Jesse Owens Jesse grew up as James Cleveland, the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama. Growing up, Owens was a frail child and was often sick from his often battles with chronic bronchial congestion (swelling of the airways) and pneumonia. However this served as no excuse for Owens because he was still expected to work. At the tender age of seven he was hauling about 100 pounds of cotton on a daily basis to help his family put food on the table. At the age of 9, Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where the young he discovered how different the world was outside of slower southern life he had grown up with. School proved to be one of the bigger changes for owns. Being used to lessons taking place in a one-room schoolhouse, he was baffled at a bigger setting with more and stricter teachers. Here, Owens earned the nickname that would stick with him the rest of his life due to an unlikely turn of events. Being unable to decipher his thick southern accent, one of his instructors believed the young athlete said his name was "Jesse," when he in fact had said "J.C." Jesse gave the world a preview of the amazing legacy he’d leave behind in Berlin. While at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935 Owens set three world records and tied a fourth. These were great achievements however Jesse was uncertain as to whether he could participate any further due do a back injury from falling down stairs. However, he was able to convince his coach to allow him to run the 100-yard dash saying that it would serve as a test for his back. Astoundingly, Jesse managed to record an official time of 9.4 seconds, which tied with the world record at the time. Despite the pain, Jesse then went on to participate in three other events, setting a world record in each event. In a span of 45 minutes, Jesse accomplished one of the greatest athletic feats in history. Setting 3 world records and tying a fourth in four grueling track and field events was unheard of at the time; much less doing it while still recovering from a back injury. His success at the 1935 Big Ten Championships gave him the confidence that he was ready to excel at the highest level. Jesse entered the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Nazi Germany. According to historians the games were held by Hitler to support his ridiculous belief that pure blood Germans where superior. However, Jesse had plans to prove Hitler wrong. Jesse became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad. This remarkable achievement stood unequaled until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when American Carl Lewis matched Jesse's feat.
Although others have gone on to win more gold medals than Jesse, he remains the best remembered Olympic athlete because he achieved what no Olympian before or since has accomplished. During a time of deep-rooted segregation, racism, and prejudice, he discredited the master race theory of one of the most feared men in the world at the time. However more importantly he also proved that excellence within oneself distinguishes one man from another, rather than race or national origin.