings aren't on the European soil

with stadiums of cheering people.

The deepest parts of all

are sunk into an Alabama sharecropper shack

with the dirt of the Alabama cotton fields under my nail.

-Our father was born in Danville, Alabama.

He was the 9th child of 10 children.

His father was Henry Owens. His mother was Emma.

This photo is the only photo I've ever seen --

what about you? -- -Uh-huh.

-...of my father's parents. -This is the only one

that I've ever seen. -Uh-huh.

His father was the son of a slave.

After the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves,

there were some families who inherited or acquired land.

Then there were others, like our grandfather,

who became sharecroppers.

They farmed cotton.

Whatever they picked went to the landowner,

and they were given a small amount to live on.

It was some form of slavery again.

That family struggled,

just on a day-to-day basis, to survive.

I think, in the end, it was their spirit

that helped them survive,

and it was primary in the building of his character.

-Those years in the South were cruel,

because we never had enough to eat

and there were holes in everything we wore.

It was sharecropper's poverty,

with the suffocating prison of 1913 Alabama.

-He used to talk about running in the field

and how he just loved the feeling

because it made him feel free.

-Jesse grew up in a very difficult time

for black Americans.

[ Gunfire ]

It was a time when you had

black soldiers returning from World War I.

You've been fighting for your country.

So you came back,

and you felt that you were entitled.

But you came home, instead of to a hero's welcome,

to even more vitriol.

The racism and the Jim Crow had not abided.

In fact, there were people who were equally emboldened

to stop this black empowerment.

This was the first time, I think, though,

that black people fought back.

-They start to march in New York.

They're saying, "We have fought for this country,

we have shed blood for this country,

and we've returned to a place

that is continuing to uphold a racial hierarchy

that is discounting our contributions

to the United States."

But this infused sense of activism

is also met with a resurgence of vigilante violence,

a resurgence of the KKK,

and this is why 1918 becomes known as Red Summer.

♪

Red Summer is a series of race riots

that we see spreading across the country.

-This was basically war declared on black people.

It was a violent time for African-Americans,

where there just seemed to be no way out.

Jesse's family had to leave the South

because they would have no hope.

[ Train whistle blows ]

-To escape racial terror, to search for opportunities,

what we start seeing is people saying,

"We are going to leave the specific racial terror

that's happening in the South."

And this great migration North

is going to forever shift the demographics of the country

and change the course of American history.

-Every life has its turning point.

I don't think I'd be telling the story today

if it hadn't been for the sacrifice my parents made,

taking us from the South to Cleveland.

-As a matter of fact, Jesse,

your real name is James Cleveland Owens.

How did you happen to get the name Jesse?

-That goes back to long, long years ago,

when I first entered grade school in Cleveland, Ohio.

First time in my life I'd ever been to a mixed school.

And I came from Alabama being rather shy.

And the lady asked me my name,

and I told her J.C., and real fast,

and she says "Jesse?" I said, "No, ma'am."

I says, "J.C."

She says, "Well, your name is Jesse Owens, isn't it?"

-[ Chuckles ] -I says, "Yes, ma'am."

And it's been Jesse Owens ever since.

-And who was your track coach at Fairmont, Jesse?

-Fella by the name of Charles Riley.

-Charles Riley. -Oh, Coach! How are you?

[ Applause ] Good to see you.

-Charles Riley sees Jesse for the first time

when Jesse's a kid.

First thing he notices, he has incredibly powerful legs

and how he seemed almost built to be fast.

Until now,

Jesse Owens had not been exposed at all to the world of track.

So Charles Riley would take Jesse

to the thoroughbred races

to teach him what pure running looked like,

because he thought they were the world's greatest athletes.

To Jesse Owens, Charles Riley is really

the first white man who's willing to invest in him.

And he works with him for years as his coach,

building his technique, building his confidence.

And he becomes to Charles Riley more than someone he's coaching,

but really a kind of son.

♪

-For a young black kid like Jesse Owens,

track presented the widest opportunity

and the freest opportunity.

-If we look at sports at that period in time,

there was segregation everywhere.

And yet sports are equalizing

because either you're better or you're not.

Ultimately, the time shows it or the play shows it

or the performance shows it.

And that's the great thing about it.

-It is an even playing field, which is really alluring,

especially in track and field, because you're literally

lining up at the starting line, and it's a foot race.

It was a sport

where we see integrated dual meets happening

before other sports.

-You're going through the space

and you're told you're less, you're given less,

all opportunities are less. But then there's one place,

no matter what all of that is,

we get right here next to each other.

You can't stop it.

-And running is freedom.

That's a great metaphor for what a lot of black folks did.

Ran away from patrols, ran from the South,

running to freedom.

And Jesse found himself.

Track and field, for him, became liberating.

-As a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old,

Jesse Owens is doing things that are really impressive.

He's running just about as fast

as the fastest men in the world at that time.

-One day, Mr. Riley introduces you to the late Charley Paddock,

then known as the world's fastest human.

Do you remember what Mr. Riley said to you

after talking to Paddock?

-Well, he told me that I could be like this man,

but there was one thing that I had to do

that meant work and a lot of great deal of effort,

and those are the things that I live by.

-Coach Riley saw what was happening before anyone else.

He'd given me my legs, and that was the beginning

of the dreams I had of reaching the Olympics,

where all the fears and hopes bottled up in me

since I was a child would be tested

by the greatest evil the world has ever known.

♪

-In Berlin, there was a parade of an association of veterans,

the Steel Helmets.

They seek revenge.

-In the aftermath of World War I,

Germany was subjected to the Versailles Treaty...

-Versailles -- the delegations of 53 countries

come to sign the peace. -...what most Germans consider

to be a harsh and unfair and vindictive peace treaty.

-It was a pretty desperate time in Germany.

The strictures of the Treaty of Versailles

require massive reparations;

the Great Depression setting in;

there wasn't a lot of employment;

there was a ton of inflation.

So, as a result, German workers are out of work

and the German people are generally demoralized.

People are desperate.

-Riots start.

These disturbances facilitate the rise of radicals

and help the cause of Adolf Hitler.

-With the outbreak of World War I,

Hitler was fighting in the German army,

and in service, he had found a meaning to his life.

-He was just as shocked by Germany's collapse

as most Germans were,

but it took him a few years after the war

to decide to go into politics.

In the early '20s, he found a political home

in the obscure, far-right Nazi Party.

-Hitler looks at the Weimar Republic,

which is the government in Germany.

And he sees it as being dominated

by the politicians who signed the Treaty of Versailles,

enabled by Jewish businessmen and Jewish capital.

He sort of sees this intertwined threat of elites and the Jews.

And so he started seeing the Jews as the enemy

who were poisoning Germanic culture.

-To historians, Hitler's success with the German masses

stemmed from his gift of oratory,

from his speeches.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Hitler's message was that Germany was being threatened

by Jews, by Communism.

It had been cheated and treated badly,

and it was unjust the Germans were paying the price.

And Hitler was promising to restore Germany to greatness.

-Hitler's idea is, there are no classes in Germany.

"We can keep Germany German, Aryan.

Among Aryans, there are no classes."

Educated Germans are hotly opposed to it.

They can see what's going on.

But Hitler was kind of this silky politician

who very cleverly allies himself with the German President,

Field Marshal Hindenburg.

-Hitler understood that gaining power in Germany,

Hindenburg, for as long as he was alive,

was a necessary ally.

In 1931,

in the last years of the Weimar Republic,

the International Olympic Committee awards

the Olympic Games to Germany.

-Their award is the Winter and Summer Games for 1936.

And it's seen as this great new dawn for Germany.

They're kind of emerging

from their post-World War I isolation.

-Now, of course, this is a couple of years

before Hitler and the Nazis come to power.

-So it looks like this kind of respectable bourgeois government

in Germany that will continue to knit itself

into the fabric of Europe and the world.

But the big problem in German politics

after World War I is that there's no viable center.

There's no government that can form

and have an operating majority.

So the president, Field Marshal Hindenburg,

gets to govern by emergency decree.

-That's when Hindenburg's closest advisers

convince him that the way to break the political logjam

is to form an alliance with the Nazis.

The problem is that Hitler will accept

nothing other than the chancellorship.

-Hindenburg doesn't want to collaborate with Hitler,

because he knows he's a completely unethical,

immoral guy, but he says,

"I need this guy in order to build a durable coalition."

And then he stupidly thinks, "I can control Hitler."

-They made the single most catastrophic

political miscalculation in modern history.

Hitler could not be controlled.

At the end of February 1933, someone burns down Reichstag,

Germany's great parliament building.

So the Nazis presented the fire as the opening salvo

in an attempt by the German Communists

to stage a coup.

President Hindenburg suspends civil liberties.

And then the passage of the Enabling Act...

-Shall disband all political parties.

Emergency law, passed the next day

after the Reichstag fire,

gave him the legal power to do so.

-The Enabling Act was

the legal political foundation of Hitler's dictatorship.

-Hitler became a dictator of all Germany.

-Now, in addition to that,

there was increasingly mass terror.

-The writings of all Jews are seized and burned.

-So, one of the first targets

was a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

And thousands of German Jews were purged

from Germany's civil service.

In the spring of 1933, a special unit

within the party, bodyguard for Adolf Hitler,

called the Schutzstaffel, or the SS,

creates the first concentration camp at Dachau.

and Dachau would become the model

for future concentration camps and death camps.

-There's no question that the original sin

in all this is President Hindenburg's

decision to make Hitler chancellor.

-But now the accelerating persecution of the Jews

is receiving a lot of press attention around the world.

-Anti-Semitism has swept Germany,

fire and pillage.

-This presents a particular problem

for hosting this huge international event

in which there will be Jewish athletes

and non-white athletes.

-People around the world start saying,

"We cannot countenance racism, anti-Semitism,

bigotry in any form,

and going to Germany for the Olympics does exactly that."

Almost immediately, a boycott movement

springs up in the United States.

-I am here this evening to join in a great protest

against the present German government!

-But on the other side, you have

the anti-boycott movement, which is led by Avery Brundage.

-Avery Brundage, like many people at the time,

is intensely anti-Communist.

But he even thinks the Nazi regime

is a kind of model because it is anti-Communist

and because it is so intensely patriotic.

But also Avery Brundage is an anti-Semite.

-As the president of the American Olympic Committee,

Brundage is the liaison to the International Olympic Committee.

As part of those duties,

the IOC hosts a meeting of committee heads

over at the Olympic site before the game.

So Brundage then goes over to Berlin.

And while he's there, the Nazis have arranged

for him to speak to Jewish people

who are kind of in the room.

being glared at by their Nazi hosts.

-He's basically wined and dined by Hitler.

He looks around at this guided tour.

He's charmed by these German officials.

Germany makes assurances repeatedly

that it is going to have a fair process.

-Brundage says to these Germans, "Don't worry about it.

You know, it's the American media.

It's staffed by German-hating Jews

who are writing columns in the New York Times,

like, vilifying Germany."

-It's clear that he'd already made up his mind

he would not support a boycott.

So it matters greatly

that the Nazis have a sympathetic ear

in this enormously influential individual.

-A man rises to power in Germany

who will turn the Olympic Games

into the greatest publicity stunt of his career.

-Initially, Hitler doesn't want to have anything

to do with the Olympics.

He's so focused on building the Aryan community in Germany,

but he's convinced by Goebbels,

who is Hitler's brilliant caricaturist and propagandist.

Goebbels says, "This is going to be gold.

We're going to be able to showcase Hitler's Germany

to the world."

-The timing was very good for Hitler.

Germany could present itself

as a proud, peace-seeking, stable nation,

and it could put on display

the supposedly superior so-called Aryan race.

-Hitler is now immersed in this Olympic project.

And what Hitler envisions is this massive stadium.

This has to be like the Colosseum in Rome,

and it's going to be this showcase of his capital

and his Germany.

-And black athletes, like Jesse Owens,

will become a threat to the political project

that Adolf Hitler is trying to build around these games,

which hinges on complete Aryan supremacy.

♪

-In 1933, Jesse, you've received scholarship offers

from many colleges and universities,

but you enroll as a freshman at Ohio State University

in Columbus.

Why, Jesse? -College of choice would be

one of the first of a lot of dilemmas

that a guy like Owens faced.

What he would represent was much larger than himself.

-In the early '30s, for black athletes like Jesse Owens,

there's great scrutiny over college choice,

and you can see this in the black press.

At the time, there was a great expansion

of historically black colleges and universities

across the country with their own vast athletic culture.

So what school is going to be the best school to go to?

Where can he have an impact?

Where might he showcase the race?

-The Ohio State University is a very well-resourced place

that had a tremendous track and field program.

-And for Jesse Owens, the other thing is

Ohio State University had proximity

to his daughter and his girlfriend at the time,

his future wife, Ruth.

-This is my wife, Mrs. Owens, Mr. Murrow.

-Good evening, Mrs. Owens. -Good evening, Mr. Murrow.

-I first met Ruth Solomon in grammar school.

If there are things living within me that haven't changed,

it's my love for Ruth.

She picked me up whenever I stumbled

and held our family together

starting at 16 years old, which wasn't easy.

♪

-Jesse desperately needed money at home for his family

because Ruth had no form of income.

I mean, he had a very steep mountain to climb.

And at Ohio State, there was more opportunity,

so he had to make a choice.

-At Ohio State, first of all, it was closer to home.

I had heard a great deal about the coaching staff,

and my junior high school coach wanted me to go.

-Through his trust in Charles Riley,

he decides to go run at Ohio State University

to run under coach Larry Snyder.

-Your former track coach at Ohio State, Larry Snyder!

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Larry Snyder was a quirky guy.

He had become fairly well known

for having his athletes train to music on the phonograph

because he thought it would help their rhythm.

And getting Jesse Owens puts him on the map.

-Larry Snyder was extremely helpful in helping him get a job

where he could study and do the work too.

He worked just to get by and to send money home.

But as a student at Ohio State, it had to be tough

because it was like the rest of the country for --

pretty racist.

You couldn't live in the dorm.

Most of the black students lived in rooming houses off campus.

Even though he was star of the track team, he did as well.

-If you were an African-American athlete in those days,

the only space you had where you could exhale

was actually in the competition.

Everywhere you go, there's fear, there's resentment,

there is isolation.

The only time you have is those 10 seconds or 20 seconds

or a longer competition.

-We have the famous Ralph Metcalfe.

-My grandfather Ralph Metcalfe and Jesse Owens

met for the very first time in 1934 at the AAU championships.

They competed against each other.

By this time, my grandfather was quite well known.

-Here they come! Metcalfe in the middle was the fastest of all.

-He had competed in the '32 Olympics.

He was regarded by "Ripley's Believe It or Not!"

as the fastest man on Earth.

Great champions are defined by the adversity that they face,

the opponents that they face.

In track and field, they had each other,

so they pushed each other's greatness.

-Under your tutelage,

Jesse went on to newer track triumphs.

-Well, mainly because of his exceptional ability.

He made track history one day at Ann Arbor.

♪

-I had been working 10 years for the once in a million chance

where a black boy out of the rural south

would be able to go to college

and compete in the Big Ten tournament.

-The Big Ten track meet was the huge platform

to show your athletic prowess,

to continue to make a name for yourself.

A few days before that track meet,

Jesse Owens is wrestling with his frat brother

and injures himself.

-He went into that track meet

with a back so sorely injured from a fall

that the Ohio State boys, his teammates,

had to help him put on his track uniform.

Remember, Jesse? -They had to carry me upstairs.

-[ Chuckles ] They really did.

-Even his coach is saying, "Sit it out."

And he's saying, "I can't sit it out. Are you kidding?

From where I came from, you know, being a sharecrop--

I -- No! If I have to crawl there, I'll do it."

And that sets the stage for a legendary performance.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-When the starter told us to take our marks and get set,

I forgot everything... except running.

-100-meter dash.

Owens again covers himself with glory.

-What he does is probably the most incredible thing

anyone has ever done in sports.

In less than an hour, he equals the world record

in the 100-yard dash,

he breaks the world record in the 220-yard dash

by an incredible distance

and the 220-yard low hurdles,

and he broke the world record for the long jump,

which was then called the broad jump,

and technically he's also broken the records

in the metric distances,

so he's got five world records in an hour.

-After the Big Ten championship, his universe of possibility

begun to expand.

Before going to the Olympics and winning a gold medal,

that kind of goal was practically unthinkable.

That gold medal was like going to the moon.

But now he's really beginning to see

that dreams really can come true.

You can now get to the moon.

-In the wake of the Big Ten championships, Jesse Owens,

young as he might be, is now a star.

-He's almost an overnight sensation,

and he becomes this hero not just to black Americans,

but to white Americans as well. -King of the track,

Ohio State's Jesse Owens, one of the greatest of all athletes,

makes history in the National Collegiate Games

at Berkeley, California.

-Young Jesse Owens finds himself in LA

with a new air of celebrity around him.

There's certainly more opportunities coming his way,

but also more opportunities to get caught up in the fast life.

-Now he's hanging out with movie stars.

He's clearly distracted,

and he meets a young woman named Quincella Nickerson --

a young black woman in LA, prominent family.

But now all the newspapers, they're reporting

that he's proposed to her.

And at this point, Jesse is unmarried,

but he has promised himself to Ruth.

It gets kind of messy.

Ruth is obviously distressed.

-Something appeared in the newspaper.

-Oh, yeah. -Uh-huh.

-I know that my mother's parents would not let him see her.

[ Chuckles ] He was banned.

-So while he's on this long trip

and he's supposed to be running these track exhibitions,

the unthinkable happens and he starts losing.

And he doesn't just lose once, he loses continuously.

The trip turns out to be a complete and utter disaster.

-He starts losing races,

in particular to a fellow named Eulace Peacock,

who's a very formidable opponent.

He's racing against the best of the best day after day --

the Eulace Peacocks, the Ralph Metcalfes, the Foy Drapers,

the Frank Wykoffs.

And at this point, he is worn down and he's not good enough.

-He's running terribly,

and there's all of these rumors swirling around about him.

It's a wake-up call, is what it is.

-He's 21 years old. He's not invincible.

A year out from the Berlin games,

he's not in a position where he can afford

to lose his self confidence, to get injured,

any of those things.

He has to get his personal life sorted out,

and he's got to get some rest.

-Jesse Owens goes back to Ohio.

He sees Ruth there and he says, "You know what?

That was all I needed. -He gets off the train,

and he and Ruth see each other again,

and they like, "Alright, let's get married -- tonight!"

-And he had the sense enough to know

that he had to be centered.

He lost himself in California, but to his credit,

he rediscovered himself,

and his wife helped him rediscover himself too.

He saw that "whatever I was tempted to do

is totally outweighed from this dream that I've had."

-A new matured, committed, Jesse Owens

recommits himself to training in pursuit of that Olympic dream.

-Jesse Owens still needs to qualify for the Olympic team,

so he and Charles Riley and Larry Snyder go back to work

as they build toward the Olympic track and field trials.

-And Ohio's one-man team steps out in front.

The champion of them all,

he's Uncle Sam's brightest dark hope for the 1936 Olympics.

-This is the moment, everything

he has been building to for his whole life.

And if he's not in top form, it's not gonna be good enough.

-He was this close of going to the moon.

He was not gonna be derailed.

[ Drums beating ]

-In Germany leading up to the games,

Hitler's vision was always to build an empire within Europe

as the basis for ultimately world domination.

In 1934, Hitler still does not have complete power.

He has a big problem.

His own paramilitary organization,

the Storm Troopers,

has a leadership that is not entirely loyal to Hitler.

So in the summer of 1934, he has the leadership murdered.

Here he's sending a message --

"I will not share power with anyone."

But there was still the question of President von Hindenburg.

-Death came this year to fall upon Hindenburg!

Although active to the last in his nation's affairs,

his old age finally inflicted the fate of all men.

-When President Hindenburg dies,

there's really nothing stopping Hitler.

-[ Speaking in German ]

-But now Hitler combines the office the chancellor

with that of the president.

Hitler becomes the Fuhrer.

-[ Speaking in German ] -[ Speaking in German ]

-He forces all the parties to dissolve themselves

and proclaim the Nazi party the only party in Germany.

-[ Shouting in German ]

-Right away, he authorizes pogroms against Jews

and has the SA going around beating up Jews

and closing down Jewish shops.

And then he comes in with the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.

♪

-[ Speaking in German ]

-The Nuremberg Laws stripped Germany's Jewish citizens

of all their most basic rights.

In the course of three years,

you've gone from full rights to no rights.

They were complete outcasts.

-This really presents all the teams planning

to go to the Olympics in Berlin with a huge dilemma.

You can no longer deny that Germany's

an officially anti-Semitic state.

So what do you do --

do you go, or do you stand apart from this?

-In the summer of '35,

these calls for boycotts start to rise once again.

And at the heart of those tensions are the black athlete

who's caught between these larger kind of

collective aspirations.

-All he wanted to do was qualify in the Olympic trial.

So we go from Jesse Owens just trying to be the best he can be

to now being thrust into a political situation.

-When it came to these games, there was one school of thought,

which was that the games should be boycotted,

and that would send a very clear

and powerful message around the world.

However, there was an opposing school of thought

that felt that if the athletes do go over there,

they will have the opportunity to dispel all of this rhetoric.

-Jews were clearly the target,

but blacks were not escaping either.

Anybody who was not Aryan.

-There are a lot of people who also point to the hypocrisy

they see of the United States.

How can we say we're not going to go to Germany

because the way they treat Jews,

when you look in the United States,

look at the way we treat black people?

And that's a powerful argument.

-The Nuremberg Laws were tantamount to the Jim Crow laws.

You want to make this big global statement about these injustices

when you haven't done anything

to correct it here at home first.

-People start to approach Jesse Owens

and say, "Wouldn't it be impactful

if you consider not going?"

-Are you going to cosign for these crimes against humanity,

or you going to take a stand?

Jesse Owens issued a statement and saying

that if any minority is being oppressed in this country,

we should back out.

-But his mentors, Larry Snyder, Charles Riley,

they say, "Absolutely not.

You are threatening your career. You have to keep your head down.

You're there to run a race. That's what you need to do."

-He was extremely conflicted.

He wanted to be a part of the sentiments

of the black community,

but also wanted to be a participant in the Olympics.

It had to be very difficult and very frustrating and scary.

But it was his father who made the difference.

His father told him that they're going to hate you

whether you go or not, and you should go.

-Olympic Games belong to the athletes

and not to the politicians.

And speaking for the American Olympic Committee,

I can say definitely

that there will be teams representing the United States

in the 1936 games.

-Ultimately, the boycott falls apart.

Boycotts only work if everybody does it.

And when you have somebody like Jesse Owens who has in his ear

mentors who are not concerned about that,

they're concerned about Jesse,

they're concerned about Jesse's future,

it's a hard thing

because it lays a lot on the shoulders of black athletes.

It's a burden that they did not necessarily choose to inherit,

but yet nonetheless, it's their burden to carry.

-As a black man in America,

there are restaurants he can't eat in,

hotels he can't stay in,

jobs no one will give him,

opportunities that he won't be afforded.

But if he can shine in Berlin,

that will, in all likelihood,

give him a foothold into a better life.

And if he doesn't rise to the occasion in Berlin,

those opportunities won't be there.

-He wasn't thinking about being the role model

and speaking for black Americans.

The focus was just concentrating on being great in that moment,

this meet, this Olympic trial.

♪

-Jumping from the tank to the cinders where

Uncle Sam chose his strongest Olympic track team in history.

-Stars like Jesse Owens are already sure of making the team.

-You can't underestimate what he did at the trials.

Most of the people were just trying to

qualify in their event.

He wanted to qualify in three.

He just wanted to dominate.

-Owens equals the AAU's record in winningest undefeated sprint.

Owens is also the long jump king.

-He qualified for the 100,

which is always the most competitive.

Then he qualified for the 200,

then he qualified for the long jump.

The fact that he qualified for three

is setting him up for greatness in the Olympic --

if he could pull it all off.

-"Let me out in front. I'm gonna catch the boat for Berlin."

You made it alright, Jesse.

-Heading into the 1936 Olympics,

a very interesting athletic moment precedes it

that sets the stage for what was to occur.

-[ Indistinct ] -Just a couple of months before,

Joe Louis, who was the American boxing champion,

faced the German named Max Schmeling.

-America and the world went into their corners.

It was probably the most listened to event --

not sporting event -- event in world history at the time.

-The significance of this heavyweight bout

was that Joe Louis represented not just America,

but the hopes and dreams and aspirations

of the black community at that time.

-Joe Louis was like our guy.

He was this 22-year-old young shiny hope.

-Max Schmeling at age 30 was considered past his prime,

so Hitler didn't want Schmeling ultimate defeat

to define anything that his movement was working towards.

♪

Much to everyone's surprise,

Joe Louis got knocked out by Max Schmeling.

-So many hopes are now shifting to Jesse Owens

because he's really kind of sharing the pedestal

as a black American hero with Joe Louis.

-[ Chanting in German ] -After the fight,

Hitler used it as an opportunity to double down

on all of his racist rhetoric.

So now for Jesse,

the stakes are raised even higher going into

the 1936 Olympics.

-On their way to the Olympic Games in Berlin

on the USS Manhattan are the best of American athletes.

-Many years ago,

my ancestors were brought on a boat from Africa

to America as slaves for men

who felt they had the right to own other men.

In August of 1936,

I boarded a boat to go back across the Atlantic Ocean

to do battle with a man who thought

all other men should be slaves to him and his Aryan army.

As the traces of land vanished,

I knew I wouldn't see home again until I had won or I had lost.

♪

♪

-Before Hitler came into power,

the German army, by treaty, was limited to 100,000 men.

The Nazi leaders were now ready to strike.

-For Hitler, there were lots of reasons to really put on

a big international show.

In March 1936, Hitler takes a big gamble.

He marches troops into the Rhineland.

-The Rhineland, a strip of land between Germany and France

demilitarized after the last war as a precaution

against future German aggression.

-Seems hugely significant in retrospect,

but at the time, all the powers that were

policing the Treaty of Versailles --

France and Great Britain -- they were concerned,

above all else, to avoid war.

-This whole stunt made a lot of people quite nervous.

What were Hitler's intentions?

He's rearming Germany.

Does he intend to start another war in Europe?

-On the eve of these summer games,

it's really the first pebble in this coming avalanche of war.

-Here is an opportunity to show the world

that Germany is actually on the path of peace.

-The 11th Olympic Games of the modern era.

A final line of runners relay the torch,

which was carried night and day in all weather,

from ancient Olympia in Greece

by 3,000 youths of seven nations.

-The Olympic Games are held in Berlin,

which Hitler has transformed into the show place

of the Third Reich.

-So with the eyes of the world upon them,

Nazi Germany has really gone out of its way

to put up great wallpaper and window dressing.

-Hitler ordered that the persecution of Jews

be paused for the duration of games.

It meant reducing signs saying Jews are unwanted here.

This had to be put under control.

-You don't see the concentration camps,

you don't see the degradation of Jews and non-Aryan Germans.

-The country's anti-Semitism has almost forced

the International Olympic Committee

to move the games to another site.

-They even went so far to allow a couple of Jewish athletes

to participate with the German team.

-They were trying to show Germany in a positive light

and try to leach away a lot of this criticism

that was building around the anti-Semitism,

the Nuremberg Laws, the dictatorship.

They're trying to put a real pretty face on it.

So Hitler contracts with Leni Riefenstahl.

She did the famous Nazi film "Triumph of the Will."

But for the 1936 Games, he has her to do "Olympia."

♪

This is going to show the sort of majesty of German athletes.

Muscles, slab-like arms and pectorals,

hurling discus and shot puts

and pointing to the good health and vigor and vitality

of this new Germany,

this kind of racial purity.

-Hitler has ignited a new torch among the Germans --

hot passion to prove the Aryans as a super race.

-Part of the idea around Aryan superiority

really is rooted in this idea of genetics,

that you can engineer the master race.

And so a lot of emphasis was to reproduce the best specimens,

and the idea that the best breeding stock was

Aryan breeding stock.

Part of weeding out these undesirable elements

from German society

was to not dilute this kind of reproductive ground

for producing the best, most superior,

most physically fit specimens.

And so the Olympic Games, of course,

becomes the arena in which to showcase them.

And Jesse is a clear threat to that.

-I'm going to try to bring back three crowns,

that is in 100 meters, 200 meters, and the broad jump.

-Aboard the Manhattan, a shipload of

American athletes and officials arrived at Hamburg --

the Olympic Games are open.

-As they were approaching this very serious environment

in this foreign land, they didn't know what to expect.

-The challenge leveled at Americans by the Nazis was this:

the democracies were decadent -- they bred inferior people.

-Hitler, by now, had taken total control of the German press.

There was a Nazi press office that had to okay

everything that went out.

Journalists would insult the black athletes

as not being racially equal to Aryan athletes.

But then the Nazi press office would say, "You know,

let's not say anything negative about American blacks,

because we don't want to lose American goodwill."

-In a place like Berlin in which a lot of media

has been controlled by the Nazi party,

the other thing to know is that the citizens in Germany

are getting an eye and a lens to the world

through the international press

that is bringing with them stories about athletes to watch,

such as Jesse Owens.

So he has a target, but he also has a spotlight.

And those two things are on a collision course.

-Hitler intended to forge from the Olympic flame

a propaganda victory for his perverted race theories.

But in the ranks of the American Olympic squad stood Jesse Owens,

American, and to the dismay of the Nazis, a Negro also.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

♪

♪

-At the time when the Olympic Games were set to get underway,

I didn't want anything to do with politics,

and I felt that I wasn't in Berlin

to compete against any one athlete or even Hitler himself.

-The Olympic Games said Hitler would prove

the greater vitality of fascism.

Democracy's athletes set out to prove Hitler's theory

was pure poppycock.

-My sole purpose with the Olympics was to do my very best.

-America's Olympic team has had the additional burden

of proving Democracy's athletes were not inferior

to the so-called Nazi superman.

-They are the favorites, a squad of champions,

with the greatest of them all, Jesse Owens.

♪

-[ Speaking in German ]

[ Cheering ]

♪

-The last runner of the torch relay enters of the stadium

to ignite the Olympic flame with his torch,

and the games will officially be on.

-Newspaper men from all over the world

were writing about Hitler's super strong, super smart,

super everything Aryan superman,

but now those same newspaper men were asking Hitler,

"Who have you got to beat Jesse Owens?"

♪

♪

♪

-Over 50 nations are represented here today.

Competition will be key,

for each country has chosen its best to compete

against the rest of the world.

-At first, things are looking good for the Nazis,

but people are waiting to find the crack in the armor,

waiting to find true pictures of Nazi Germany to emerge.

-The Nazis were intent

upon showing up what they considered

the inferior decadent democracy.

They appeared to be succeeding. -Hitler's there,

and over the course of the day,

he congratulates these conspicuously blond medalists,

Fins and Germans.

A big show is made of him meeting them

and congratulating them.

Meanwhile, this competition is unfolding in the high jump.

Dave Albritton and Cornelius Johnson,

the two African-American star high jumpers.

They're going back and forth and back and forth

and back and forth.

It eventually becomes clear

that one of them is going to win the gold medal

and the other is going to win the silver medal.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-First Johnson, America,

a new Olympic record of 6 foot, 8 inches.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-When it was time for them to take the stand

and receive their medals,

Hitler abruptly left the stadium.

-He just snubs them and he's whisked away,

and they say, "Oh, he just has another engagement to get to."

-The media is quick to jump on this

and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You're not congratulating these black Americans?

What's going on?" -He's talking about

the need to purify Germany racially,

so he can't be seen to be enthusiastic

toward African-American or Jewish athletes.

He can only reward Aryan athletes,

but that won't pass muster with the sort of international press.

So that's why he retreats.

-The head of the International Olympic Committee

tells Adolf Hitler, "Either congratulate everybody

or you congratulate nobody."

After that first day, he chose nobody.

-However, secretly he would meet with some

of the German athletes and he would congratulate them

and shake their hands behind closed doors.

He wasn't a statesman. He was really a coward.

And this just goes to demonstrate once again

the weakness of his character, the weakness of his ideology,

and the weakness of his entire identity.

♪

-The fastest sprinters of the world are getting ready.

-100-meter dash is the most important event for Jesse Owens.

If you can win 100-meter dash

and be proclaimed the world's fastest man,

you have etched your place in sports history.

-100 meters is probably the most prestigious

single sporting event world.

Who's the fastest person?

[ Cheers and applause ]

The pressure of not making a mistake is the biggest issue.

You can't be distracted.

-It's about locating the best part of yourself at the moment

when it matters most, in a country

in which he is officially a sub human,

with Hitler watching.

One mistake... it's over.

-Unfortunately, America prepared him for this moment.

Being an African-American man at that time, you were not wanted,

you were told you couldn't go into restaurants,

you couldn't sleep in this hotel,

you better get out of this city before the sun goes down.

So most of the time, that's how you felt.

-[ Speaking in German ]

Borchmeyer, Metcalfe, Wykoff, Owens.

-This was my chance.

How could I let Hitler,

his cronies, and his true believers

in that packed stadium know that I was scared?

♪

I got myself together,

overcoming the impulses...

-[ Speaking in German ]

-Ready to fly.

♪

♪

-[ Speaking in German ]

[ Crowd chanting "Owens" ]

-He blows away the field,

equals the world record.

He's so electric, there's this whir around him

that people responded to and the crowd respond to,

as one, starting to chant his name.

[ Chanting continues ]

We can't help but be awed

by this great black American star...

in Hitler's capital.

All of the hopes and all the promises,

all of the dreams that come to fruition,

and now Jesse Owens is an Olympic champion.

-[ Speaking in German ]

[ Cheers and applause ]

-I think that the greatest moment

that a person can have is to stand on

a victory stand far away from home,

and then from the distance you could hear

the strings of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

And the higher the stars and stripes rose,

the louder the strings of "The Star-Spangled Banner"

would be heard.

I think that's the greatest moment

of my whole athletic career.

♪

-Immediately following the 100-meter dash, it was said

that Jesse Owens was personally snubbed by Adolf Hitler.

It's not even just like the front pages of

American newspapers.

It's banner headlines above the fold --

"Hitler snubs Owens."

Was it true? It's hard to say.

There are many conflicting versions of what happened.

Hitler's been told not to congratulate anyone,

but in the moment it seemed

that he was willing to actually meet with Jesse Owens.

-The Defender account detailed the snub,

that Owens was going to go up to the box and see him.

-"Defender foreign press service correspondence --

Surrounded by his Nazi comrades and officials,

Hitler raised his hand

as the official Nazi salute to the winded Owens.

Owens had started upstairs to the Fuhrer's box

escorted by German officials.

Owens hoped Hitler would receive him,

but his attempt failed.

As King Owens approached, Hitler was making his departure.

Even the fact that Hitler has found reasons

to avoid his personal salutations,

he has failed to dim fandom's appreciation

for the greatest Olympic athlete who has ever lived."

I mean, it could be true and it could be questionable.

My father really never addressed it.

-As he used to say, he didn't go to shake hands with Hitler.

He went there to run, and run he did.

-Regardless if the snub was fact or fiction,

if you were black, you recognized

that type of disrespect.

That was probably all the motivation they needed.

If you're not going to acknowledge us,

we're going to force you to acknowledge us.

And now that sets the stage

for Jesse Owens to face Hitler's Aryan long jump.

♪

-The beginning of the Olympic Games

were a considerable success,

especially for the Nazi propaganda wing.

There was Riefenstahl's film in the making.

Zeppelins were used to carry the results of German victories

who were winning the most medals overall.

Things are humming along smoothly

until Jesse Owens comes along.

-The men's long jump.

-Hitler has great faith

that his star long jumper is going to take

the gold medal.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Luz Long -- he was one of those rare athletic happenings

you come to recognize after years of competition,

and he had been groomed his entire life for this Olympiad

in this single event.

The broad jump trials gave each athlete three tries

to make a qualifying distance of 23.5 feet.

I hadn't gone a foot less than that practice

or otherwise since high school.

-All he has to do is jump 23.5 feet

to qualify for the final

and move on and look for another gold medal.

So, he does like a little practice jaunt

through the pit...

and they call him for a foul.

He's clearly just practicing.

They're like, "No, that's a foul.

You can't just, you know, run through the pit.

That -- That counts."

So he's now unnerved.

-I'd been careless.

"Forget it," I said to myself.

"You've fouled before, and there's still two jumps left."

♪

-He fouls again.

And at that point, anybody can get nervous.

-I'd gone over the takeoff board. I couldn't believe it.

-You're running 40 meters trying to hit one board

in the right body position at the right time.

It's really challenging.

You've got the pressure of the Olympics.

And if you don't make this jump, then it gets Hitler,

gets all these people chance to say, "See there?

I knew he couldn't handle it."

-Jesse Owens is down to one last chance.

-It cannot end like this.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

It was Luz Long.

The way his hand rested on my shoulder

made me know somehow that he was far from being my enemy.

"I think I know what is wrong with you,"

he said in broken English.

"You're afraid you will foul again.

I've been there myself, and I have the answer."

-Ohio State's phenomenal Jesse Owens

again takes the spotlight.

It's his last try, and it's got to be good.

-I jogged over to the runway,

refocusing my jump on the towel

he had placed in front of the takeoff board,

and began my run without fear.

♪

♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

When I came down,

it was more than 26 feet --

nearly an Olympic record.

On the verge of fouling out

and maybe blowing my entire Olympiad,

Luz, one of Hitler's Nazis,

changed everything for me at his own expense.

-The men's long jump final -- the great Negro athlete,

Jesse Owens of America, is up against the German, Luz Long.

♪

-7.54 meters.

-His first leap took the lead.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-7.74 meters.

-I beat it.

-7.84 meters.

-The second of three was even better...

-7.87 meters.

-...and I beat that by half an inch.

[ Crowd chanting "Owens" ]

-They've had this spectacular competition going back

and forth for the gold medal.

It really is this incredible drama.

[ Crowd chanting "Luz Long" ]

But eventually Jesse outlasts Luz Long.

♪

-Fate was against him.

Luz looked up from the pit to see the red flag waving.

He had fouled, and I had won.

But victory is the sweetest when you win it on your own merits.

I still had one jump left, and I wanted it to be remembered.

Luz deserved my very best, and I still had more to give.

-Owens.

♪

[ Crowd chanting "Owens" ]

8.46 meters.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-A new Olympic record.

I had jumped farther than any man on Earth.

After the scene with Hitler

and the near disaster in the broad jump,

the man that had saved me from that

raced over to me and led me towards the crowd.

-The visual of this is really dramatic.

Here they were, joined arm in arm.

This wasn't supposed to be on display.

-Owens, America. -In the context of

the Hitler Olympics, it was a beautiful moment,

but it also shows what the Olympics should really be about.

-It is the opposite of the Hitler snub story.

Black American grandson of slaves

competing against this model of Aryan youth.

And how at that moment, instead of being adversaries,

they became brothers.

It's a story that Jesse later in his life

returned to again and again.

-We built a friendship, and we corresponded with one another

for a number of years.

Then the war broke out,

and then I didn't hear any more from him at all.

-Ultimately, in World War II Luz Long is killed in battle.

-My father was sent a letter from Luz.

In it, he says,

"Would you promise that you will go find my son

and tell him what kind of person I was."

-In 1951,

I had the privilege of meeting his son,

and after showing some pictures and letters

that he had in a scrapbook that I had written his father...

well, as a result of that,

today I am now corresponding with his son.

-Jesse, you've been a very important part of my life

and I've very often seen pictures from you

and the photographs of my father.

-I have experienced many moments in the sun,

but perhaps the most rewarding was to have Luz Long beside me

on the winner's platform.

♪

-With every Jesse Owens victory,

Hitler understands that his agenda is crumbling.

So the only thing he could do

is to try to dehumanize Jesse Owens.

He was a monster that was not going to be deterred.

♪

-The 11th modern in Olympiad in sports history.

These latest pictures show the greatest thrills

of the greatest Olympics,

starring the invincible Jesse Owens.

-As Jesse starts to win events,

Hitler very quickly moves to dismiss these.

They try to spin Jesse Owens' success

and any kind of black success at the Olympic Games.

To not actually be a threat to Hitler's Nazi ideology,

they say these are just uncivilized brutish people

who, of course, excel physically,

but mentally, they're not on par.

-So they just cooked up this idea of black auxiliaries.

This was their way of explaining

that Americans are an inferior race.

"The only way they can keep pace with us Aryans

is by bringing in their black auxiliaries."

-Hitler says, "When we're in power,

we will have Olympic Games free from Jews,

free from blacks, free from all of these inconveniences.

It will just be a space

to showcase Aryan supremacy, as it should be."

That becomes his quick pivot to try to salvage the games

that are crumbling around him.

-America's track star, 22-year-old Jesse Owens,

gets ready for the feature event of the day.

-Like many of the other events,

his biggest competition was his own teammates.

Now in the 200,

this particular teammate was Mack Robinson,

the older brother of one Jackie Robinson.

His brother Jack is going to become the next generation

Jesse Owens -- the barrier breaker,

the symbolic black athlete

that a lot of people gravitate around.

And then you have Mack Robinson,

who is just a shade off Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympic Games.

♪

-Jesse had excelled in the 100-yard dash

and the broad jump, but Jesse had no way of knowing

that he was also to leap into history

as a champion of Democracy.

-The 200-meter race was a story of resilience versus racism.

Jesse understood that Hitler's rhetoric was a fallacy.

These theories of Aryan supremacy, the master race,

none of this was scientifically proven.

None of this was done through clinical studies.

This was just the rumblings of a madman.

They knew how dominant they were

and how competitive they could be,

especially on the world stage.

-The gun sounds, and there they go.

Here they come in the 200-meter final

with Jesse Owens.

[ Cheers and applause ] The crowd is stunned.

Jesse Owens, phenomenal star of the American squad,

streaking around the turn.

-He's setting new Olympic and world records

as he rockets home.

-A third Olympic crown -- time 21.2 seconds.

-The Olympic Stadium in Berlin

no longer belongs to Aryan supremacy.

It belongs to Jesse Owens.

[ Crowd chanting "Jesse Owens" ]

-For somebody like Jesse Owens

who listened to the words of Larry Snyder when he said,

"Keep your head down, don't make political statements,

just go out and run," he's run the race,

he's won the medals.

Now you're unmuzzled.

Now you can speak to these much larger geopolitical issues.

♪

-This was the message of Jesse Owens sent to Americans

through The Pittsburgh Courier.

"This is the happiest day of my life to me personally.

I am proud that I am an American."

-I see the sun breaking through the clouds.

Millions of Americans will recognize now

that what I and the boys of my race are trying to do

is for the glory of our country and our countrymen.

-For a black man,

to go to a country where you really aren't welcome

and gain the respect from a crowd

that are not really for you,

it's like a badge of merit.

It's something that I wear with great pride

and believe in perpetuating what he stood for.

♪

-I'm very glad to have won my three events of the games

here at Berlin.

-Owens has already won three gold medals,

and he thinks that's it --

that he's going home, it's a great day's work.

But unbeknownst to him,

there are machinations behind the scenes

way above his pay grade.

-The last thing left that Jesse Owens can compete in

is the 4 by 100-meter relay.

Now historically,

if you were the guy who won 100-meter gold medal,

you weren't going to take part in the relay.

You were going to let one of your teammates

get an opportunity -- Frank Wykoff, Foy Draper,

Sam Stoller, and Marty Glickman.

They get their moment in the relay.

But at the last minute, it is announced

Marty and Sam are not going.

The two Jewish guys on the team

are not going to get a chance to run.

-What would it mean if

two Jewish athletes won the gold medal?

From Brundage's point of view,

Hitler had already been embarrassed

by African-American athletes.

-If two Jewish athletes were to take the stand

and receive any medals whatsoever,

it just would have been too much for him to bear.

-So Brundage has Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman

replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.

-My father, he spoke up.

He was insisting that he was not going to run.

He truly believed that Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller

should have been allowed to run.

-They said, "You will do as you're told."

♪

-Jesse Owens leads off for the United States

in the quarter-mile relay.

He's after his fourth Olympic crown.

-Avery Brundage crushed two people's dreams.

That pissed them off, though he knew to put

Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe one and two

to make sure that we win this four by one.

-They're set.

♪

[ Starting pistol fires ]

-Jesse Owens blazing the back trail

for the American quartet and picking up a four-yard lead.

-When you look at the footage of that relay,

you can see in my grandfather's language,

he ran that race angrily.

-From Owens the stick goes to Ralph Metcalfe.

The colored streak tears around the clay circuit

with the speed of the wind. -He was seething with anger

at how this situation had been handled.

You see in his body language

when he's running his leg of that race.

It's just with this thunderous intensity.

-Metcalfe passes the stick to Foy Draper.

As Draper goes flying in the lead,

Frank Wykoff is on his toes for the touch off

for the anchor leg. And there it is.

Wykoff now in his third Olympiad,

provides a record-breaking climax to America's

world supremacy in track and field.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Winning the fourth gold medal was relief.

It's too much pressure for too long.

There were so many complicated issues

Jesse Owens had to deal with,

and ultimately the great story came out of those games.

But we also have to tell the other stories,

so people like Marty have something to latch on to.

-So in the context of an awful moment,

you had a great moment when Owens told Metcalfe,

"You get on the victory stand and take the gold medal."

Jesse Owens knew the narrative. -In the '32 games,

the gold medal escaped my grandfather.

So for Jesse to give him the highest platform

and receive the medal,

it was a pivotal moment that cemented their brotherhood.

-The success of Jesse Owens and 18 African-Americans

was really anathema to Hitler and the Nazi leadership.

And this is the last time that Hitler plays nice,

because by the late 1930s, he has no more room to run.

-Germany wins the games, but America wins in track and field.

-In the highest visibility events,

African-American athletes punctured the myth

of the superior Aryan athlete,

and this was a very significant defeat for Nazi ideology.

-Hitler said that "we won the Olympics

'cause we won the most medals."

History said, "Yeah, but you lost

because these black guys came over here

and particularly Jesse Owens came and beat your socks off."

-The crowd roars for Jesse. They clamber for this autograph.

-He should have come out of those games a hero.

-But the trouble came --

a post-Olympic suspension for walking out on a meet.

-After the Olympics,

Avery Brundage sought to send Olympians

on a post-Olympic tour of Europe

to capitalize on the exploit of American Olympians,

especially Jesse Owens.

-You're exhausted emotionally, physically.

Jessie said, "I'm tired. I want to go home.

I want to see my family."

-After the most rugged competition imaginable,

I felt sick, underweight, and bone tired.

I informed the AAU of my decision to leave the tour.

This performing monkey was done being their PR machine.

-Avery Brundage loses it. He goes on the offensive.

Jesse Owens will be suspended from amateur competitions,

which basically are pre-Olympic trials, Olympic trials,

or the Olympic games.

He says, "This is the line.

If you cross it, you're done."

Jesse decided that was a line he was willing to cross.

-Imagine that you're suspending the hero

of the Olympics because he wasn't being a good boy.

If Jesse Owens had to sober up about the reality

of being a black man in America, it happened pretty immediately.

-Jesse Owens, the world's fastest human being,

has a word to say about his suspension.

-Well, my suspension, I really don't --

can't say much about it because I was tired.

I wanted to come home, and I really did.

After all, I haven't seen my wife for three months,

and I'm very glad to be back home to see her.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Broadway gives America's athletic stars,

headed by Jesse Owens,

an old-fashioned ticker tape homecoming.

Ohio's modest black flash

captures the spotlight of the day.

-I arrived from Berlin

to a welcome few people have ever experienced.

For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the world.

Perfection is having everything you've ever dreamed of.

This was more. -Ladies and gentlemen...

-But I was soon toppled from my Olympic heights.

♪

-What he found when he got home was disrespect.

Even at the places that would host balls in his honor,

he was still needing to go around the back door.

No matter the glory he brought to the United States,

he was still just a colored boy

who needed to be reminded of his place.

-He just left a racist Third Reich.

Now you're coming back to a racist United States.

Going from the skillet to the frying pan.

-You come back to your country, and you're treated like dirt.

It was devastating to him.

-Because he goes home, he loses his amateur status.

"Thank you for your service."

Then comes home to a ticker tape parade.

Can't stay in the hotel, has to go up the service elevator,

all of that, and you're right back where you started.

♪

-Jesse Owens is a star, and he's expecting riches.

But as a black man in America,

you're not asking him to take the vice presidency

of this company or to become a partner at this firm or any--

none of that is happening.

-Because of this suspension,

there's not a lot of opportunities to run

and to make money.

-And if you turn pro, you lose your amateur status

and you can't compete in the Olympics ever again.

But you're going to be able to make money, presumably.

-A lot of offers where different types of exploitation.

-He has made lots of promises and none of those panned out.

-It's a struggle.

He struggles financially, he struggles emotionally.

I mean, he's 22 years old and it's over.

-People came to Jesse and said, "Well, you can't race,

but you could race a horse."

♪

American Olympic star had to resort to racing horses

to have two coins to rip together.

-It was so hard, 'cause he struggled.

I mean, he really struggled.

It was such a hard row for him to hoe.

-The most he can do is hope for another Olympic cycle.

But the Nazis are still in power.

-War -- the way of living for the next 1,000 years

was to be decided. -In World War II,

Hitler's plan was a German-dominated Europe,

but the war had a tremendously destructive effect on the world.

-It was this infernal Nazi Germany massacre.

Millions of Jews.

-As the world is dominated by war,

the next two Olympic cycles are canceled

and Jesse Owens' dream of returning to the Olympic Games

and continuing a professional track career are over.

-There have been a lot of rumors

that Hitler committed suicide.

-After Adolf Hitler had committed suicide,

all of Germany was occupied by allied armies.

-Surrender came at Supreme Headquarters

after the most crushing defeat ever suffered

by a major military power.

-Beginning of May 1945, the war is over

and Germany became the center of the emerging Cold War.

-Ever since the end of the war,

tension had been increasing.

The Cold War was becoming warm.

-And this reflected the wider division of Europe

between East and West.

But you also have a battleground of ideologies.

Artists, intellectuals, and athletes

would be enlisted on both sides

in this great ideological contest of the Cold War.

-Jesse Owens is generally recognized

as the greatest track star of the last half century.

Good evening, Mr. Owens. -Good evening, Mr. Murrow.

How are you this evening? -Fine, thank you. And you?

-Very well, thank you. -Tonight, Jesse Owens,

the boy from the Alabama cotton fields

who became a great Olympic champion.

-Jesse Owens becomes a Cold War hero.

He's sent around the world by the US State Department,

where he goes to countries

that are part of this battleground

between communism and capitalism.

-And what will you be doing on this trip?

-We will be talking about our American way of life.

-And he becomes a spokesman

for the American Olympic Committee,

for propaganda purposes, of the Olympic principles.

-All of the things that the Olympics portray.

When 12,000 people can break bread together

and they can sing together and dance together,

I think that this has a great meaning.

-I was working hard in the '50s.

It was as if I had two lives.

Only now they were using me for what I'd done,

not for what I could do.

-Here is Jesse Owens, a real Olympian.

-And I became a celebrity, and my voice got louder.

[ Sirens wailing ]

-If you're American, probably this is the way

you see the Black Panthers.

-The last words on my lips -- I am a revolutionary.

-[Chanting] Beep, beep, bang, bang, ungawa, Black Power!

-Black Power is a consequence of the white backlash.

Riots are consequences of the white backlash,

rather than a cause from it.

-In the United States, the civil rights

and the black freedom struggle are at an apex,

where, in 1968, the year that Junior died,

we have political assassinations.

-The death of Martin Luther King is a great tragedy.

-We have a lot happening.

And so, in the lead-up to the 1968 Games,

the same conversations of boycotts

are swirling in the black community.

-Before the Olympics,

there was a furor in this country

over a threatened boycott by Negro athletes.

-At that time, black athletes continued

to carry US track and field on their backs,

and, in the eyes of the world,

are the face of American sporting excellence.

So, what would it look like if black Americans

refused to compete in the '68 Games?

So the US Olympic Committee sends in Jesse Owens

to talk to Tommie Smith and to John Carlos...

[ Gunshot ] ...which proves to be

a really heartbreaking confrontation.

-Well, I deplore the use of the Olympic Games

by certain people as the vehicle for political aggrandizement.

This, I don't believe in.

I don't think that politics has any part to play

in athletics whatsoever.

-So you would urge them to go?

-That is my word, "go."

-The generational divide and the political divide

between Tommie Smith and John Carlos

and people who are ready for confrontation

are meeting up with this old guard

who chose a different path in '36,

whose symbolic work spoke a lot for himself,

but whose own voice didn't really say very much.

-Tommie, do you think you represented

all black athletes in doing this?

-I can say I represented black America.

-There was a spirit of protest at the 1968 Games

to raise the specter of human rights,

to raise concerns against apartheid governments,

Jim Crow governments.

And that ran headfirst into Jesse Owens,

who had been raised up in a different tradition.

It creates a chasm.

-Because they brought Jesse Owens in

to kind of calm things down,

he was being painted as this Uncle Tom.

He didn't think he was being an Uncle Tom.

He said, "Look, look at what I did in 1936 in Nazi Germany.

It's far worse than what you guys are facing.

Come on, give me a break. You couldn't do what I did."

But then, "Yeah, but that was then, this is now."

[ Glass shatters ]

-I remember, one time,

I was working at a bank and I was waiting for the bus.

And this man came up to me, and he said,

"You're an Owens, aren't you?"

And I said, "Yeah." He said, "You know,

when I first came to Chicago, your father helped me make it."

And then he said, "And, you know,

I wouldn't do a darn thing to help him now."

-What? -Uh-huh.

And I could not believe...

♪

...that he gets such a bad rap,

and that's what really bothers me most.

-I think he was misunderstood,

and, as a result, was disrespected, I think,

by those that he thought that he was helping.

He wasn't all the negative things

that people said about him.

-Jesse Owens was not an Uncle Tom.

He was -- Like so many black people.

he was simply afraid.

Right here in this country,

they're shooting our leaders down and bombing our churches,

lynching civil rights workers

who are just saying, "We want to vote."

But they hung on, and they brought forth a generation

that wasn't scared of anybody.

Jesse came to see,

"You know what? At some point, you got to take a stand."

-Around 1970,

the coming generation looked at me differently.

And deep down, that really hurt me.

Outside of Adolf Hitler,

I never really thought I had made many enemies.

But perhaps I was walking a tightrope for my positions

on what I believed would unite the activists,

the apathetics, the old, the black, and the white.

To those who see what it took me nearly 60 years to see,

the choice isn't between changing or not changing,

but between changing for the better

or changing for the worse.

♪

-It's been 130 years since the Olympic Games were revived.

And if you look at all of the great champions

and all the great moments and all the drama,

if you were to ask, "Who is the ultimate Olympian?"

I think Jesse Owens is the inevitable answer.

It's about what he achieved

and it's about the backdrop against which he achieved it.

When you look at the story of civil rights in America

and you consider the role of prominent athletes,

Jesse Owens, you could argue, is at the very forefront.

He was before Jackie Robinson, before Muhammad Ali,

before the civil rights leaders in sports in the 1960s.

♪

As we're revisiting Jesse's legacy,

it should be to think about how individuals

are navigating these institutional pressures,

these geopolitical environments, and evolving themselves.

By just wedging him into this long history

of athletic activism, we lose the nuance.

We lose his political evolution.

We lose the tensions in his understandings of

how he wants to use his platform.

We lose what happens

when the platform gets cut out from under him.

-Jesse Owens has a very complicated legacy.

He was used by a racist country,

and he pushed against a fascist country.

He was caught in the middle.

Nothing he could say was right, but what he did was right.

It was deeds and not words, and that, to me, is his legacy.

-I had the great fortune of meeting Jesse Owens.

That moment changed my life.

It gave me direction and a sense of pride.

-Carl Lewis on the inside.

-He was an absolute inspiration, as an athlete, as a mentor.

-Four gold medals. What are you going to do with them all?

-Well, I was looking for Ruth Owens today

because I was thinking about dedicating one to her,

because without the inspiration

that Jesse Owens was able to give me,

I wouldn't be here today.

After the Olympics in '84,

this reporter says, "Man, you might have matched his medals,

but you'll never beat Jesse Owens."

So I said, "You're right.

But because of Jesse, I can go up the front elevator.

Because of Jesse, I can do this.

Because of Jesse, I can do that."

What I hope is that, someday, these young people say,

"Well, because of Carl Lewis, I can do this and do that."

And that's the difference he made in my life

that took it way beyond sports.

He helped me get a perspective of the world

I was going to be in.

♪

-When he died,

it was the most difficult,

devastating time in my life.

-Here I have, as a part of my family, Mr. Murrow, is Marlene.

-I was devastated as his daughter

because I always felt so safe with him.

We were just talking about this photo,

and it is of the four of us.

Our mother, Ruth, Gloria, Beverly, and me.

He just said that we were his four gold medals.

-Hello, everybody! [ Cheers and applause ]

♪

In the brand-new Museum of African American History and Culture,

you can see the cleats of the great Jesse Owens,

what he wore in the 1936 games, in the middle of Nazi Germany,

under the gaze of Adolf Hitler,

that put a lie to notions of racial superiority.

♪

-All human lives are filled with the same tragedy and triumph,

loss and love.

Each of us knows that, some day, our life on this Earth will end.

But what gives us our greatest, most infinite joy

is the belief that anyone can change.

♪

-So, now I'm back in Berlin again.

Time has stood still for me.

This stadium has memories that fill every corner.

-The road to the Olympics leads to no city and no country.

It goes far beyond New York, Ancient Greece, or Nazi Germany.

In the end, that road leads us to the best within ourselves.

-Thanks to you, many a boy is made a better man.

This is your life, Jesse Owens.

Thank you, goodnight, and God bless you.

[ Applause ]