Broadcast: August 8, 2004 (MUSIC)
((Note: This is a almost repeat report of PEOPLE IN AMERICA - June 9, 2002: Jesse Owens))
VOICE ONE:
This is Gwen Outen.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special English. Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United States.
Today we tell the story of athlete Jesse Owens. He once was the fastest runner in the world.
(MUSIC)
VOICE ONE:
Jesse Owens on a United States Postal Service stamp.
In the summer of nineteen-thirty-six, people all over the world heard the name of Jesse Owens. That summer, Owens joined the best athletes from fifty nations to compete in the Olympic games. They met in Berlin, Germany. There was special interest in the Olympic games that year.
Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany. Hitler and his Nazi party believed that white people -- especially German people – were the best race of people on Earth. They believed that other races of people -- especially those with dark skin -- were almost less than human.
In the summer of nineteen-thirty-six, Hitler wanted to prove his beliefs to the world. He wanted to show that German athletes could win every important competition. After all, only a few weeks before the Olympics, German boxer Max Schmeling had defeated the great American heavyweight Joe Louis, a black man.
VOICE TWO:
Jesse Owens was black, too. Until nineteen-thirty-six, very few black athletes had competed in the Olympics for the United States. Owens was proud to be on the team. He was very sure of his ability.
Jesse Owens preparing to run.
Owens spent one week competing in four different Olympic track and field events in Berlin. During that time, he did not think much about the color of his skin, or about Adolf Hitler.
Owens said later: "I was looking only at the finish line. I thought of all the years of practice and competition, and of all who believed in me."
VOICE ONE:
We do not know what Hitler thought of Jesse Owens. No one recorded what he said about this black man who ran faster and jumped farther than any man of any color at the Olympic games. But we can still see Jesse Owens as Hitler saw him. For at Hitler's request, motion pictures were made of the Berlin Olympic games.
The films show Jesse Owens as a thin, but powerfully-built young man with smooth brown skin and short hair. When he ran, he seemed to move without effort. When he jumped, as one observer said, he seemed to jump clear out of Germany.
Jesse Owens won the highest award -- the Gold Medal -- in all four of the Olympic competitions he entered. In the one-hundred meter run, he equaled the fastest time ever run in that Olympic event. In the long jump and the two-hundred meter run, he set new Olympic records. And as part of a four-man team, he helped set a new world record for the four-hundred meter relay race. He was the first American in the history of Olympic track and field events to win four Gold Medals in a single Olympics.
