Making Jesse Owens

Making

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jesse Owens’ four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin is the stuff of legend. “A man who's a second class citizen at home, son of a sharecropper, grandson of slaves, going over to Hitler's Germany,” explained ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap on Making. “And he rose to the occasion in a way that embodies true greatness.” But Owens’ journey from Alabama to Ohio to Germany and back again was filled with many highs and lows. His mother used a hot knife to excise a tumor from his chest when he was 5. He tied the world record in the 100 yard dash as a senior in high school. His college years at Ohio State were marked by both racial segregation and unparalleled athletic achievement. And after his return to America following the Berlin Olympics, Owens and other African-American medalists did not receive the same invitation to the White House that their white counterparts did. “It was one of the things that really hurt him,” said Marlene Rankin, Owens’ daughter and the co-founder of the Jesse Owens Foundation. “Not everything got to him, but I think that did.” On this week’s Making, host Brandon Pope leads a conversation on the years that defined Jesse Owens’ life, featuring Rankin, NBCNews.com contributor Cecil Harris, Owens’ son-in-law and former business partner Stuart Rankin, and Schaap, author of Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode includes references to Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust.
0:06.4	Jesse Owens wasn't even a teenager when he learned he had an incredible gift.
0:12.0	Speed.
0:14.8	In high school, he equaled the world record in the 100-yard dash.
0:20.4	In college, he set four world records in the span of 45 minutes.
0:25.8	And then, at the 1936 Olympics, he won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler,
0:36.8	dispelling the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy.
0:42.8	From WBZ Chicago, this is Making Jesse Owens. I'm Brandon Poe.
0:47.8	James of America, a new world record, 26 feet high.
0:51.8	Today, how Jesse Owens became the world's greatest athlete.
0:55.8	Joining us is journalist and NBC News contributor Cecil Harris.
0:59.8	Jesse Owens is still the yardstick by which all other track and feel athletes are judged.
1:05.8	Jesse Owens' daughter, the co-founder of the Jesse Owens Foundation, Marlene Rankin.
1:10.8	He trusted a lot of people and a lot of times he got burned.
1:15.8	Jesse's son-in-law, former business partner, Stuart Rankin.
1:18.8	He killed people with kindness and that's something that a lot of us have tried to live by.
1:24.8	And the author of Triumph, the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics,
1:29.8	ESPN reporter Jeremy Schapp.
1:31.8	A man who's a second-class citizen at home going over to Hitler's Germany,
1:35.8	doing what he did under that kind of pressure embodies true greatness.
1:41.8	Today on Making.
1:49.8	Making is supported by Neil Gerber Eisenberg, a Chicago law firm committed to a diverse
	...

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