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