Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens

James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". He set three world records and tied another, all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan—a feat that has never been equaled and has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport". He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy". The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track and Field's highest accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highest-ranked in his sport. In 1999, he was on the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. Jesse Owens, originally known as J.C., was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) born to Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913. He was the grandson of a slave. At the age of nine, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration (1910–40) when 1.6 million African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North. When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book, he said "J.C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life. As a youth, Owens took different menial jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens realized that he had a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior high school track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead. Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter Gloria in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters together: Marlene, born in 1937, and Beverly, born in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1980. Owens first came to national attention when he was a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100 yards (91 m) dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9+1⁄2 inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago. ... Source: Article "Jesse Owens" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

  • Title : Jesse Owens
  • Popularity : 2.019
  • Known For : Acting
  • Birthday : 1913-09-12
  • Place of Birth : Oakville, Alabama, USA
  • Homepage :
  • Also Known As : James Cleveland Owens
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Jesse Owens Movies

  • 1938
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    Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

    Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

    6.87 1938 HD

    Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form....

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  • 2008
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    Black Power Salute

    Black Power Salute

    1 2008 HD

    A film about one of the most iconic images of the 20th century, the moment when the radical spirit of the 1960s upstaged the greatest sporting event...

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  • 1944
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    The Negro Soldier

    The Negro Soldier

    6.1 1944 HD

    Documentary focusing on the contributions to the American war effort of African-American soldiers.

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  • 1997
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    Hitler's Forgotten Victims

    Hitler's Forgotten Victims

    10 1997 HD

    The story of black and mixed race people in Nazi Germany who were sterilised, experimented upon, tortured and exterminated in the Nazi concentration...

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  • 2016
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    Der wahre Champion: Siegen mit Hightech

    Der wahre Champion: Siegen mit Hightech

    6.5 2016 HD

    Every year, top athletes set new world records. But are today’s record holders really better than those of the past? Or do modern athletes get...

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  • 2015
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    Jesse Owens et Luz Long: le temps d'une étreinte

    Jesse Owens et Luz Long: le temps d'une étreinte

    1 2015 HD

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  • 1966
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    Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin

    Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin

    6.5 1966 HD

    The rise of National Socialism in Germany and Hitler’s anti-semitic policies and advocation of the superiority of the Aryan race resulted in...

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  • 1991
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    The Record Breakers

    The Record Breakers

    1 1991 HD

    Welcome to a hard driving video about the biggest winners of all, the athletes and teams who broken records in their sports.

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  • 1948
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    Olympic Cavalcade

    Olympic Cavalcade

    1 1948 HD

    Documentary footage recaptures the excitement of the 1948 London Olympics, the first games since 1936.

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  • 1950
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    The Century Is Fifty

    The Century Is Fifty

    1 1950 HD

    As the title of this French documentary indicates, Ce Siecle a 50 Ans examines the 20th Century at its halfway point. Utilizing the archives of...

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  • 1975
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    Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

    Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

    5.7 1975 HD

    Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

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  • 1982
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    Ace of Aces

    Ace of Aces

    7.089 1982 HD

    In this action comedy the French boxer Jo Cavalier is charmed on the train to Berlin for the Olympics in Hitler's Germany by the little boy Simon...

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  • 1999
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    Fists of Freedom: The Story of the '68 Summer Games

    Fists of Freedom: The Story of the '68 Summer Games

    7 1999 HD

    Fists of Freedom examines one of the 20th century’s most memorable moments — the dramatic “Black Power” demonstration of...

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  • 2012
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    Jesse Owens

    Jesse Owens

    1 2012 HD

    Jesse Owens details Jesse's early career; describes Adolf Hitler s outsized ambitions for the 1936 Olympics; explores the movement in Western...

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  • 1982
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    Genocide

    Genocide

    7.4 1982 HD

    The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust...

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  • 1961
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    The Grand Olympics

    The Grand Olympics

    5.3 1961 HD

    Events and athletes that characterized the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. From the absolute protagonist Wilma Rudolph, called the black gazelle, to...

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  • 1947
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    Easy to Get

    Easy to Get

    1 1947 HD

    U.S. Army training film about avoiding venereal disease, intended primarily for Black servicemen.

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  • 2017
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    Europa: The Last Battle

    Europa: The Last Battle

    1 2017 HD

    World War II revisionist film that claims Jews deliberately caused both World Wars – and that Hitler was only trying to save Germany from the...

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  • 1988
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    American Experience

    American Experience

    7.5 1988 HD

    TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

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  • 1948
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    The Ed Sullivan Show

    The Ed Sullivan Show

    6.632 1948 HD

    The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by...

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  • 1950
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    What's My Line?

    What's My Line?

    6.7 1950 HD

    Four panelists must determine guests' occupations - and, in the case of famous guests, while blindfolded, their identity - by asking only "yes" or...

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  • 2018
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    Explained

    Explained

    7.5 2018 HD

    This documentary series, made in partnership with Vox, explain some of the world's current trends, from politics, to science to pop culture.

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