Why Was Jesse Owens A Black Man Was The Dictator Of Germany?

the time, and the Nazis were in power. Before the Olympics, German Jews had been segregated and

The Olympic games were an athletic competition help in Greece around every four years from 776 B.C.E. In 776 B.C.E, the first olympics were held in Athens where many competitors clashed during the sporting events. The olympics then stopped in 393 C.E. due to Theodosius I’s orders on stopping the olympic events. Later during 1896, the modern olympics began to take place. The olympics were different from the ancient olympics in that the competition was shaped due to social, political, and economic reasons.

Most people would classify the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 as just another Olympics, and they would be right because the Games did have the classic triumphs and upsets that occur at all Olympic Games. What most people did not see, behind the spectacle of the proceedings, was the effect the Nazi party had on every aspect of the Games including the results. Despite Nazi Germany’s determination to come off as the superior nation in the 1936 Olympics, their efforts were almost crushed by the very people they were trying to exclude.

Jesse Owens had very interesting years growing up. He was born September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama. Owen's birth name was James Cleveland Owens, but he changed it to Jesse Cleveland Owens. When he was 9 Mary Emma Fitz (Mother), and Henry Cleveland Owens(father) moved to Cleveland, Ohio. This is where his new school teacher gave him the name he became known by.

In which it was all true in America. Black people faced discrimination in both in and out of sports. Although many where more focus in fixing the issue in Germany rather than in the United States, Owen was in an internal debate whether to support the boycott or participate the Olympics. The article Jesse Owens: A Chilly Reception in Nazi Germany then Olympic Glory describe, “The A.A.U. wasn’t the only organization involved in a moral tug of war over the Olympics.

James Cleveland Owens otherwise known as “Jesse” was an Olympic long jumper and sprinter whose speed and inspirational defiance of Hitler shocked the world. The 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin and Adolf Hitler of the Nazi party believed that these Olympic Games would showcase the great skill of the Aryan (Caucasian) race, and the last person he would expect to show him up would be an African-American man (Barnes 1). With sixty-six U.S. Olympic contestants competing in the Games, the American race was really put on the spot in front of Hitler, the most powerful man in the world (Smith 1). Jesse Owens was one of these men, and while being laughed at by Hitler during his one hundred meter sprint against six other Caucasian sprinters, he

Transition. Despite being an Olympic hero for America, Jesse Owens becomes a victim to racial discrimination during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Jesse Owens was the son of a share cropper and the grandson of slaves. At the age of 10, he was expected to pick 100 cottons a day to help support his family. In high school, Jesse started setting records for his local track team. He was known as the ‘Buckeye Bullet’ (Jesse Owens Biography) because of the overwhelming amount of records he set. In 1936, Jesse competed in his first ever Olympics, representing team America. News reporter William Shirer commented on the games: “’the berlin glitter as merely hiding a racist, militaristic regime’” (No place for games: Nazi Olympics exhibit opens in Illinois).

Jesse Owens was in Alabama and had money troubles when he was a kid. They had to work on the farm a lot and he barely had any time to work on homework. He was always on the farm more than he was in the house. After a while his parents decided to leave Alabama and they moved to Chicago. Where he started

The 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin, Germany held from August first to August sixteenth. 49 nations showed up and 3,963 athletes represented them. Adolf Hitler was the Fuhrer at the time of the olympics and used it as Nazi propaganda. Hosting the olympics helped Germany show the world that it had recovered from the destruction and isolation The Treaty of Versailles had caused it. Adolf Hitler hid his racism towards Jewish people and Roma people and as well as its growing military. In 1931 the International Olympic Committee chose Berlin for the eleventh Summer Olympics. In 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor and Germany became an one party dictatorship. Germany then started to go after Jewish people and blamed their problems on them.

This is all about Jesse Owens and how he became a very important person. Jesse Owens was born on September 12,1913.His parents names are Henry Cleveland Owens and his mother name is Mary emma fitzgerald. When he was a kid his family struggled with poor health as a child he had a dump his chest. Jesse’s mom then started to bleed out. It soon healed and the lump was gone.

The Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936 destroyed Hitler’s master race history. "There was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man," Woodruff said. "We destroyed [Hitler's] master race theory whenever we started winning those gold medals,” said runner John Woodruff (7). John Woodruff was a black man who won a gold medal. Another African American Jesse Owens won four track and field gold medals. These two people defied the Aryan ideal that Hitler believed that Aryan dominated the world. Another important impact the Olympic brought happened in 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. In that Olympics, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon refused to participate because of a dispute over the Suez Canal; Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands boycotted the Games in protest over the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary; China boycotted the Games because a flag of Taiwan was raised in the Olympic Village. The original purpose of the Olympics was to make the countries collaborate, however, it also brought negative impacts. Another example is that Olympics in Mexico city in 1968. Americans politicised the Games by letting two African Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, represent the United States. Tommie Smith and John Carlos placed first and third in the track and field. During their medal ceremony, they raised a clenched fist above their

“No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas” (Advertising, Demonstrations, Propaganda* 98). This rule shows just what the Germans were hoping for, a peaceful, passive, war-free environment in which countries can get together and compete. Although we all know that quite the antithesis was upon the 1972 Olympics in Munich between September the fifth and September the sixth. The Munich Massacre, one of the worst massacres of all time, was driven by the vengefulness of the Palestinian group known as Black September, towards the people of Israel, or more relevantly, towards their Olympic team (Rosenberg). Since this confrontation between Palestine and

"...Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution...Nazi Germany is endeavoring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi regime rather than the Olympic ideals."

Jesse Owens was an Olympic athlete who competed against Hitler's Nazis in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As an African-American male in the 1930s he was looked down upon by most white people. As Jesse Owens once said “People come out to see you perform, and you’ve got to give them the best you have within you,” ("Jesse Owens: A Chilly Reception"). Jesse always worked to the best of his ability but never got the recognition he deserved due to the discrimination at the time. Jesse Owens took a stand by thriving in the 1936 Olympics, beating Nazi runners, and finally by spreading inspiration for young African Americans across the country from Alabama to Arizona.

The Olympic Games of 1936 were a huge Nazi propaganda success. Education and work Education and youth Measures were imposed to make sure that schools and youth associations became Nazified: Non-Nazi teachers and university professors were sacked; teachers had to join the National Socialist Teachers' League. Textbooks were re-written to include Nazi political and racial