CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -He is one of the greatest athletes of the 20th Century and perhaps the most important.
“Jesse Owens could be the greatest athlete to come out of Cleveland, out of our region,” said Bob DiBiasio, President of the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame.
Jesse Owens ran from his humble beginnings in Cleveland and East Tech High School to The Ohio State University and then to Berlin, straight to the Olympic podium.
Owens won four gold medals in the politically charged 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
“You’re standing on the podium four times as a four-time Gold Medal winner in the one hundred, two hundred, long jump, and the four hundred relay,” continued DiBiasio. “I can only what imagine what that felt like for a gentleman like Jesse Owens to be on the podium getting medals in Berlin in 1936 in front of Hitler.”
“It was an amazing thing for an American athlete to accomplish what Jesse Owens did but specifically a Black American athlete,” said Margaret Lann, Cleveland Restoration Society, Director of Preservation Services and Publications. “Much of the Nazi propaganda that someone of the African American, other non-white races could not achieve this type of success,”
A teacher mistaking J.C. for Jesse, James Cleveland Owens, youngest of ten children, moved to Cleveland at age nine, part of the “Great Migration,” as Blacks moved north from the segregated South.
The Owens family rented a home at 2178 East 100th Street and the Cleveland Restoration Society is working to preserve the home.
Owens was inducted in the first class of the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 1976.
“He stands for achievement and success in the face of racism and prejudice and he did it with dignity and integrity,” concluded Lann.
The Cleveland Restoration Society has an event planned on July 8 for the 90th anniversary of Jesse Owens Olympic victories.
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