History Channel Looks at the Triumph and Tragedy of Olympic Great Jesse Owens

History Channel

On May 25, 1935, Ohio State University track and field athlete Jesse Owens needed less than an hour to set three world records and tie a fourth, making him among the top competitors expected to compete at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

Owens, being a Black American, would be traveling into the hornet’s nest of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and its racist ideology of Aryan supremacy. Hitler assumed German athletes would prevail, but the Führer watched in dismay as Owens won a record-breaking four gold medals.

Owens returned to America as an Olympic champion, but racial discrimination in his own country limited his ability to make a living. He worked menial jobs — even raced against horses for money — and had filed for bankruptcy and was prosecuted for tax evasion in 1966.

History’s Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics (Wednesday, June 19, at 8pm ET/PT), a documentary from LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company, is narrated by Don Cheadle and takes an in-depth look at Owens’ legacy as an athlete, and as a simultaneously triumphant and tragic American hero.