October 10, 2024 • 45 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.
This is part two of a two-part crossover from Revisionist History’s ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ series. To listen to the whole series, head over to the Revisionist History show page.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Hey, last dark, I've listeners. Here's part two of
my look at Jesse Owens's famous long jump in the
nineteen thirty six Nazi Olympic Games. If you missed part one,
(00:38):
maybe give that a listen first. It should be in
your feed. To hear the rest of our nine part
Revision's history series on the nineteen thirty six Olympics, head
over to Revisionist Histories show page and look for the
episodes titled Hitler's Olympics. Here's the episode. On a warm
(01:00):
day in August nineteen fifty one, a helicopter appeared in
the sky above the Berlin Olympics 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 (01:18):
The loudspeaker announcer called out attention, attention.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
A black man in a white suit stepped out onto
the red cinder track.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest run on the world, it
turned mister Burland.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Jesse Owens was back in Germany to take a victory lap.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I had many thoughts as I made the symbolic run
of victory around the same Red Center track that had
run so many years before. As I passed each section,
there was a bridge to the pass.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
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
(02:13):
that day at the Globetrotter's 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
(02:34):
athletes on this field, and here we reached the important part,
he says, especially by Lutslang of Germany, the man I
managed to be in the broad jump.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The crowd came forth with a tremendous role, and the
cheers are with me today.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
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
(03:20):
between him and Luteslog at the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
It was the start of the great long jump tall Tale.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Hi'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
things overlooked and misunderstood. Throughout this series, we've been looking
at how people tried to rationalize their participation in Hitno's Olympics,
and in this episode we've reached the most enduring and
I think heartbreaking rationalization of all. Jesse Owens his story
(03:54):
about befriending a Nazi, the story that it seems Owen's
made up. But why why did Owens need to tell
a lie?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Our home was in Alabama and my parents were sharecroppers
on this particular place.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
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 midcentury modern armchairs so close their
knees were almost touching. The curtains were drawn, the room
was filled with smoke. They spoke for six hours, starting
(04:45):
at the very beginning.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
What about the people that owned the big house where
your father was a shared dropper?
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Was this a Negro individual?
Speaker 6 (04:55):
Light?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
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, him their gift child. It
can be hard to know things for certain about Jesse Owens' life.
His biographer William J. Baker once wrote of him, Jesse
(05:19):
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 the.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Triumphs Now, that's where it all began.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Junior Heins rebala I spoke chapter with the basketball team.
Chapter in of the track team, captain of the baseball team,
I was president of the student council, captain about cards.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
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
(06:19):
about one idea.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
She get tired of this sometimes, Oh yes, you get
tired of living in a glass bowl.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Living in a glass bowl. But it's a.
Speaker 7 (06:32):
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 it would scrutinize everything that you did,
and so therefore you had to be very, very careful
of what of the things that you did, and it's.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
A tough thing.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Sometimes. By the time he taped this interview, people had
been telling stories about Jesse Owens, mythologizing him for decades.
You can even hear of the interview we're doing it.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
How did all this make you feel?
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Now, Remember, you're a you're you're a youngster from the
cotton fields of Alabama, and this is all relatively new
to you. And suddenly you're you're you're the captain of
so many things, and you're a well, a good suit
and people like you.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And when you felt like you were somebody, you know?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And that, I think is that the heart of why
Jesse Owens made up that story about Lutslog 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
(07:49):
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 (08:03):
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 (08:15):
Yeah, And I actually think what's striking looking at Jesse
Owens's life is how really 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.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
He's at the time, how old.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I think he's twenty two.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So we have this kid who is 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 (08:52):
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 and segregation. He said
in a radio interview that quote, if there is discrimination
against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics,
(09:14):
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.
(09:35):
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
(09:56):
but never sent, 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,
(10:16):
if 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 the very pre eminence of American negro athletes.
(10:36):
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.
(10:56):
White never sent that letter, 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 4 (11:13):
But you could have given up at this point. You
didn't have to go on with it. If the recognition
and the status hadn't been as important to you as
it was, you could have sat un through with this nonsense.
I'm going to finish my education and the one and
become a lawyer or something else.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
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
(11:56):
if the people are not with you, then who knows about.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Leave the gospel, become a forgotten man. So Jesse Owens
went to the Olympics with everyone watching, and he made
a miracle athleteca coming second up on it.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
Makes the others look as if they're working.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
He won gold medals in each of his events, the
one hundred and two hundred meters 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
(12:40):
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
(13:02):
athletes couldn't make money from the meets. Remember the games
were for amateurs, no money for sport. Jesse Owens, this
one 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
(13:24):
I 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
(13:46):
the 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's serious money.
In nineteen thirty six, that was a fortune. He began
to think about leaving the tour and going home. Could
(14:10):
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.
(14:31):
After the Berlin Games, a reporter asked him about rumors
that Owens was going to quit the post Olympics tour, and.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
I'd understand the Bandage that the received information that Owen
will not go to the top.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Doc Colney will not appear.
Speaker 9 (14:45):
I hope that Owen will be build engagement when one
of the Pinot boys we've had, and we hope that
there will be nothing to mar this record.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
These were crocodile tears. By the time he gave that interview,
Avery Brandage already knew that Jesse Owens had a ticket
for a steamer back to the United States leaving before
the end of that tour.
Speaker 10 (15:07):
Well, I just hope that all these up the room mud.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
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
(15:32):
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 in getting
financial security. I want to get some money while I'm
in the spotlight. He tried to make the most of it.
(15:54):
He became an entertainer, even tried 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 brundagecaw wind and said he'd banned
that sprinter from American amateur sport if he went through
with the race, so they replaced the guy with a
(16:17):
horse Cuba.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Jesse Owens, the Ebonistrick of Olympic Games, celebrates turning professional
by racing against a horse.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Jesse had a start at forty yards and one.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
Hundred and he won by injes and oh a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
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 jumped into that broad jump
pit and sunk to his knees in quicksand which is
(16:54):
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
(17:15):
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 11 (17:24):
Deal 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 (17:30):
So again this was a guy with a life. But
the interviewer is like, yeah, sure, sure, what about the Olympics?
Speaker 6 (17:36):
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 magners using
this person, and this has been broadcast certainly then many times,
(17:58):
but for the Historical Library would like to have a
record of the Olympics in your own words, the feeling.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That you had when you His job was telling the
story of the Olympics. And once she asks, he gets
right to it.
Speaker 11 (18:14):
I remember it was in July July the fourth of
nineteen thirty six when we had the final tryouts for
the Olympics at Randos Island, and that was the fourth.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
But 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 Globe Trotter's game,
he discovered its most powerful edition, Loots Long. We'll be
(18:50):
right back. I guess first, can you tell me about
that Globe Trotter's game in the Berlin Stadium in nineteen
fifty one. Sure, I'm talking to Damien L. Thomas, Curator
(19:11):
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 (19:23):
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
(19:45):
of exchanges, and they wanted to ensure that the US
and the West was able to tell their own story.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
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 (20:03):
The Harlem Globetrotters basketball Wizard's extraordinary their patents planned them
bring in play sandy capers that made them the most
popular team in the history of the sport.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Before the NBA was a big deal, before black people
played even college basketball and any great numbers, the Heartlem
Globetrotterers were kind of traveling basketball circus. True to the name,
they were all.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Over the place, Harlem Groctore.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
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.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
I'm gooi twelve, Come on, let's push again.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
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, even in slow motion. They're magical hands
fool you. I was talking to Damian Thomas though, because
underneath the goofiness there was something more sinister going on.
Speaker 12 (21:07):
The Harlem Lowe Trotters were also so deeply tied to
minstro se, which was the dominant form of entertainment in
America from the eighteen eighties through the nineteen early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The players, almost all black Americans, were often referred to
as clowns.
Speaker 8 (21:28):
Meet the most colorful comedy acting in present day. Spot
Purists say they make a mockery of the game. They clown,
they juggle, they fool.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
But where some people might see a kind of basketball circus,
the State Department saw the perfect propaganda weapon.
Speaker 12 (21:43):
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
(22:03):
they didn't think of it as as had been in
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 (22:21):
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
(22:41):
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 people in this country, and
the second, much more sinister part, look at these clowns.
(23:02):
Don't you see why we're segregating them.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
Number fifty is Goose Tato, clown with the longest arms
in the spot with his seven foot overall reachie rakes
in seven thousand a year from a team which grows
a million last season.
Speaker 12 (23:15):
You would see these situations where maybe Goose 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
(23:39):
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 quality, don't have all the
(24:01):
opportunities that are available to white Americans because they are lazy,
they're as intelligent, they are not ready to occupy a
space of full equality.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
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 (24:32):
All throughout the nineteen forties, Jesse Owens had traveled sporadically
with the Harlem Globe Trotters 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
(24:53):
up hurdles around the court and Jesse Owens would jump
over the hurdles around the core as a halftime entertainment spectacle.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
At one of the Globetrotters promoters events, he ran a
race against another Black Castle fleet on his hands and
knees even worse than that horse race in Cuba.
Speaker 12 (25:14):
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
was I supposed to do?
Speaker 10 (25:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (25:30):
What would other options available?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
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
(25:56):
on the part of his story the Americans and the
Germans most needed, the part about Lutslang, a good white
German who'd embraced a black man just the day before
that Globetrotters game. Owens had finally met Lutslong's widow and
his son Kai. It seems he told them that untrue
story about the qualifying round and how Lutzlang had helped
(26:17):
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
(26:40):
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 even
more successful than anticipated.
Speaker 12 (26:59):
And this became one of the most requested stories that
Jesse Wootaeil while the speaker started.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
After that trip to Germany, Owens began to tell increasingly
a laborate stories about Lutslog. By the nineteen sixties, In public,
the story had grown to Lutslang helping Owens to qualify.
Later came the apocryphal letters, but with each version of
that story, Owens was masterfully navigating the complexities of Cold
(27:26):
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 (27:43):
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 the long jump.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He's lost control of his own emotions.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yes, he's being instructed about how to control his emotions.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, Actually 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 lou 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 (28:24):
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 (28:38):
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 there's many people that I'm
suspicious of who play several meaningful white co writers on
this story. But I really think that Jesse Owens is
the first mover.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So he's so internalized these Yeah, well, 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 the story. That's the plausible version of the story.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
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.
(29:30):
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 had been
(30:10):
telling one version or another of the Lutslog 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 documentary
and Bud Greenspan. It builds up to that globetrotter's trip
in nineteen fifty one, the jog around the track, the
(30:31):
standing ovation, but the heart of the piece is Lutslang's son, Kai,
I have.
Speaker 14 (30:37):
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 (30:51):
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 9 (31:03):
Ki, 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, but we had the premonaries 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
(31:24):
he 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 (31:36):
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
(31:57):
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
(32:18):
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 9 (32:28):
It was at Olympic record one to sixty five and
one third inches. The first one to greet name was
looks Long, an athlete of special carriage. He put his
arms around him and we walked down the broad jump
runway directly in front of Chapley Hitler's box.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The Bud Greenspan documentary meant that Jesse Owens finally had
it all again, his fame, his financial security, and his
Olympic glory back, 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
(33:07):
President of the International Olympic Committee, 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
(33:29):
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
(33:52):
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. Owen got
anxious and told him not to do anything public, and
(34:13):
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
(34:33):
in the radio booth high above the field watching. According
to that radio co host Les Kider, 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 glovefists in a black
(34:57):
power salute. The image was broadcast across the world.
Speaker 13 (35:02):
Yesterday, they came in first and third in the two
hundred meter dash and then stood on the victory platform
with wildheads wearing black socks and gloves and a racial protest.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
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 (35:28):
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 (35:49):
That's Damian Thomas again, Smithsonian Sports Curator.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
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
(36:14):
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
(36:36):
athletes is no longer seen as progressive in and of itself.
It's seen as now the status quote thirty years after
Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens won gold and so athletes in
the nineteen sixties are now saying that the country needs
(36:59):
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 (37:22):
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. And
(37:42):
he did. 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. Jesse Owens must have felt as if
(38:06):
his whole life was on trial. I mean, just listened
to Tommy Smith.
Speaker 15 (38:11):
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 yet, and still I would have to fight myself
from the inside.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
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
(38:47):
the two are not similar, but I guess I was
the only one involved in both. And then he talked
about the night before, and 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
(39:08):
titled 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
louts Long. 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
(39:28):
like what 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.
(39:48):
At blacks climactic moment, Jesse Owens wrote, don't pass up
your Olympics and euroluts 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,
(40:12):
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
(40:34):
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 long, Tom, can you hear me?
Speaker 10 (41:02):
Okay? I can, Yes, Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
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 year before
(41:27):
the nineteen thirty six Games.
Speaker 10 (41:29):
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 6 (41:39):
And he slept in your.
Speaker 10 (41:40):
Daughter's bed, Tom's wife, Carol, Yeah, he slept and he
slept at our house. Wow, So you guys actually had
a good relationship. Yeah, we got along, really do well.
He told a lot of the same stories that I
love to hear.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
One of those stories, of course, was the Lutslong 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
(42:21):
looked when he made that final jump. He didn't say
anything about Lutsloan. Decades later, in Cedar Rapids, Tom says
he asked Jesse Owens about the jump himself.
Speaker 10 (42:35):
Oh, yes, yeah, I talked to We talked about Lutslan
and the fact that that most of that was made up,
he admitted through. Oh yeah, why did he make it up? Oh?
He well, he he He wanted he wanted to tell
(42:56):
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 (43:09):
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 then that one day
he woke up alone in a strange land and stepped
out onto a great field in a big glass bowl
(43:30):
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 telling the truth?
Speaker 9 (43:48):
We posed 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
interlude in my life when a fellow athletes showed a
special grace and a special courtesy when I needed help.
I've experienced many moments of the sun, but perhaps the
(44:09):
most rewarn was to have Let's long beside me On
the Winners Platform.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Mattaphaffrey, Kalli Emlyn,
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
(44:44):
to Karen Chakherji, Wendy Martin, J. D. Landis, and Lee
Haffrey for translation help. I'm Ben Mattaphaffrey. For more from
(45:05):
our nine part series on Hitler's Olympics, head over to
Revisionist History. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. Hey, last dark, I've listeners. Here's part two of
my look at Jesse Owens's famous long jump in the
nineteen thirty six Nazi Olympic Games. If you missed part one,
(00:38):
maybe give that a listen first. It should be in
your feed. To hear the rest of our nine part
Revision's history series on the nineteen thirty six Olympics, head
over to Revisionist Histories show page and look for the
episodes titled Hitler's Olympics. Here's the episode. On a warm
(01:00):
day in August nineteen fifty one, a helicopter appeared in
the sky above the Berlin Olympics 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 (01:18):
The loudspeaker announcer called out attention, attention.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
A black man in a white suit stepped out onto
the red cinder track.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest run on the world, it
turned mister Burland.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Jesse Owens was back in Germany to take a victory lap.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I had many thoughts as I made the symbolic run
of victory around the same Red Center track that had
run so many years before. As I passed each section,
there was a bridge to the pass.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
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
(02:13):
that day at the Globetrotter's 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
(02:34):
athletes on this field, and here we reached the important part,
he says, especially by Lutslang of Germany, the man I
managed to be in the broad jump.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The crowd came forth with a tremendous role, and the
cheers are with me today.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
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
(03:20):
between him and Luteslog at the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
It was the start of the great long jump tall Tale.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Hi'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
things overlooked and misunderstood. Throughout this series, we've been looking
at how people tried to rationalize their participation in Hitno's Olympics,
and in this episode we've reached the most enduring and
I think heartbreaking rationalization of all. Jesse Owens his story
(03:54):
about befriending a Nazi, the story that it seems Owen's
made up. But why why did Owens need to tell
a lie?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Our home was in Alabama and my parents were sharecroppers
on this particular place.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
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 midcentury modern armchairs so close their
knees were almost touching. The curtains were drawn, the room
was filled with smoke. They spoke for six hours, starting
(04:45):
at the very beginning.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
What about the people that owned the big house where
your father was a shared dropper?
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Was this a Negro individual?
Speaker 6 (04:55):
Light?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
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, him their gift child. It
can be hard to know things for certain about Jesse Owens' life.
His biographer William J. Baker once wrote of him, Jesse
(05:19):
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 the.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Triumphs Now, that's where it all began.
Speaker 7 (05:43):
Junior Heins rebala I spoke chapter with the basketball team.
Chapter in of the track team, captain of the baseball team,
I was president of the student council, captain about cards.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
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
(06:19):
about one idea.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
She get tired of this sometimes, Oh yes, you get
tired of living in a glass bowl.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Living in a glass bowl. But it's a.
Speaker 7 (06:32):
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 it would scrutinize everything that you did,
and so therefore you had to be very, very careful
of what of the things that you did, and it's.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
A tough thing.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Sometimes. By the time he taped this interview, people had
been telling stories about Jesse Owens, mythologizing him for decades.
You can even hear of the interview we're doing it.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
How did all this make you feel?
Speaker 5 (07:08):
Now, Remember, you're a you're you're a youngster from the
cotton fields of Alabama, and this is all relatively new
to you. And suddenly you're you're you're the captain of
so many things, and you're a well, a good suit
and people like you.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And when you felt like you were somebody, you know?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And that, I think is that the heart of why
Jesse Owens made up that story about Lutslog 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
(07:49):
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 (08:03):
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 (08:15):
Yeah, And I actually think what's striking looking at Jesse
Owens's life is how really 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.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
He's at the time, how old.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I think he's twenty two.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So we have this kid who is 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 (08:52):
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 and segregation. He said
in a radio interview that quote, if there is discrimination
against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics,
(09:14):
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.
(09:35):
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
(09:56):
but never sent, 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,
(10:16):
if 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 the very pre eminence of American negro athletes.
(10:36):
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.
(10:56):
White never sent that letter, 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 4 (11:13):
But you could have given up at this point. You
didn't have to go on with it. If the recognition
and the status hadn't been as important to you as
it was, you could have sat un through with this nonsense.
I'm going to finish my education and the one and
become a lawyer or something else.
Speaker 7 (11:32):
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
(11:56):
if the people are not with you, then who knows about.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Leave the gospel, become a forgotten man. So Jesse Owens
went to the Olympics with everyone watching, and he made
a miracle athleteca coming second up on it.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
Makes the others look as if they're working.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
He won gold medals in each of his events, the
one hundred and two hundred meters 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
(12:40):
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
(13:02):
athletes couldn't make money from the meets. Remember the games
were for amateurs, no money for sport. Jesse Owens, this
one 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
(13:24):
I 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
(13:46):
the 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's serious money.
In nineteen thirty six, that was a fortune. He began
to think about leaving the tour and going home. Could
(14:10):
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.
(14:31):
After the Berlin Games, a reporter asked him about rumors
that Owens was going to quit the post Olympics tour, and.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
I'd understand the Bandage that the received information that Owen
will not go to the top.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Doc Colney will not appear.
Speaker 9 (14:45):
I hope that Owen will be build engagement when one
of the Pinot boys we've had, and we hope that
there will be nothing to mar this record.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
These were crocodile tears. By the time he gave that interview,
Avery Brandage already knew that Jesse Owens had a ticket
for a steamer back to the United States leaving before
the end of that tour.
Speaker 10 (15:07):
Well, I just hope that all these up the room mud.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
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
(15:32):
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 in getting
financial security. I want to get some money while I'm
in the spotlight. He tried to make the most of it.
(15:54):
He became an entertainer, even tried 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 brundagecaw wind and said he'd banned
that sprinter from American amateur sport if he went through
with the race, so they replaced the guy with a
(16:17):
horse Cuba.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Jesse Owens, the Ebonistrick of Olympic Games, celebrates turning professional
by racing against a horse.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Jesse had a start at forty yards and one.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
Hundred and he won by injes and oh a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
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 jumped into that broad jump
pit and sunk to his knees in quicksand which is
(16:54):
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
(17:15):
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 11 (17:24):
Deal 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 (17:30):
So again this was a guy with a life. But
the interviewer is like, yeah, sure, sure, what about the Olympics?
Speaker 6 (17:36):
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 magners using
this person, and this has been broadcast certainly then many times,
(17:58):
but for the Historical Library would like to have a
record of the Olympics in your own words, the feeling.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
That you had when you His job was telling the
story of the Olympics. And once she asks, he gets
right to it.
Speaker 11 (18:14):
I remember it was in July July the fourth of
nineteen thirty six when we had the final tryouts for
the Olympics at Randos Island, and that was the fourth.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
But 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 Globe Trotter's game,
he discovered its most powerful edition, Loots Long. We'll be
(18:50):
right back. I guess first, can you tell me about
that Globe Trotter's game in the Berlin Stadium in nineteen
fifty one. Sure, I'm talking to Damien L. Thomas, Curator
(19:11):
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 (19:23):
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
(19:45):
of exchanges, and they wanted to ensure that the US
and the West was able to tell their own story.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
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 (20:03):
The Harlem Globetrotters basketball Wizard's extraordinary their patents planned them
bring in play sandy capers that made them the most
popular team in the history of the sport.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Before the NBA was a big deal, before black people
played even college basketball and any great numbers, the Heartlem
Globetrotterers were kind of traveling basketball circus. True to the name,
they were all.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Over the place, Harlem Groctore.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
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.
Speaker 9 (20:40):
I'm gooi twelve, Come on, let's push again.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
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, even in slow motion. They're magical hands
fool you. I was talking to Damian Thomas though, because
underneath the goofiness there was something more sinister going on.
Speaker 12 (21:07):
The Harlem Lowe Trotters were also so deeply tied to
minstro se, which was the dominant form of entertainment in
America from the eighteen eighties through the nineteen early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
The players, almost all black Americans, were often referred to
as clowns.
Speaker 8 (21:28):
Meet the most colorful comedy acting in present day. Spot
Purists say they make a mockery of the game. They clown,
they juggle, they fool.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
But where some people might see a kind of basketball circus,
the State Department saw the perfect propaganda weapon.
Speaker 12 (21:43):
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
(22:03):
they didn't think of it as as had been in
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 (22:21):
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
(22:41):
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 people in this country, and
the second, much more sinister part, look at these clowns.
(23:02):
Don't you see why we're segregating them.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
Number fifty is Goose Tato, clown with the longest arms
in the spot with his seven foot overall reachie rakes
in seven thousand a year from a team which grows
a million last season.
Speaker 12 (23:15):
You would see these situations where maybe Goose 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
(23:39):
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 quality, don't have all the
(24:01):
opportunities that are available to white Americans because they are lazy,
they're as intelligent, they are not ready to occupy a
space of full equality.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
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 (24:32):
All throughout the nineteen forties, Jesse Owens had traveled sporadically
with the Harlem Globe Trotters 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
(24:53):
up hurdles around the court and Jesse Owens would jump
over the hurdles around the core as a halftime entertainment spectacle.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
At one of the Globetrotters promoters events, he ran a
race against another Black Castle fleet on his hands and
knees even worse than that horse race in Cuba.
Speaker 12 (25:14):
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
was I supposed to do?
Speaker 10 (25:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 12 (25:30):
What would other options available?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
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
(25:56):
on the part of his story the Americans and the
Germans most needed, the part about Lutslang, a good white
German who'd embraced a black man just the day before
that Globetrotters game. Owens had finally met Lutslong's widow and
his son Kai. It seems he told them that untrue
story about the qualifying round and how Lutzlang had helped
(26:17):
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
(26:40):
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 even
more successful than anticipated.
Speaker 12 (26:59):
And this became one of the most requested stories that
Jesse Wootaeil while the speaker started.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
After that trip to Germany, Owens began to tell increasingly
a laborate stories about Lutslog. By the nineteen sixties, In public,
the story had grown to Lutslang helping Owens to qualify.
Later came the apocryphal letters, but with each version of
that story, Owens was masterfully navigating the complexities of Cold
(27:26):
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 (27:43):
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 the long jump.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
He's lost control of his own emotions.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yes, he's being instructed about how to control his emotions.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, Actually 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 lou 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 (28:24):
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 (28:38):
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 there's many people that I'm
suspicious of who play several meaningful white co writers on
this story. But I really think that Jesse Owens is
the first mover.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So he's so internalized these Yeah, well, 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 the story. That's the plausible version of the story.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
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.
(29:30):
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 had been
(30:10):
telling one version or another of the Lutslog 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 documentary
and Bud Greenspan. It builds up to that globetrotter's trip
in nineteen fifty one, the jog around the track, the
(30:31):
standing ovation, but the heart of the piece is Lutslang's son, Kai,
I have.
Speaker 14 (30:37):
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 (30:51):
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 9 (31:03):
Ki, 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, but we had the premonaries 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
(31:24):
he 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 (31:36):
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
(31:57):
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
(32:18):
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 9 (32:28):
It was at Olympic record one to sixty five and
one third inches. The first one to greet name was
looks Long, an athlete of special carriage. He put his
arms around him and we walked down the broad jump
runway directly in front of Chapley Hitler's box.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The Bud Greenspan documentary meant that Jesse Owens finally had
it all again, his fame, his financial security, and his
Olympic glory back, 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
(33:07):
President of the International Olympic Committee, 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
(33:29):
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
(33:52):
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. Owen got
anxious and told him not to do anything public, and
(34:13):
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
(34:33):
in the radio booth high above the field watching. According
to that radio co host Les Kider, 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 glovefists in a black
(34:57):
power salute. The image was broadcast across the world.
Speaker 13 (35:02):
Yesterday, they came in first and third in the two
hundred meter dash and then stood on the victory platform
with wildheads wearing black socks and gloves and a racial protest.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
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 (35:28):
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 (35:49):
That's Damian Thomas again, Smithsonian Sports Curator.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
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
(36:14):
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
(36:36):
athletes is no longer seen as progressive in and of itself.
It's seen as now the status quote thirty years after
Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens won gold and so athletes in
the nineteen sixties are now saying that the country needs
(36:59):
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 (37:22):
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. And
(37:42):
he did. 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. Jesse Owens must have felt as if
(38:06):
his whole life was on trial. I mean, just listened
to Tommy Smith.
Speaker 15 (38:11):
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 yet, and still I would have to fight myself
from the inside.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
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
(38:47):
the two are not similar, but I guess I was
the only one involved in both. And then he talked
about the night before, and 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
(39:08):
titled 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
louts Long. 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
(39:28):
like what 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.
(39:48):
At blacks climactic moment, Jesse Owens wrote, don't pass up
your Olympics and euroluts 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,
(40:12):
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
(40:34):
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 long, Tom, can you hear me?
Speaker 10 (41:02):
Okay? I can, Yes, Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
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 year before
(41:27):
the nineteen thirty six Games.
Speaker 10 (41:29):
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 6 (41:39):
And he slept in your.
Speaker 10 (41:40):
Daughter's bed, Tom's wife, Carol, Yeah, he slept and he
slept at our house. Wow, So you guys actually had
a good relationship. Yeah, we got along, really do well.
He told a lot of the same stories that I
love to hear.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
One of those stories, of course, was the Lutslong 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
(42:21):
looked when he made that final jump. He didn't say
anything about Lutsloan. Decades later, in Cedar Rapids, Tom says
he asked Jesse Owens about the jump himself.
Speaker 10 (42:35):
Oh, yes, yeah, I talked to We talked about Lutslan
and the fact that that most of that was made up,
he admitted through. Oh yeah, why did he make it up? Oh?
He well, he he He wanted he wanted to tell
(42:56):
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 (43:09):
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 then that one day
he woke up alone in a strange land and stepped
out onto a great field in a big glass bowl
(43:30):
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 telling the truth?
Speaker 9 (43:48):
We posed 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
interlude in my life when a fellow athletes showed a
special grace and a special courtesy when I needed help.
I've experienced many moments of the sun, but perhaps the
(44:09):
most rewarn was to have Let's long beside me On
the Winners Platform.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Mattaphaffrey, Kalli Emlyn,
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
(44:44):
to Karen Chakherji, Wendy Martin, J. D. Landis, and Lee
Haffrey for translation help. I'm Ben Mattaphaffrey. For more from
(45:05):
our nine part series on Hitler's Olympics, head over to
Revisionist History. Thanks for listening.
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