August 8, 2024 • 44 mins
Jesse Owens spent the rest of his life retelling the story of the 1936 games and his encounter with Luz Long. We trace the evolution of a tall tale, discovering the hidden life of one of America’s iconic sports heroes.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On a warm day in August nineteen fifty one, a
helicopter appeared in the sky above the brilliant Olympic Stadium.
Seventy five thousand people had gathered there to watch a
Harlem globetrotter's basketball game. The crowd looked up. The chopper,
circled three times and landed on the field.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
The loudspeaker announcer called out attention, attention.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
A black man in a white suit stepped out onto
the red cinder track.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest run on the world returned.
Mister Burland.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Jesse Owens was back in Germany to take a victory lap.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I had many thoughts as I made the symbolic run
of victory around the same red sender track that had
run so many years before. As I passed each section,
there was a bridge to the pass.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The Second World War had ended only six years earlier,
and Germany, along with the rest of the world, was
still reckoning with it all. Whatever was left of the
Nazi leadership had been grilled at the Nuremberg trials. Berlin
was rebuilding after Allied bombing campaigns. About eighty percent of
the city center had been flattened. Yet the stadium the
Nazis had built for the Olympics was still standing, and
(01:17):
that day at the Globetrotters game, Jesse Owens was back
to take his victory lab and to give a speech.
Words often fail on occasions like this, he told the
German crowd, But I remember the good that happened here.
I remember the fighting spirit and sportsmanship shown by German
(01:37):
athletes on this field. And here we reached the important part,
he says, especially by Lutslog of Germany, the man I
managed to be in the broad jump.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The crowd came forth with a tremendous role, and the
cheers are with me today.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Owens stood for an ovation that one of the globetrotters
said lasted a full fifteen minutes. And I think maybe
it was then, standing there watching how hungry that crowd
was for even this mention of a good German that
he decided to tell an even bigger story about what
happened between him and Luteslog at the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
(02:29):
It was the start of the great long jump tall tale.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
H'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
things overlooked and misunderstood. Throughout this series, Who've been looking
at how people tried to rationalize their participation in Hitner's Olympics,
And in this episode we've reached the most enduring and
I think heartbreaking rationalization of all. Jesse Owens his story
(02:58):
about befriending a Nazi, the story that it seems Owen's
made up. But why why did Owens need to tell
a lie?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Our home was in Alabama and my parents were sharecroppers
on this particular place.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
In nineteen sixty one, Jesse Owens sat down with an
interviewer to record in oral history. She a white woman
in cat's eye glasses and pearls Owens or a suit.
The two sat in mid century modern armchairs so close
their knees were almost touching. The curtains were drawn, the
room was filled with smoke. They spoke for six hours,
(03:48):
starting at the very beginning, What.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
About the people that owned the big house where your
father was a shared dropper? Was this a Negro individual?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Light? The first tape is mostly about Owens's early life,
growing up one of the youngest of ten brothers and
sisters in Alabama. He was a sickly kid with a
sunny disposition. His parents had him late, called him their
gift child. It can be hard to know things for
certain about Jesse Owens's life. His biographer William J. Baker
(04:21):
once wrote of him, Jesse Owens was always strong on imagination,
weak on literal truth. But whatever the facts, I believe
his tone of voice in this tape, its warmth and
its weariness. You hear about the setbacks, the time he
saw his mother crying while folding the laundry because she
couldn't afford clothes for him, and then you hear about
(04:44):
the triumphs Now.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
That's where it all began. Junior heights reveal or Character
of the Basketball team.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Chapterin of the Track Team, Captain of the baseball team,
I was President of the student council, Captain about cards.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I was impressed the first time I heard him list
all those accomplishments. He was obviously great from the start.
But the second time I listened, I noticed just how
worn out he sounds going through that list. That tone
has a lot to do with how I came to
understand Jesse Owens. He's telling the story of his life
in this oral history, but really he just keeps talking
(05:23):
about one idea.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
She get tired of this sometimes, Oh yes, you get
tired of living in a glass bowl, living in a
glass bowl.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But it's a.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
It's a wonderful thing to help people to recognize you,
people to admire you for your ability, but sometimes people
forget your human being. People were looking, everybody's eyes were
upon you, and they would scrutinize everything that you did.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And so therefore you had to be very, very careful
of what other things that you did. And it's a
tough thing.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Sometime, by the time he taped this interview, people had
been telling stories about Jesse Owens, mythologizing him for decades.
You can even hear the interviewer doing it.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
How did all this make you feel?
Speaker 7 (06:11):
Now?
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Remember you you're a youngster from the cotton fields of Alabama,
and this is all relatively new to you, and and
suddenly you're you're you're the captain of so many things,
and you're all a suit and people like you.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And when you felt like you were somebody you know.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
And that I think is of the heart of why
Jesse Owens made up that story about Luteslong helping him
during the broad jump qualifying rounds and about their friendship
all those years afterwards. First being an athlete made him somebody.
Then when that was done, telling stories about it kept
him with somebody. But he was black in early twentieth
(06:52):
century America, which meant that as soon as he started
to be somebody, he had to play the two crowds,
the white people giving him opportunities and the black people
who wanted him to use his status to change things.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
If you're the first to come along, you're a pioneer.
You represent not just yourself, which you represent your category.
And he's being asked to represent his category in a
way that no obviously, no white athlete is being asked
to represent a category.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, And I actually think what's striking looking at Jesse
Owens's life is how early that starts for him. I mean,
it's really he's sort of a superlative athlete from a
very young age, and then this just keeps happening to him.
It was the same when people started boycotting the nineteen
thirty six Olympics, wondering if he would too. He's at
the time, how old I think he's twenty two. So
(07:41):
we have this kid who is.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Being asked to parse one of the most complicated kind
of moral and political questions of the time, and he's
being torn in two directions.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
At first, Jesse Owens seemed to see the situation in
Germany clearly, the violence and the discrimination, and he supported
the boycott. He knew what it was like living in
the United States under Jim Crow in segregation. He said
in a radio interview that quote, if there is discrimination
against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics,
(08:17):
to which his white coach, Larry Snyder responded, basically, suit yourself.
But if you skip the Olympics, you're going to be,
and this is his exact phrase, a forgotten man, the
opposite of a somebody. In the end, eighteen black athletes
went to Berlin with the US Olympic team that year.
(08:38):
Each of them had to wrestle privately with the question
of whether or not to participate, but because of the
Glass Bowl, Jesse Owens had to do it in public.
There were endless opinions about what he should do. Even
the secretary of the NAACP Walter White, had an opinion
best represented in a letter to Owens that he drafted
(08:59):
but which now sits in the archives. I fully realize
how great a sacrifice it will be for you to
give up the trip to Europe and to forego the
acclaim which your athletic prowess will unquestionably bring you. On
the other hand, it is my firm conviction that the
issue of participation in the nineteen thirty six Olympics, if
(09:20):
held in Germany under the present regime, transcends all other issues.
Participation by American athletes, and especially by those of our
own race, which has suffered more than any other from
American race hatred, would I firmly believe, do irreparable harm.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
The very pre.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Eminence of American Negro athletes gives them an unparalleled opportunity
to strike a blow at racial bigotry and to make
other minority groups conscious of the sameness of their problem
with ours. If the Hitlers and Mussolini's of the world
are successful, it is inevitable that dictatorships based upon prejudice
will spread throughout the world. White never sent that letter,
(10:02):
but it captured how a lot of people understood the
stakes of the choice that Jesse Owens had to make
deny his Olympic dreams for the good of Black America
or go to the games at their expense.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
But you could have given up at this point. We
didn't have to go on with it. If the recognition
and the status hadn't been as important to you as
it was, he could have sat on through with this nonsense.
I'm going to finish my education and the one and
become a lawyer or something else.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Well, this you could have done. But yet and still
you feel that here you are, where people have made
it possible for you to start, Why at this point
become See you're not any greater. Then the people will
make you. You can do a number of things. But
(11:00):
if the people are not with you, then who knows about?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Leave the glass bowl, become a forgotten man. So Jesse
Owens went to the Olympics with everyone watching, and he
made a miracle happen.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Capa conic second up on it na makes the others
look as if they're working.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
He won gold medals in each of his events, the
one hundred and two hundred meter dashes, the one hundred
meter relay, in that legendary broad jump, and for a
lot of people, all those medals seemed to validate his
choice to go. He'd proven Hitler wrong with every step,
so much Farian supremacy. That's where the story of Jesse
(11:43):
Owens usually ends, but there's so much more to it.
After the track and field events in nineteen thirty six,
the athletes toured Europe for a series of track meets.
Avery Brandage, Newly, a member of the International Olympic Committee,
had organized it with the Amateur Athletic Union. The organizations
would pocket their cut of the ticket sales, but the
(12:06):
athletes couldn't make money from the meets. Remember, the games
were for amateurs, no money for sport. Jesse Owens once said,
all we athletes get out of this Olympic business is
a view out of a train or airplane window. It
gets tiresome, it really does, staring out those windows. I
think he had started to contemplate his future, and I
(12:28):
don't think he liked what he saw. They were expected
to keep training, compete for a few more years until
their bodies started to fall apart. Maybe there'd be another
Olympic Games. But then what Owens didn't come from a
rich family. He'd barely had the time to get an
education with all his training, What kind of job could
he do once his athletic career was over. After the
(12:50):
Berlin Games. He was really famous. Offers had started to
come in. Twenty five grand for two weeks with an
orchestra in California, forty grand for ten weeks of shows
with the entertainer Eddie Canter. Now that serious money. In
nineteen thirty six, that was a fortune. He began to
think about leaving the tour and going home. He could
(13:13):
be rich, but going professional would be violating Olympic rules
and missing the rest of the tour would too. He
could never compete at the Olympics. Again. Those were the rules,
rules enforced by Avery Brandage, who took amateurism extremely seriously.
(13:35):
After the Berlin Games, a reporter asked him about rumors
that Owens was going to quit the post Olympics tour.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
And I'd understand the Bondage that the received information that
Owns will not go to the stop, but Doc Holmley
will not appear, and I hope that Owen will be
build engagements when one of the finest boys we've had,
and we hope that there will be nothing tom this record.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
These were crocked dial tears. By the time he gave
that interview, averybrend had already knew that Jesse Owens had
a ticket for a steamer back to the United States,
leaving before the end of that tour.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
No, I just hope that all these are just rumored.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Jesse Owens was banned for life from amateur sport. The
nineteen thirty six Games would be the last act and
the pinnacle of his athletic career. He went to the
press with a rare complaint. I came over to Europe
with only ten dollars in my pocket. To make matters worse,
I've lost six pounds being pushed around and circused all
(14:35):
over Europe. They sent me to Prague from Cologne without
a cent and I had to run a race in
Prague without having had an ounce of food for ten hours.
I am turning professional because I'm busted and know the
difficulties encountered by any member of my race and getting
financial security. I want to get some money while I'm
in the spotlight. He tried to make the most of it.
(14:58):
He became an entertainer, even try tap dancing, and along
the way he was working to keep up with sports too,
But it was like everything had gone a little sour.
He was supposed to race against another amateur in Cuba,
a sprinter until Avery Brundage caught win and said he'd
banned that sprinter from American amateur sport if he went
through with the race. So they replaced the guy with
(15:20):
a horse Cuba.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
Jesse Owens, the Ebonistic of Olympic Games, celebrates turning professional
by racing against a horse.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Jesse had a start at forty yards and one hundred
and he won by inches.
Speaker 9 (15:31):
And I ought a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So when Jesse Owens went professional, that essentially was the
choice he made to spend the rest of his life
reliving those two weeks in August nineteen thirty six. He
was trapped as if he'd jumped into that broad jump
pit and sunk to his knees in quicksand which is
(15:58):
not to say that it wasn't also a good life.
He had three daughters, He was involved in presidential campaigning.
He ran a fitness program during the war for the
US Office of Civilian Defense. He led a big life,
but in order to do all the other stuff, he
had to keep the dream of those two weeks alive.
You can even hear this in that oral history when
(16:19):
they start on that third tape. Jesse Owens is in
the middle of talking about his actual life. Now in
the nineteen sixties, he's complaining about some business deal that
went south.
Speaker 10 (16:28):
THEO for me and I got to sing over to
the bank and I made a mistake by not having
two sources, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So again this was a guy with a life. But
the interviewer is like, yeah, sure, sure, what about the Olympics?
Speaker 11 (16:40):
Though, what else is new? Jesse, Let's go way back
now to nineteen thirty six and reminisce about the Olympics.
I'm sure that you have told this story how many
hundreds of times to how many papers and miners using
this person, and this has been broadcast, certainly known many times.
(17:02):
But for the Historical Library would like to have a
record of for the Olympics, in your own words, the
feeling that you.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Had when you know his job was telling the story
of the Olympics. And once she asks, he gets right
to it.
Speaker 10 (17:18):
I remember it was in July July the fourth of
nineteen thirty six when we had the final tryouts for
the Olympics at Rados Island, and that was the fourth But.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The thing about telling one story for your entire life
is that the meaning of that story has to keep
changing with the times, to stay marketable, to keep enough
eyes on that glass bowl. And in nineteen fifty one,
at that halftime speech during the Harlem Globetrotter's game, he
discovered its most powerful edition, Loots Long. We'll be right back.
(18:03):
I guess first, can you tell me about that Globetrotters
game in the Berlin Stadium in nineteen fifty one. Sure,
I'm talking to Damian L. Thomas, Curator of Sports at
the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
He's the author of the book Globe Trotting, African American
Athletes and Cold War Politics.
Speaker 12 (18:27):
The Harlem Globetrotters were just starting to travel internationally and
they had played a game in Frankfurt a couple of
days before, and one American official had asked them to
play this game in West Berlin because at the time,
the Soviets were doing a lot of festivals, a lot
(18:49):
of exchanges, and they wanted to ensure that the US
and the West was able to tell their own story.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
In the Cold War, the US and the USSR were
fighting for the hearts and minds of the rest of
the world, which led them bizarrely straight to the Harlem Globetrotters.
Speaker 13 (19:07):
The Harlem Globetrotters basketball Wizard's extraordinary. They are patent that
plan them, bring and play, and Sandy Capers had made
them the most popular team in the history.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Of the sport.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Before the NBA was a big deal, before black people
played even college basketball, and any great numbers, the Harlem
Globetrotters were kind of traveling basketball circus. True to the name,
they were all over the.
Speaker 11 (19:30):
Place persona Harlem grouptore.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It was a major operation run by one of the
most infamous and ruthless sports promoters of all time, a
white guy named Abe Sapperstein. I'm MASAKOWI twelve.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Come on, let's push again, for.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You've probably seen footage of them playing a lot of
fake passes, improbable shots, and goofing around. Except they're totally
incredible at basketball.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Even in slow motion. Their magical hands pool you.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was talking to Damian Thomas though, because underneath the
goofiness there was something more sinister going on.
Speaker 12 (20:10):
The Harlem Blobetrotters were also so deeply tied to mins
pro se, which was the dominant form of entertainment in
America from the eighteen eighties through the nineteen early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
The players, almost all black Americans, were often referred to
as clowns.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Meet the most colorful comedy acting in present day spot
purists say they make a mockery of the game.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
They clown, they juggle, they fool.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
But where some people might see a kind of basketball circus,
the State Department saw the perfect propaganda weapon.
Speaker 12 (20:46):
People often didn't think of sports as having ideological content,
and so whereas other forms of American culture would be resisting,
sometimes Coca cola, sometimes blue jeans, rock and roll, and
American movies were shunt people often welcomed basketball because they
(21:07):
didn't think of it as as had been a propagandistic function.
But it did, and it's one of the things that
made it very important is that people didn't see it
as containing hidden messages.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
A lot of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War called
out the lie of American equality. The US might talk
about all people being equal, but the country was segregated,
and really only white people had a shot at a
decent quality of life. It was true and a particularly
useful message for the USSR trying to get African and
(21:45):
Asian countries to align with them instead of the US.
So the United States responded with a big hidden message
about the globetrotters, a message with two parts, first part, hey,
look we have wealthy black peace in this country. And
the second, much more sinister part, look at these clowns.
(22:06):
Don't you see why we're segregating them.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Number fifty is Goose Tatum, clown with the longest arms
in the spot with his seven foot overall reachie raks
in seven thousand a year from a team which grows
to a million last season.
Speaker 12 (22:19):
You would see these situations where maybe Goost Tatum, who
was the lead clown, which lay on the floor and
read read the newspaper while the game was going on
on the other end of the floor, designed to stress
that African Americans were lazy and then we were unresponsible
(22:43):
or weren't mentally engaged in the game. And so you
saw all of these various ways where the stereotypes played
out in some of the comedic routines of the low tribes.
It allows the State Department to make the argument that
African Americans don't have full e quality, don't have all
(23:04):
of the opportunities that are available to white Americans because
they are lazy, they're not as intelligent, they are not
ready to occupy a space of full equality.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
The State Department needed black success stories that also made
segregation look okay. Enter the Globetrotters and Jesse Owens. And
how did Jesse Owens become involved in all this?
Speaker 12 (23:36):
All throughout the nineteen forties, Jesse Owens had traveled sporadically
with the Harlem Globetrotters and he would serve a variety
of functions. He would serve as the press secretary, the
announcer during the game, and also as halftime entertainment. And
typically when he performed during halftime, they would set up
(23:58):
hurdles around the core and Jesse Owens would jump over
the hurdles around the core as they have time entertain
a spectacle.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
At one of the Globetrotter's promoters events, he ran a
race against another black athlete on his hands and knees
even worse than that horse race in Cuba.
Speaker 12 (24:18):
He writes about that, and he writes about how he
felt humiliated and felt as if he was being treated
less than But then he also writes, well, what else.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Was I supposed to do?
Speaker 7 (24:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (24:33):
What would other options available?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And That is how in nineteen fifty one, Jesse Owens
returned to the Berlin Stadium at the behest of the
State Department as the black superstar with a story to
tell about a kind Nazi. Jesse Owens had spent much
of his life in the Glass Bowl. He knew the rules,
and so during his second visit to Berlin, he focused
(24:59):
on the part of his story the Americans and the
Germans most needed, the part about Lutzlang, a good white
German who'd embraced a black man Just the day before
that Globetrotter's game. Owens had finally met Lutzlang's widow and
his son Kai. It seems he told them that untrue
story about the qualifying round and how Lutzlang had helped
(25:20):
him keep from fouling out. And maybe he'd seen how
much the story of Long's kindness had touched Kai too.
It was another story with two messages, Hey, look, the
US and Germany can be friends again too, and also
how bad could segregation be if this black superstar could
still see the humanity in a white Nazi? And it
(25:43):
was a smash success. Owens stood outside that stadium for
hours after that game, signing autographs. The US State Department's
office in Berlin sent home a report. Appearance Harlem Globetrotters
with Jesse Owens in Olympic Stadium August twenty two more
successful than anticipated, and.
Speaker 12 (26:03):
This became one of the most requested stories that Jesse
Wood tailed on the speaker circuit.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
After that trip to Germany, Owens began to tell increasingly
elaborate stories about Lutslog. By the nineteen sixties, in public,
the story had grown to Lutslog helping Owens to qualify.
Later came the apocryphal letters, but with each version of
that story, Owens was masterfully navigating the complexities of Cold
(26:30):
War US racial politics. It's somehow an apology for his
own excellence, because the premise of the story is that he,
a person who holds the world record and broad jumping,
needs to be instructed on how to approach the pit
by a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
No, but actually been. It's worse than that, because the
story itself has its own kind of implied racial bias,
which is, he's not just being instructed about how to
conduct a long jump.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
He's lost control of his own emotions.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yes, he's being instructed about how to control his emotions.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, Actually it's not. He's not being told how to
control his emotions. He's being told how to handle the
fact that he will continue to be unable to control
his emotions. It's not like it's not like lout song
comes up and is like, here's a transcendental meditation that
I think you could do to really get this under control.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I mean, the meta story in that story is so
kind of like weird and distasteful, and Jesse Owens is
forced to play along with this kind of deeply offensive narrative.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
But that's that's the really sad part though, is he's
not He's not forced to play along with it, like
he generates the narrative. Like I there's many people that
I'm suspicious of who play a several meaningful white co
writers on this story. But I really think that Jesse
Owens is the first mover.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
He's so internalized these Yeah, but he knows enough, he
knows enough about what it means to be a black
man in nineteen thirty six that he knows that that's
a story, that's the plausible version of the story.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
We almost always tell the story of Jesse Owens's Gold
Medals as a story of Triumph. Actually, Triumph is the
title of a best selling book about him. It's the
name of a Jesse Owens History Channel documentary that just
came out. And I'm not saying that Jesse Owens didn't triumph,
or that he didn't enjoy the fame or the money.
(28:34):
But look at what two weeks of Triumph cost him.
A life behind glass, playing a version of himself in
a story of racial reconciliation that he must have on
some level known was just not true. And it was
a story that worked like magic, until all of a
sudden it didn't. We'll be right back. Jesse Owens had
(29:13):
been telling one version or another of the Lutslang story
for nearly twenty years when it finally went mainstream in
nineteen sixty eight. That was the year Jesse Owens Returns
to Berlin came out. The film by the legendary Olympic
documentarian Bud Greenspan. It builds up to that globetrotter's trip
in nineteen fifty one, the jog around the track, the
(29:35):
standing ovation, but the heart of the piece is Lutslang's
son Kai.
Speaker 14 (29:40):
I have very often seen pictures from you and the
photographs of my father, please tell me about this competition
here in the stadium, because I've my father only seen
for three times. I was born nineteen forty one and
my father has died in ninety forty three.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Remember, Kai was still a kid when his dad died.
He didn't know his father, and in the film, Jesse
Owens tells him a story about how his dad helped
Owens qualify for the broad jump.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
Kyle, you probably don't know it, but your father was
greatly responsible for my winning the broad jump in nineteen
thirty six. It all happened on the other side of
the field here when we had the preminaries for the
running broad jump, and on the first two jumps, I
followed on one and didn't go far enough on the other,
and your father came to my assistance and he helped
me measure a footback of the takeoff board, and he
(30:28):
helped the tape until I measured a foot back as
far as my takeoff was concerned. And then I came
down and I hit between these two marks, and therefore
I qualified, and that led to the victory in the
running broad jump.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
He seemed to say, sure, your dad would go on
to fight with the Nazis, but he was a good man.
Kai asked Owens if he'd like to recreate the famous
photograph of his father. They laid down in the grass together.
The film was a huge, huge hit, the first time
(31:01):
Jesse Owens really got his Olympic glory back. The nineteen
thirty six games were before people had televisions in their homes,
so Americans hadn't really seen the footage of the games
before that movie hadn't seen just how incredible Jesse Owens's
Olympic achievement was. I haven't watched a lot of track
and field, but it still takes my breath away. The
(31:22):
long jump especially, it just looks like he's running on air,
and as he leaps, he raises his hand above his
head and he just soars.
Speaker 15 (31:32):
It was a little Olympic record, one to sixty five
and one third interest the first month.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
The Greek name was looks Long, an athlete of special carriage.
Speaker 15 (31:42):
He put his arms around him and we walked down
the broad jump runway directly in front of Chapley hit
those box.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The Bud Greenspan documentary meant that Jesse Owens finally had
it all again, his fame, his financial security and his
Olympic glory and all that had come just in time
for another Olympic Games, Mexico City, nineteen sixty eight. By
that point, Avery Brendage had become the first American President
(32:11):
of the International Olympic Committee ever, and decades after suspending
Jesse Owens, Olympic leaders had seen the power of the
Owens story and welcomed him back to the Olympic movement
as a kind of figurehead. In Mexico, Jesse Owens was
a guest of the government, an adjunct of the US
Olympic Committee, and a radio commentator. But once again, the
(32:32):
Games were about something more than sports. That year, it
was the summer of nineteen sixty eight, the height of
the civil rights movement, and like in nineteen thirty six,
there was talk of black American athletes protesting the games,
specifically the track athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos. Everyone
was on eggshells. One day during the Games, Jesse Owens
(32:56):
was walking through the Olympic village when he ran into Carlos.
I know this because Owens's radio co host Les Kider
was with him, and later he wrote about it in
his memoirs. Carlos apparently confided in Owens that he was
planning some kind of protest the next day, Owens got
anxious and told him not to do anything public. And
(33:17):
then apparently Carlos got frustrated and in the middle of
the Olympic village he pointed a finger at Jesse Owens
and yelled, you goddamn uncle. Tom Owens was stunned. The
next day, John Carlos won bronze in the two hundred
meter sprint and Tommy Smith won the gold. Owens was
(33:37):
in the radio booth high above the field watching. According
to that radio co host Les Kid, Owens said, boy,
I hope nothing happens when they play the national anthem.
They might refuse to accept the awards. Instead, something much
more dramatic happened. They accepted their medals, but then they
took the podium shoeless and raised gloves in a black
(34:01):
power salute. The image was broadcast across the world.
Speaker 13 (34:06):
Yesterday, they came in first and third in the two
hundred meter dash and then stood on the victory platform
with bowed heads, wearing black socks and gloves and a
racial protest.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Kider said that when Jesse Owens learned what Smith and
Carlos had done. He sat there and repeated three words
to himself, Oh my god.
Speaker 12 (34:32):
They were also breaking a very important unwritten rule in America,
which is you don't criticize the United States in foreign land.
And so Jesse Owens was aware of that rule in
the thirties and in the forties, and he was certainly
someone who abided by that.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
That's Damian Thomas again, Smithsonian Sports Curator.
Speaker 12 (34:56):
Jesse Owens is from an era where it was important
for you to be a credit to your race. And
so the way in which you advanced African American opportunity
access was through good behavior. It was through embodying these
(35:18):
middle class values, chastity thrift tempoints. But by nineteen sixty eight,
African Americans are half of the players in the NBA,
a third in the NFL, and a quarter in Major
League Baseball. And so the mere presence of African American
(35:40):
athletes is no longer seen as progressive in and of itself.
It's seeing as now the status quo thirty years after
Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens won gold and so athletes in
the nineteen sixties are now saying that the country needs
(36:02):
to do more that you need to be more engaged
with solving racial problems and racial issues, and so athletes
by nineteen sixty eight are willing to confront America, and
they're willing to confront America before a worldwide audience.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Avery Brandage was apoplectic, and in one of the most
deeply cynical twists of fate, Brandage and the International Olympic
Committee asked Jesse Owens, whom they'd previously banned for life,
to go see Tommy Smith and John Carlos to ask
them to apologize and promise not to protest again.
Speaker 9 (36:46):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He was received the way you might expect. They would
not be apologizing. Tommy Smith and John Carlos were kicked
out of the Olympic village and banned from future games.
They had faced a conundrum a lot like Jesse Owens
had thirty two years earlier, but they made the opposite choice.
(37:08):
Jesse Owens must have felt as if his whole life
was on trial. I mean, just listen to Tommy Smith.
Speaker 16 (37:15):
Had I been a good boy in Mexico, I could
have probably been a monetarily richer and I would probably
have been a bigger figure that I am, right now
well getting steal I would have to fight myself from
the inside.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
The day after their protests, on air, Owens's radio co
host asked him to compare the Black Power salute with
being snubbed by Adolf Hitler in nineteen thirty six, another
story about something that had never happened, Owens was taken aback.
He just spent the whole night trying to get the
athletes to apologize. He paused for a second and said
(37:50):
the two are not similar, but I guess I was
the only one involved in both, And then he talked
about the night before he began to weep. It all
hit Owens extremely hard, so hard that he wrote a
book length response to the Black Power movement. He'd titled
(38:12):
it Black Think, one of a series of books he
wrote at the end of his life with a white
co author, and here we find ourselves again at Lootslong.
That book came out just two years after the Mexico
City Games. But it's almost written like he's still there.
There's a kind of urgency to it. It's like what
(38:32):
he wishes he'd said in that conversation with John Carlos
and Tommy Smith, and what did he wish he'd told
them a story about a good German, loots Long, about
how his friendship across racial lines was even bigger and
even more improbable than anyone ever could have imagined. At
(38:52):
Black Things, climactic moment, Jesse Owens wrote, don't pass up
your Olympics and eurolots Long, don't let the black thinkers
sell you out. The significance of that brief interaction just
kept growing in Jesse Owens's life story until two years
before he died in nineteen seventy eight. With that co author,
(39:16):
Jesse Owens published a book called Jesse a Spiritual Autobiography.
This is the one with the letter Lutslong supposedly sent
right before he died in the deserts of North Africa,
a place in truth he never fought. It's kind of
a beautiful letter, though, even knowing it's not true, I
still get choked up when I read it. But it's
(39:37):
the dedication on spiritual autobiography that really gets me. Owens
dedicates the book to two unmatchable teammates, my wife of
almost fifty years, Ruth, and the Nazi who fought Hitler
with me, loots.
Speaker 9 (39:55):
Long, Tom.
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Can you hear me? Okay?
Speaker 9 (40:07):
I can.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, Okay, fantastic. I had one last question, how did
Jesse Owens feel about making this story up? Did he
ever talk about it with anyone? So I called Tom Ecker,
once a great track and field coach. He trained Sweden
for the nineteen sixty eight Games. He's something of an
Olympic historian. He's eighty nine now. He was born the
(40:30):
year before the nineteen thirty six Games.
Speaker 9 (40:33):
I met with Jesse Owens a few times, and then
I brought into Cedar Rapids where I live, and he
came here and spoke to a group.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
And he slept in your daughter's bed, Tom's wife, Carol.
Speaker 9 (40:46):
Yeah, he slept and he slept in our house.
Speaker 7 (40:49):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (40:50):
So you guys actually had a good relationship. Yeah, we
got along really well. He told a lot of the
same stories that I love to hear.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
One of those stories, of course, was the Lutslang broad jump.
Tom had heard the story before, but it didn't quite
add up. He'd never seen any official account of an
interaction between Owens and Long during that qualifying round. He
knew the famous sports writer Grant land Rice had been
watching the event through his binoculars and in a detailed
account of that day, Rice described how calm Jesse Owens
(41:24):
looked when he made that final jump. He didn't say
anything about lutslog. Decades later in Cedar Rapids, Tom says
he asked Jesse Owens about the jump himself.
Speaker 9 (41:38):
Oh, yes, yeah, I talked to We talked about lut
slang and the fact that that most of that was
made up.
Speaker 7 (41:47):
He admitted to it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Oh yeah, Why did he make it up?
Speaker 8 (41:53):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (41:53):
He well, he.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
He.
Speaker 7 (41:57):
He wanted to tell good stories. He told me that
that he wanted to just be able to tell good
stories and that that was a good story. We all
know what's true.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'm left with this image of Jesse Owens falling asleep
in a little girl's bed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where
he's once again been called to tell his great story.
And what dream could visit him?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Then?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
That one day he woke up alone in a strange
land and stepped out onto a great field in a
big glass bowl to fight for a country that didn't
want him, against the people who were most supposed to
hate him, and then all of a sudden one of
them reached out and touched him. Under the circumstances, who's
(42:50):
telling the truth we posed.
Speaker 15 (42:53):
As his father and I did on the grass of
the stadium, and though it may seem a little childish,
doing it brought back memories of a warm interdude in
my life when our follow athletes showed a special grace
and a special courtesy when I needed help. I've experienced
many moments in the sun, but perhaps the most rewarding
(43:13):
was to have Let's long beside me on the winner's platform.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Mattaphaffrey, Tally Emlin,
and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact
checking on this episode by J. L. Goldfeind. Original scoring
by Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Gorsky, Engineering by Nina
Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks
(43:48):
to Karen Chakerji, Wendy Martin, J. D. Landis, and Lee
Haffrey for translation help. I'm Ben Mattaphaffrey.
On a warm day in August nineteen fifty one, a
helicopter appeared in the sky above the brilliant Olympic Stadium.
Seventy five thousand people had gathered there to watch a
Harlem globetrotter's basketball game. The crowd looked up. The chopper,
circled three times and landed on the field.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
The loudspeaker announcer called out attention, attention.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
A black man in a white suit stepped out onto
the red cinder track.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest run on the world returned.
Mister Burland.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Jesse Owens was back in Germany to take a victory lap.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I had many thoughts as I made the symbolic run
of victory around the same red sender track that had
run so many years before. As I passed each section,
there was a bridge to the pass.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The Second World War had ended only six years earlier,
and Germany, along with the rest of the world, was
still reckoning with it all. Whatever was left of the
Nazi leadership had been grilled at the Nuremberg trials. Berlin
was rebuilding after Allied bombing campaigns. About eighty percent of
the city center had been flattened. Yet the stadium the
Nazis had built for the Olympics was still standing, and
(01:17):
that day at the Globetrotters game, Jesse Owens was back
to take his victory lab and to give a speech.
Words often fail on occasions like this, he told the
German crowd, But I remember the good that happened here.
I remember the fighting spirit and sportsmanship shown by German
(01:37):
athletes on this field. And here we reached the important part,
he says, especially by Lutslog of Germany, the man I
managed to be in the broad jump.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The crowd came forth with a tremendous role, and the
cheers are with me today.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Owens stood for an ovation that one of the globetrotters
said lasted a full fifteen minutes. And I think maybe
it was then, standing there watching how hungry that crowd
was for even this mention of a good German that
he decided to tell an even bigger story about what
happened between him and Luteslog at the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
(02:29):
It was the start of the great long jump tall tale.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
H'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
things overlooked and misunderstood. Throughout this series, Who've been looking
at how people tried to rationalize their participation in Hitner's Olympics,
And in this episode we've reached the most enduring and
I think heartbreaking rationalization of all. Jesse Owens his story
(02:58):
about befriending a Nazi, the story that it seems Owen's
made up. But why why did Owens need to tell
a lie?
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Our home was in Alabama and my parents were sharecroppers
on this particular place.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
In nineteen sixty one, Jesse Owens sat down with an
interviewer to record in oral history. She a white woman
in cat's eye glasses and pearls Owens or a suit.
The two sat in mid century modern armchairs so close
their knees were almost touching. The curtains were drawn, the
room was filled with smoke. They spoke for six hours,
(03:48):
starting at the very beginning, What.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
About the people that owned the big house where your
father was a shared dropper? Was this a Negro individual?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Light? The first tape is mostly about Owens's early life,
growing up one of the youngest of ten brothers and
sisters in Alabama. He was a sickly kid with a
sunny disposition. His parents had him late, called him their
gift child. It can be hard to know things for
certain about Jesse Owens's life. His biographer William J. Baker
(04:21):
once wrote of him, Jesse Owens was always strong on imagination,
weak on literal truth. But whatever the facts, I believe
his tone of voice in this tape, its warmth and
its weariness. You hear about the setbacks, the time he
saw his mother crying while folding the laundry because she
couldn't afford clothes for him, and then you hear about
(04:44):
the triumphs Now.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
That's where it all began. Junior heights reveal or Character
of the Basketball team.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Chapterin of the Track Team, Captain of the baseball team,
I was President of the student council, Captain about cards.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I was impressed the first time I heard him list
all those accomplishments. He was obviously great from the start.
But the second time I listened, I noticed just how
worn out he sounds going through that list. That tone
has a lot to do with how I came to
understand Jesse Owens. He's telling the story of his life
in this oral history, but really he just keeps talking
(05:23):
about one idea.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
She get tired of this sometimes, Oh yes, you get
tired of living in a glass bowl, living in a
glass bowl.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But it's a.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
It's a wonderful thing to help people to recognize you,
people to admire you for your ability, but sometimes people
forget your human being. People were looking, everybody's eyes were
upon you, and they would scrutinize everything that you did.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And so therefore you had to be very, very careful
of what other things that you did. And it's a
tough thing.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Sometime, by the time he taped this interview, people had
been telling stories about Jesse Owens, mythologizing him for decades.
You can even hear the interviewer doing it.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
How did all this make you feel?
Speaker 7 (06:11):
Now?
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Remember you you're a youngster from the cotton fields of Alabama,
and this is all relatively new to you, and and
suddenly you're you're you're the captain of so many things,
and you're all a suit and people like you.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And when you felt like you were somebody you know.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
And that I think is of the heart of why
Jesse Owens made up that story about Luteslong helping him
during the broad jump qualifying rounds and about their friendship
all those years afterwards. First being an athlete made him somebody.
Then when that was done, telling stories about it kept
him with somebody. But he was black in early twentieth
(06:52):
century America, which meant that as soon as he started
to be somebody, he had to play the two crowds,
the white people giving him opportunities and the black people
who wanted him to use his status to change things.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
If you're the first to come along, you're a pioneer.
You represent not just yourself, which you represent your category.
And he's being asked to represent his category in a
way that no obviously, no white athlete is being asked
to represent a category.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, And I actually think what's striking looking at Jesse
Owens's life is how early that starts for him. I mean,
it's really he's sort of a superlative athlete from a
very young age, and then this just keeps happening to him.
It was the same when people started boycotting the nineteen
thirty six Olympics, wondering if he would too. He's at
the time, how old I think he's twenty two. So
(07:41):
we have this kid who is.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Being asked to parse one of the most complicated kind
of moral and political questions of the time, and he's
being torn in two directions.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
At first, Jesse Owens seemed to see the situation in
Germany clearly, the violence and the discrimination, and he supported
the boycott. He knew what it was like living in
the United States under Jim Crow in segregation. He said
in a radio interview that quote, if there is discrimination
against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics,
(08:17):
to which his white coach, Larry Snyder responded, basically, suit yourself.
But if you skip the Olympics, you're going to be,
and this is his exact phrase, a forgotten man, the
opposite of a somebody. In the end, eighteen black athletes
went to Berlin with the US Olympic team that year.
(08:38):
Each of them had to wrestle privately with the question
of whether or not to participate, but because of the
Glass Bowl, Jesse Owens had to do it in public.
There were endless opinions about what he should do. Even
the secretary of the NAACP Walter White, had an opinion
best represented in a letter to Owens that he drafted
(08:59):
but which now sits in the archives. I fully realize
how great a sacrifice it will be for you to
give up the trip to Europe and to forego the
acclaim which your athletic prowess will unquestionably bring you. On
the other hand, it is my firm conviction that the
issue of participation in the nineteen thirty six Olympics, if
(09:20):
held in Germany under the present regime, transcends all other issues.
Participation by American athletes, and especially by those of our
own race, which has suffered more than any other from
American race hatred, would I firmly believe, do irreparable harm.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
The very pre.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Eminence of American Negro athletes gives them an unparalleled opportunity
to strike a blow at racial bigotry and to make
other minority groups conscious of the sameness of their problem
with ours. If the Hitlers and Mussolini's of the world
are successful, it is inevitable that dictatorships based upon prejudice
will spread throughout the world. White never sent that letter,
(10:02):
but it captured how a lot of people understood the
stakes of the choice that Jesse Owens had to make
deny his Olympic dreams for the good of Black America
or go to the games at their expense.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
But you could have given up at this point. We
didn't have to go on with it. If the recognition
and the status hadn't been as important to you as
it was, he could have sat on through with this nonsense.
I'm going to finish my education and the one and
become a lawyer or something else.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Well, this you could have done. But yet and still
you feel that here you are, where people have made
it possible for you to start, Why at this point
become See you're not any greater. Then the people will
make you. You can do a number of things. But
(11:00):
if the people are not with you, then who knows about?
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Leave the glass bowl, become a forgotten man. So Jesse
Owens went to the Olympics with everyone watching, and he
made a miracle happen.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
Capa conic second up on it na makes the others
look as if they're working.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
He won gold medals in each of his events, the
one hundred and two hundred meter dashes, the one hundred
meter relay, in that legendary broad jump, and for a
lot of people, all those medals seemed to validate his
choice to go. He'd proven Hitler wrong with every step,
so much Farian supremacy. That's where the story of Jesse
(11:43):
Owens usually ends, but there's so much more to it.
After the track and field events in nineteen thirty six,
the athletes toured Europe for a series of track meets.
Avery Brandage, Newly, a member of the International Olympic Committee,
had organized it with the Amateur Athletic Union. The organizations
would pocket their cut of the ticket sales, but the
(12:06):
athletes couldn't make money from the meets. Remember, the games
were for amateurs, no money for sport. Jesse Owens once said,
all we athletes get out of this Olympic business is
a view out of a train or airplane window. It
gets tiresome, it really does, staring out those windows. I
think he had started to contemplate his future, and I
(12:28):
don't think he liked what he saw. They were expected
to keep training, compete for a few more years until
their bodies started to fall apart. Maybe there'd be another
Olympic Games. But then what Owens didn't come from a
rich family. He'd barely had the time to get an
education with all his training, What kind of job could
he do once his athletic career was over. After the
(12:50):
Berlin Games. He was really famous. Offers had started to
come in. Twenty five grand for two weeks with an
orchestra in California, forty grand for ten weeks of shows
with the entertainer Eddie Canter. Now that serious money. In
nineteen thirty six, that was a fortune. He began to
think about leaving the tour and going home. He could
(13:13):
be rich, but going professional would be violating Olympic rules
and missing the rest of the tour would too. He
could never compete at the Olympics. Again. Those were the rules,
rules enforced by Avery Brandage, who took amateurism extremely seriously.
(13:35):
After the Berlin Games, a reporter asked him about rumors
that Owens was going to quit the post Olympics tour.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
And I'd understand the Bondage that the received information that
Owns will not go to the stop, but Doc Holmley
will not appear, and I hope that Owen will be
build engagements when one of the finest boys we've had,
and we hope that there will be nothing tom this record.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
These were crocked dial tears. By the time he gave
that interview, averybrend had already knew that Jesse Owens had
a ticket for a steamer back to the United States,
leaving before the end of that tour.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
No, I just hope that all these are just rumored.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Jesse Owens was banned for life from amateur sport. The
nineteen thirty six Games would be the last act and
the pinnacle of his athletic career. He went to the
press with a rare complaint. I came over to Europe
with only ten dollars in my pocket. To make matters worse,
I've lost six pounds being pushed around and circused all
(14:35):
over Europe. They sent me to Prague from Cologne without
a cent and I had to run a race in
Prague without having had an ounce of food for ten hours.
I am turning professional because I'm busted and know the
difficulties encountered by any member of my race and getting
financial security. I want to get some money while I'm
in the spotlight. He tried to make the most of it.
(14:58):
He became an entertainer, even try tap dancing, and along
the way he was working to keep up with sports too,
But it was like everything had gone a little sour.
He was supposed to race against another amateur in Cuba,
a sprinter until Avery Brundage caught win and said he'd
banned that sprinter from American amateur sport if he went
through with the race. So they replaced the guy with
(15:20):
a horse Cuba.
Speaker 8 (15:23):
Jesse Owens, the Ebonistic of Olympic Games, celebrates turning professional
by racing against a horse.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Jesse had a start at forty yards and one hundred
and he won by inches.
Speaker 9 (15:31):
And I ought a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So when Jesse Owens went professional, that essentially was the
choice he made to spend the rest of his life
reliving those two weeks in August nineteen thirty six. He
was trapped as if he'd jumped into that broad jump
pit and sunk to his knees in quicksand which is
(15:58):
not to say that it wasn't also a good life.
He had three daughters, He was involved in presidential campaigning.
He ran a fitness program during the war for the
US Office of Civilian Defense. He led a big life,
but in order to do all the other stuff, he
had to keep the dream of those two weeks alive.
You can even hear this in that oral history when
(16:19):
they start on that third tape. Jesse Owens is in
the middle of talking about his actual life. Now in
the nineteen sixties, he's complaining about some business deal that
went south.
Speaker 10 (16:28):
THEO for me and I got to sing over to
the bank and I made a mistake by not having
two sources, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So again this was a guy with a life. But
the interviewer is like, yeah, sure, sure, what about the Olympics?
Speaker 11 (16:40):
Though, what else is new? Jesse, Let's go way back
now to nineteen thirty six and reminisce about the Olympics.
I'm sure that you have told this story how many
hundreds of times to how many papers and miners using
this person, and this has been broadcast, certainly known many times.
(17:02):
But for the Historical Library would like to have a
record of for the Olympics, in your own words, the
feeling that you.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Had when you know his job was telling the story
of the Olympics. And once she asks, he gets right
to it.
Speaker 10 (17:18):
I remember it was in July July the fourth of
nineteen thirty six when we had the final tryouts for
the Olympics at Rados Island, and that was the fourth But.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The thing about telling one story for your entire life
is that the meaning of that story has to keep
changing with the times, to stay marketable, to keep enough
eyes on that glass bowl. And in nineteen fifty one,
at that halftime speech during the Harlem Globetrotter's game, he
discovered its most powerful edition, Loots Long. We'll be right back.
(18:03):
I guess first, can you tell me about that Globetrotters
game in the Berlin Stadium in nineteen fifty one. Sure,
I'm talking to Damian L. Thomas, Curator of Sports at
the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
He's the author of the book Globe Trotting, African American
Athletes and Cold War Politics.
Speaker 12 (18:27):
The Harlem Globetrotters were just starting to travel internationally and
they had played a game in Frankfurt a couple of
days before, and one American official had asked them to
play this game in West Berlin because at the time,
the Soviets were doing a lot of festivals, a lot
(18:49):
of exchanges, and they wanted to ensure that the US
and the West was able to tell their own story.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
In the Cold War, the US and the USSR were
fighting for the hearts and minds of the rest of
the world, which led them bizarrely straight to the Harlem Globetrotters.
Speaker 13 (19:07):
The Harlem Globetrotters basketball Wizard's extraordinary. They are patent that
plan them, bring and play, and Sandy Capers had made
them the most popular team in the history.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Of the sport.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Before the NBA was a big deal, before black people
played even college basketball, and any great numbers, the Harlem
Globetrotters were kind of traveling basketball circus. True to the name,
they were all over the.
Speaker 11 (19:30):
Place persona Harlem grouptore.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
It was a major operation run by one of the
most infamous and ruthless sports promoters of all time, a
white guy named Abe Sapperstein. I'm MASAKOWI twelve.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Come on, let's push again, for.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You've probably seen footage of them playing a lot of
fake passes, improbable shots, and goofing around. Except they're totally
incredible at basketball.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Even in slow motion. Their magical hands pool you.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was talking to Damian Thomas though, because underneath the
goofiness there was something more sinister going on.
Speaker 12 (20:10):
The Harlem Blobetrotters were also so deeply tied to mins
pro se, which was the dominant form of entertainment in
America from the eighteen eighties through the nineteen early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
The players, almost all black Americans, were often referred to
as clowns.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Meet the most colorful comedy acting in present day spot
purists say they make a mockery of the game.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
They clown, they juggle, they fool.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
But where some people might see a kind of basketball circus,
the State Department saw the perfect propaganda weapon.
Speaker 12 (20:46):
People often didn't think of sports as having ideological content,
and so whereas other forms of American culture would be resisting,
sometimes Coca cola, sometimes blue jeans, rock and roll, and
American movies were shunt people often welcomed basketball because they
(21:07):
didn't think of it as as had been a propagandistic function.
But it did, and it's one of the things that
made it very important is that people didn't see it
as containing hidden messages.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
A lot of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War called
out the lie of American equality. The US might talk
about all people being equal, but the country was segregated,
and really only white people had a shot at a
decent quality of life. It was true and a particularly
useful message for the USSR trying to get African and
(21:45):
Asian countries to align with them instead of the US.
So the United States responded with a big hidden message
about the globetrotters, a message with two parts, first part, hey,
look we have wealthy black peace in this country. And
the second, much more sinister part, look at these clowns.
(22:06):
Don't you see why we're segregating them.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Number fifty is Goose Tatum, clown with the longest arms
in the spot with his seven foot overall reachie raks
in seven thousand a year from a team which grows
to a million last season.
Speaker 12 (22:19):
You would see these situations where maybe Goost Tatum, who
was the lead clown, which lay on the floor and
read read the newspaper while the game was going on
on the other end of the floor, designed to stress
that African Americans were lazy and then we were unresponsible
(22:43):
or weren't mentally engaged in the game. And so you
saw all of these various ways where the stereotypes played
out in some of the comedic routines of the low tribes.
It allows the State Department to make the argument that
African Americans don't have full e quality, don't have all
(23:04):
of the opportunities that are available to white Americans because
they are lazy, they're not as intelligent, they are not
ready to occupy a space of full equality.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
The State Department needed black success stories that also made
segregation look okay. Enter the Globetrotters and Jesse Owens. And
how did Jesse Owens become involved in all this?
Speaker 12 (23:36):
All throughout the nineteen forties, Jesse Owens had traveled sporadically
with the Harlem Globetrotters and he would serve a variety
of functions. He would serve as the press secretary, the
announcer during the game, and also as halftime entertainment. And
typically when he performed during halftime, they would set up
(23:58):
hurdles around the core and Jesse Owens would jump over
the hurdles around the core as they have time entertain
a spectacle.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
At one of the Globetrotter's promoters events, he ran a
race against another black athlete on his hands and knees
even worse than that horse race in Cuba.
Speaker 12 (24:18):
He writes about that, and he writes about how he
felt humiliated and felt as if he was being treated
less than But then he also writes, well, what else.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Was I supposed to do?
Speaker 7 (24:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (24:33):
What would other options available?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And That is how in nineteen fifty one, Jesse Owens
returned to the Berlin Stadium at the behest of the
State Department as the black superstar with a story to
tell about a kind Nazi. Jesse Owens had spent much
of his life in the Glass Bowl. He knew the rules,
and so during his second visit to Berlin, he focused
(24:59):
on the part of his story the Americans and the
Germans most needed, the part about Lutzlang, a good white
German who'd embraced a black man Just the day before
that Globetrotter's game. Owens had finally met Lutzlang's widow and
his son Kai. It seems he told them that untrue
story about the qualifying round and how Lutzlang had helped
(25:20):
him keep from fouling out. And maybe he'd seen how
much the story of Long's kindness had touched Kai too.
It was another story with two messages, Hey, look, the
US and Germany can be friends again too, and also
how bad could segregation be if this black superstar could
still see the humanity in a white Nazi? And it
(25:43):
was a smash success. Owens stood outside that stadium for
hours after that game, signing autographs. The US State Department's
office in Berlin sent home a report. Appearance Harlem Globetrotters
with Jesse Owens in Olympic Stadium August twenty two more
successful than anticipated, and.
Speaker 12 (26:03):
This became one of the most requested stories that Jesse
Wood tailed on the speaker circuit.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
After that trip to Germany, Owens began to tell increasingly
elaborate stories about Lutslog. By the nineteen sixties, in public,
the story had grown to Lutslog helping Owens to qualify.
Later came the apocryphal letters, but with each version of
that story, Owens was masterfully navigating the complexities of Cold
(26:30):
War US racial politics. It's somehow an apology for his
own excellence, because the premise of the story is that he,
a person who holds the world record and broad jumping,
needs to be instructed on how to approach the pit
by a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
No, but actually been. It's worse than that, because the
story itself has its own kind of implied racial bias,
which is, he's not just being instructed about how to
conduct a long jump.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
He's lost control of his own emotions.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yes, he's being instructed about how to control his emotions.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, Actually it's not. He's not being told how to
control his emotions. He's being told how to handle the
fact that he will continue to be unable to control
his emotions. It's not like it's not like lout song
comes up and is like, here's a transcendental meditation that
I think you could do to really get this under control.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I mean, the meta story in that story is so
kind of like weird and distasteful, and Jesse Owens is
forced to play along with this kind of deeply offensive narrative.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
But that's that's the really sad part though, is he's
not He's not forced to play along with it, like
he generates the narrative. Like I there's many people that
I'm suspicious of who play a several meaningful white co
writers on this story. But I really think that Jesse
Owens is the first mover.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
He's so internalized these Yeah, but he knows enough, he
knows enough about what it means to be a black
man in nineteen thirty six that he knows that that's
a story, that's the plausible version of the story.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
We almost always tell the story of Jesse Owens's Gold
Medals as a story of Triumph. Actually, Triumph is the
title of a best selling book about him. It's the
name of a Jesse Owens History Channel documentary that just
came out. And I'm not saying that Jesse Owens didn't triumph,
or that he didn't enjoy the fame or the money.
(28:34):
But look at what two weeks of Triumph cost him.
A life behind glass, playing a version of himself in
a story of racial reconciliation that he must have on
some level known was just not true. And it was
a story that worked like magic, until all of a
sudden it didn't. We'll be right back. Jesse Owens had
(29:13):
been telling one version or another of the Lutslang story
for nearly twenty years when it finally went mainstream in
nineteen sixty eight. That was the year Jesse Owens Returns
to Berlin came out. The film by the legendary Olympic
documentarian Bud Greenspan. It builds up to that globetrotter's trip
in nineteen fifty one, the jog around the track, the
(29:35):
standing ovation, but the heart of the piece is Lutslang's
son Kai.
Speaker 14 (29:40):
I have very often seen pictures from you and the
photographs of my father, please tell me about this competition
here in the stadium, because I've my father only seen
for three times. I was born nineteen forty one and
my father has died in ninety forty three.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Remember, Kai was still a kid when his dad died.
He didn't know his father, and in the film, Jesse
Owens tells him a story about how his dad helped
Owens qualify for the broad jump.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
Kyle, you probably don't know it, but your father was
greatly responsible for my winning the broad jump in nineteen
thirty six. It all happened on the other side of
the field here when we had the preminaries for the
running broad jump, and on the first two jumps, I
followed on one and didn't go far enough on the other,
and your father came to my assistance and he helped
me measure a footback of the takeoff board, and he
(30:28):
helped the tape until I measured a foot back as
far as my takeoff was concerned. And then I came
down and I hit between these two marks, and therefore
I qualified, and that led to the victory in the
running broad jump.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
He seemed to say, sure, your dad would go on
to fight with the Nazis, but he was a good man.
Kai asked Owens if he'd like to recreate the famous
photograph of his father. They laid down in the grass together.
The film was a huge, huge hit, the first time
(31:01):
Jesse Owens really got his Olympic glory back. The nineteen
thirty six games were before people had televisions in their homes,
so Americans hadn't really seen the footage of the games
before that movie hadn't seen just how incredible Jesse Owens's
Olympic achievement was. I haven't watched a lot of track
and field, but it still takes my breath away. The
(31:22):
long jump especially, it just looks like he's running on air,
and as he leaps, he raises his hand above his
head and he just soars.
Speaker 15 (31:32):
It was a little Olympic record, one to sixty five
and one third interest the first month.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
The Greek name was looks Long, an athlete of special carriage.
Speaker 15 (31:42):
He put his arms around him and we walked down
the broad jump runway directly in front of Chapley hit
those box.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
The Bud Greenspan documentary meant that Jesse Owens finally had
it all again, his fame, his financial security and his
Olympic glory and all that had come just in time
for another Olympic Games, Mexico City, nineteen sixty eight. By
that point, Avery Brendage had become the first American President
(32:11):
of the International Olympic Committee ever, and decades after suspending
Jesse Owens, Olympic leaders had seen the power of the
Owens story and welcomed him back to the Olympic movement
as a kind of figurehead. In Mexico, Jesse Owens was
a guest of the government, an adjunct of the US
Olympic Committee, and a radio commentator. But once again, the
(32:32):
Games were about something more than sports. That year, it
was the summer of nineteen sixty eight, the height of
the civil rights movement, and like in nineteen thirty six,
there was talk of black American athletes protesting the games,
specifically the track athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos. Everyone
was on eggshells. One day during the Games, Jesse Owens
(32:56):
was walking through the Olympic village when he ran into Carlos.
I know this because Owens's radio co host Les Kider
was with him, and later he wrote about it in
his memoirs. Carlos apparently confided in Owens that he was
planning some kind of protest the next day, Owens got
anxious and told him not to do anything public. And
(33:17):
then apparently Carlos got frustrated and in the middle of
the Olympic village he pointed a finger at Jesse Owens
and yelled, you goddamn uncle. Tom Owens was stunned. The
next day, John Carlos won bronze in the two hundred
meter sprint and Tommy Smith won the gold. Owens was
(33:37):
in the radio booth high above the field watching. According
to that radio co host Les Kid, Owens said, boy,
I hope nothing happens when they play the national anthem.
They might refuse to accept the awards. Instead, something much
more dramatic happened. They accepted their medals, but then they
took the podium shoeless and raised gloves in a black
(34:01):
power salute. The image was broadcast across the world.
Speaker 13 (34:06):
Yesterday, they came in first and third in the two
hundred meter dash and then stood on the victory platform
with bowed heads, wearing black socks and gloves and a
racial protest.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Kider said that when Jesse Owens learned what Smith and
Carlos had done. He sat there and repeated three words
to himself, Oh my god.
Speaker 12 (34:32):
They were also breaking a very important unwritten rule in America,
which is you don't criticize the United States in foreign land.
And so Jesse Owens was aware of that rule in
the thirties and in the forties, and he was certainly
someone who abided by that.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
That's Damian Thomas again, Smithsonian Sports Curator.
Speaker 12 (34:56):
Jesse Owens is from an era where it was important
for you to be a credit to your race. And
so the way in which you advanced African American opportunity
access was through good behavior. It was through embodying these
(35:18):
middle class values, chastity thrift tempoints. But by nineteen sixty eight,
African Americans are half of the players in the NBA,
a third in the NFL, and a quarter in Major
League Baseball. And so the mere presence of African American
(35:40):
athletes is no longer seen as progressive in and of itself.
It's seeing as now the status quo thirty years after
Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens won gold and so athletes in
the nineteen sixties are now saying that the country needs
(36:02):
to do more that you need to be more engaged
with solving racial problems and racial issues, and so athletes
by nineteen sixty eight are willing to confront America, and
they're willing to confront America before a worldwide audience.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Avery Brandage was apoplectic, and in one of the most
deeply cynical twists of fate, Brandage and the International Olympic
Committee asked Jesse Owens, whom they'd previously banned for life,
to go see Tommy Smith and John Carlos to ask
them to apologize and promise not to protest again.
Speaker 9 (36:46):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He was received the way you might expect. They would
not be apologizing. Tommy Smith and John Carlos were kicked
out of the Olympic village and banned from future games.
They had faced a conundrum a lot like Jesse Owens
had thirty two years earlier, but they made the opposite choice.
(37:08):
Jesse Owens must have felt as if his whole life
was on trial. I mean, just listen to Tommy Smith.
Speaker 16 (37:15):
Had I been a good boy in Mexico, I could
have probably been a monetarily richer and I would probably
have been a bigger figure that I am, right now
well getting steal I would have to fight myself from
the inside.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
The day after their protests, on air, Owens's radio co
host asked him to compare the Black Power salute with
being snubbed by Adolf Hitler in nineteen thirty six, another
story about something that had never happened, Owens was taken aback.
He just spent the whole night trying to get the
athletes to apologize. He paused for a second and said
(37:50):
the two are not similar, but I guess I was
the only one involved in both, And then he talked
about the night before he began to weep. It all
hit Owens extremely hard, so hard that he wrote a
book length response to the Black Power movement. He'd titled
(38:12):
it Black Think, one of a series of books he
wrote at the end of his life with a white
co author, and here we find ourselves again at Lootslong.
That book came out just two years after the Mexico
City Games. But it's almost written like he's still there.
There's a kind of urgency to it. It's like what
(38:32):
he wishes he'd said in that conversation with John Carlos
and Tommy Smith, and what did he wish he'd told
them a story about a good German, loots Long, about
how his friendship across racial lines was even bigger and
even more improbable than anyone ever could have imagined. At
(38:52):
Black Things, climactic moment, Jesse Owens wrote, don't pass up
your Olympics and eurolots Long, don't let the black thinkers
sell you out. The significance of that brief interaction just
kept growing in Jesse Owens's life story until two years
before he died in nineteen seventy eight. With that co author,
(39:16):
Jesse Owens published a book called Jesse a Spiritual Autobiography.
This is the one with the letter Lutslong supposedly sent
right before he died in the deserts of North Africa,
a place in truth he never fought. It's kind of
a beautiful letter, though, even knowing it's not true, I
still get choked up when I read it. But it's
(39:37):
the dedication on spiritual autobiography that really gets me. Owens
dedicates the book to two unmatchable teammates, my wife of
almost fifty years, Ruth, and the Nazi who fought Hitler
with me, loots.
Speaker 9 (39:55):
Long, Tom.
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Can you hear me? Okay?
Speaker 9 (40:07):
I can.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, Okay, fantastic. I had one last question, how did
Jesse Owens feel about making this story up? Did he
ever talk about it with anyone? So I called Tom Ecker,
once a great track and field coach. He trained Sweden
for the nineteen sixty eight Games. He's something of an
Olympic historian. He's eighty nine now. He was born the
(40:30):
year before the nineteen thirty six Games.
Speaker 9 (40:33):
I met with Jesse Owens a few times, and then
I brought into Cedar Rapids where I live, and he
came here and spoke to a group.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
And he slept in your daughter's bed, Tom's wife, Carol.
Speaker 9 (40:46):
Yeah, he slept and he slept in our house.
Speaker 7 (40:49):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (40:50):
So you guys actually had a good relationship. Yeah, we
got along really well. He told a lot of the
same stories that I love to hear.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
One of those stories, of course, was the Lutslang broad jump.
Tom had heard the story before, but it didn't quite
add up. He'd never seen any official account of an
interaction between Owens and Long during that qualifying round. He
knew the famous sports writer Grant land Rice had been
watching the event through his binoculars and in a detailed
account of that day, Rice described how calm Jesse Owens
(41:24):
looked when he made that final jump. He didn't say
anything about lutslog. Decades later in Cedar Rapids, Tom says
he asked Jesse Owens about the jump himself.
Speaker 9 (41:38):
Oh, yes, yeah, I talked to We talked about lut
slang and the fact that that most of that was
made up.
Speaker 7 (41:47):
He admitted to it.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Oh yeah, Why did he make it up?
Speaker 8 (41:53):
Oh?
Speaker 9 (41:53):
He well, he.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
He.
Speaker 7 (41:57):
He wanted to tell good stories. He told me that
that he wanted to just be able to tell good
stories and that that was a good story. We all
know what's true.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'm left with this image of Jesse Owens falling asleep
in a little girl's bed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where
he's once again been called to tell his great story.
And what dream could visit him?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Then?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
That one day he woke up alone in a strange
land and stepped out onto a great field in a
big glass bowl to fight for a country that didn't
want him, against the people who were most supposed to
hate him, and then all of a sudden one of
them reached out and touched him. Under the circumstances, who's
(42:50):
telling the truth we posed.
Speaker 15 (42:53):
As his father and I did on the grass of
the stadium, and though it may seem a little childish,
doing it brought back memories of a warm interdude in
my life when our follow athletes showed a special grace
and a special courtesy when I needed help. I've experienced
many moments in the sun, but perhaps the most rewarding
(43:13):
was to have Let's long beside me on the winner's platform.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Mattaphaffrey, Tally Emlin,
and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact
checking on this episode by J. L. Goldfeind. Original scoring
by Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Gorsky, Engineering by Nina
Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks
(43:48):
to Karen Chakerji, Wendy Martin, J. D. Landis, and Lee
Haffrey for translation help. I'm Ben Mattaphaffrey.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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