Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, last dark, I've listeners. Here's part two of
Speaker 1: my look at Jesse Owens's famous long jump in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six Nazi Olympic Games. If you missed part one,
Speaker 1: maybe give that a listen first. It should be in
Speaker 1: your feed. To hear the rest of our nine part
Speaker 1: Revision's history series on the nineteen thirty six Olympics, head
Speaker 1: over to Revisionist Histories show page and look for the
Speaker 1: episodes titled Hitler's Olympics. Here's the episode. On a warm
Speaker 1: day in August nineteen fifty one, a helicopter appeared in
Speaker 1: the sky above the Berlin Olympics stadium. Seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: people had gathered there to watch a Harlem globetrotter's basketball game.
Speaker 1: The crowd looked up. The chopper circled three times and
Speaker 1: 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, it
Speaker 2: turned 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 Center 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 Globetrotter's 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 Lutslang 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 said,
Speaker 1: lasted a full fifteen minutes. And I think maybe it
Speaker 1: was then standing there watching how hungry that crowd was
Speaker 1: for even this mention of a good German that he
Speaker 1: decided to tell an even bigger story about what happened
Speaker 1: 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: Hi'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
Speaker 3: things overlooked and misunderstood. Throughout this series, we've been looking
Speaker 3: at how people tried to rationalize their participation in Hitno'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 2: Our home was in Alabama and my parents were sharecroppers
Speaker 2: 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 midcentury modern armchairs so close their
Speaker 1: knees were almost touching. The curtains were drawn, the room
Speaker 1: was filled with smoke. They spoke for six hours, starting
Speaker 1: at the very beginning.
Speaker 4: What about the people that owned the big house where
Speaker 4: your father was a shared dropper?
Speaker 5: Was this a Negro individual?
Speaker 6: Light?
Speaker 1: The first tape is mostly about Owens's early life, growing
Speaker 1: up one of the youngest of ten brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: in Alabama. He was a sickly kid with a sunny disposition.
Speaker 1: His parents had him late, him their gift child. It
Speaker 1: can be hard to know things for certain about Jesse Owens' life.
Speaker 1: His biographer William J. Baker once wrote of him, Jesse
Speaker 1: Owens was always strong on imagination, weak on literal truth.
Speaker 1: But whatever the facts, I believe his tone of voice
Speaker 1: in this tape, its warmth and its weariness. You hear
Speaker 1: about the setbacks, the time he saw his mother crying
Speaker 1: while folding the laundry because she couldn't afford clothes for him,
Speaker 1: And then you hear about the.
Speaker 4: Triumphs Now, that's where it all began.
Speaker 7: Junior Heins rebala I spoke chapter with the basketball team.
Speaker 7: Chapter in of the track team, captain of the baseball team,
Speaker 7: 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.
Speaker 1: Living in a glass bowl. But it's a.
Speaker 7: It's a wonderful thing to help people to recognize you,
Speaker 7: people to admire you for your ability, but sometimes people
Speaker 7: forget your human being. People were looking, everybody's eyes were
Speaker 7: upon you, and it would scrutinize everything that you did,
Speaker 7: and so therefore you had to be very, very careful
Speaker 7: of what of the things that you did, and it's.
Speaker 4: A tough thing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes. 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 of the interview we're doing it.
Speaker 4: How did all this make you feel?
Speaker 5: Now, Remember, you're a you're you're a youngster from the
Speaker 5: cotton fields of Alabama, and this is all relatively new
Speaker 5: to you. And suddenly you're you're you're the captain of
Speaker 5: so many things, and you're a well, a good suit
Speaker 5: and people like you.
Speaker 4: And when you felt like you were somebody, you know?
Speaker 1: And that, I think is that the heart of why
Speaker 1: Jesse Owens made up that story about Lutslog 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 really 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.
Speaker 3: He's at the time, how old.
Speaker 1: I think he's twenty two.
Speaker 3: So we have this kid who is being asked to
Speaker 3: parse one of the most complicated kind of moral and
Speaker 3: political questions of the time, and he's being torn in
Speaker 3: 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 and 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 never sent, which now sits in the archives. I
Speaker 1: fully realize how great a sacrifice it will be for
Speaker 1: you to give up the trip to Europe and to
Speaker 1: forego the acclaim which your athletic prowess will unquestionably bring you.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it is my firm conviction that
Speaker 1: the issue of participation in the nineteen thirty six Olympics,
Speaker 1: if held in Germany under the present regime, transcends all
Speaker 1: other issues. Participation by American athletes, and especially by those
Speaker 1: of our own race, which has suffered more than any
Speaker 1: other from American race hatred, would I firmly believe, do
Speaker 1: irreparable harm the very pre eminence of American negro athletes.
Speaker 1: Gives them an unparalleled opportunity to strike a blow at
Speaker 1: racial bigotry and to make other minority groups conscious of
Speaker 1: the sameness of their problem with ours. If the Hitlers
Speaker 1: and Mussolini's of the world are successful, it is inevitable
Speaker 1: that dictatorships based upon prejudice will spread throughout the world.
Speaker 1: White never sent that letter, but it captured how a
Speaker 1: lot of people understood the stakes of the choice that
Speaker 1: Jesse Owens had to make deny his Olympic dreams for
Speaker 1: the good of Black America or go to the games
Speaker 1: at their expense.
Speaker 4: But you could have given up at this point. You
Speaker 4: didn't have to go on with it. If the recognition
Speaker 4: and the status hadn't been as important to you as
Speaker 4: it was, you could have sat un through with this nonsense.
Speaker 4: I'm going to finish my education and the one and
Speaker 4: become a lawyer or something else.
Speaker 7: Well, this you could have done. But yet and still
Speaker 7: you feel that here you are, where people have made
Speaker 7: it possible for you to start. Why at this point
Speaker 7: become See you're not any greater, then the people will
Speaker 7: make you. You can do a number of things. But
Speaker 7: if the people are not with you, then who knows about.
Speaker 1: Leave the gospel, become a forgotten man. So Jesse Owens
Speaker 1: went to the Olympics with everyone watching, and he made
Speaker 1: a miracle athleteca coming second up on it.
Speaker 8: Makes the others 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 meters 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, this
Speaker 1: one said. All we athletes get out of this Olympic
Speaker 1: business is a view out of a train or airplane window.
Speaker 1: It gets tiresome, it really does, staring out those windows.
Speaker 1: I think he had started to contemplate his future, and
Speaker 1: I don't think he liked what he saw. They were
Speaker 1: expected to keep training, compete for a few more years
Speaker 1: until their bodies started to fall apart. Maybe there'd be
Speaker 1: another Olympic Games. But then what Owens didn't come from
Speaker 1: a rich family. He'd barely had the time to get
Speaker 1: an education with all his training. What kind of job
Speaker 1: could he do once his athletic career was over. After
Speaker 1: the Berlin Games, he was really famous. Offers had started
Speaker 1: to come in. Twenty five grand for two weeks with
Speaker 1: an orchestra in California, forty grand for ten weeks of
Speaker 1: shows with the entertainer Eddie Canter. Now that's serious money.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty six, that was a fortune. He began
Speaker 1: to think about leaving the tour and going home. 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, and.
Speaker 4: I'd understand the Bandage that the received information that Owen
Speaker 4: will not go to the top.
Speaker 1: Doc Colney will not appear.
Speaker 9: I hope that Owen will be build engagement when one
Speaker 9: of the Pinot boys we've had, and we hope that
Speaker 9: there will be nothing to mar this record.
Speaker 1: These were crocodile tears. By the time he gave that interview,
Speaker 1: Avery Brandage already knew that Jesse Owens had a ticket
Speaker 1: for a steamer back to the United States leaving before
Speaker 1: the end of that tour.
Speaker 10: Well, I just hope that all these up the room mud.
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 in 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 tried 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 brundagecaw wind and said he'd banned
Speaker 1: that sprinter from American amateur sport if he went through
Speaker 1: with the race, so they replaced the guy with a
Speaker 1: horse Cuba.
Speaker 3: Jesse Owens, the Ebonistrick of Olympic Games, celebrates turning professional
Speaker 3: by racing against a horse.
Speaker 1: Jesse had a start at forty yards and one.
Speaker 7: Hundred and he won by injes and oh 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 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 11: Deal for me and I got to sing over to
Speaker 11: the bank and I made a mistake by not having
Speaker 11: 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 6: Though, what else is new? Jesse, Let's go way back
Speaker 6: now to nineteen thirty six and reminisce about the Olympics.
Speaker 6: I'm sure that you have told this story how many
Speaker 6: hundreds of times to how many papers and magners using
Speaker 6: this person, and this has been broadcast certainly then many times,
Speaker 6: but for the Historical Library would like to have a
Speaker 6: record of the Olympics in your own words, the feeling.
Speaker 1: That you had when you His job was telling the
Speaker 1: story of the Olympics. And once she asks, he gets
Speaker 1: right to it.
Speaker 11: I remember it was in July July the fourth of
Speaker 11: nineteen thirty six when we had the final tryouts for
Speaker 11: the Olympics at Randos Island, and that was the fourth.
Speaker 1: But the thing about telling one story for your entire
Speaker 1: life is that the meaning of that story has to
Speaker 1: keep changing with the times, to stay marketable, to keep
Speaker 1: enough eyes on that glass bowl. And in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: at that halftime speech during the Harlem Globe Trotter's game,
Speaker 1: he discovered its most powerful edition, Loots Long. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. I guess first, can you tell me about
Speaker 1: that Globe Trotter's game in the Berlin Stadium in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. Sure, I'm talking to Damien L. Thomas, Curator
Speaker 1: of Sports at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
Speaker 1: History and Culture. He's the author of the book Globe Trotting,
Speaker 1: African American 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 their patents planned them
Speaker 13: bring in play sandy capers that made them the most
Speaker 13: popular team in the history 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 Heartlem
Speaker 1: Globetrotterers were kind of traveling basketball circus. True to the name,
Speaker 1: they were all.
Speaker 6: Over the place, Harlem Groctore.
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.
Speaker 9: I'm gooi twelve, Come on, let's push again.
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, even in slow motion. They're magical hands
Speaker 1: fool you. I was talking to Damian Thomas though, because
Speaker 1: underneath the goofiness there was something more sinister going on.
Speaker 12: The Harlem Lowe Trotters were also so deeply tied to
Speaker 12: minstro 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 8: Meet the most colorful comedy acting in present day. Spot
Speaker 8: Purists say they make a mockery of the game. They clown,
Speaker 8: 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
Speaker 12: resisting sometimes Coca cola, sometimes blue jeans, rock and roll,
Speaker 12: and American movies were shunt people often welcomed basketball because
Speaker 12: they didn't think of it as as had been in
Speaker 12: a propagandistic function. But it did, and it's one of
Speaker 12: the things that made it very important is that people
Speaker 12: didn't see it 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 people 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 8: Number fifty is Goose Tato, clown with the longest arms
Speaker 8: in the spot with his seven foot overall reachie rakes
Speaker 8: in seven thousand a year from a team which grows
Speaker 8: a million last season.
Speaker 12: You would see these situations where maybe Goose 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 quality, don't have all the
Speaker 12: opportunities that are available to white Americans because they are lazy,
Speaker 12: they're as intelligent, they are not ready to occupy a
Speaker 12: 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 Globe Trotters and he would serve a
Speaker 12: variety of functions. He would serve as the press secretary,
Speaker 12: the announcer during the game, and also as halftime entertainment.
Speaker 12: And typically when he performed during halftime, they would set
Speaker 12: up hurdles around the court and Jesse Owens would jump
Speaker 12: over the hurdles around the core as a halftime entertainment spectacle.
Speaker 1: At one of the Globetrotters promoters events, he ran a
Speaker 1: race against another Black Castle fleet on his hands and
Speaker 1: knees 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 12: was I supposed to do?
Speaker 10: 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 Lutslang, a good white
Speaker 1: German who'd embraced a black man just the day before
Speaker 1: that Globetrotters game. Owens had finally met Lutslong'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 even
Speaker 1: more successful than anticipated.
Speaker 12: And this became one of the most requested stories that
Speaker 12: Jesse Wootaeil while the speaker started.
Speaker 1: After that trip to Germany, Owens began to tell increasingly
Speaker 1: a laborate stories about Lutslog. By the nineteen sixties, In public,
Speaker 1: the story had grown to Lutslang 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 the 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 he's not being told how to control his emotions.
Speaker 1: He's being told how to handle the fact that he
Speaker 1: will continue to be unable to control his emotions. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's not like lou lout Song comes up
Speaker 1: and is like, here's a transcendental meditation that I think
Speaker 1: 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 there's many people that I'm
Speaker 1: suspicious of who play several meaningful white co writers on
Speaker 1: this story. But I really think that Jesse Owens is
Speaker 1: the first mover.
Speaker 3: So he's so internalized these Yeah, well, he knows enough,
Speaker 3: he knows enough about what it means to be a
Speaker 3: black man in nineteen thirty six that he knows that
Speaker 3: that's the 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 had been
Speaker 1: telling one version or another of the Lutslog story for
Speaker 1: nearly twenty years when it finally went mainstream in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. That was the year Jesse Owens Returns to
Speaker 1: Berlin came out. The film by the legendary Olympic documentary
Speaker 1: and 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 son, Kai,
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 14: Very often seen pictures from you and the photographs of
Speaker 14: my father. Please tell me about this competition here in
Speaker 14: the stadium, because I've my father only seen for three times.
Speaker 14: I was born nineteen forty one and my father has
Speaker 14: 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 9: Ki, you probably don't know it, but your father was
Speaker 9: greatly responsible for my winning the broad jump in nineteen
Speaker 9: thirty six. It all happened on the other side of
Speaker 9: the field here, but we had the premonaries for the
Speaker 9: running broad jump, and on the first two jumps, I
Speaker 9: followed on one and didn't go far enough on the
Speaker 9: other and your father came to my assistance and he
Speaker 9: helped me measure a footback of the takeoff board, and
Speaker 9: he helped the tape until I measured a foot back
Speaker 9: as far as my takeoff was concerned. And then I
Speaker 9: came down and I hit between these two marks, and
Speaker 9: therefore I qualified, and that led to the victory in
Speaker 9: the 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 9: It was at Olympic record one to sixty five and
Speaker 9: one third inches. The first one to greet name was
Speaker 9: looks Long, an athlete of special carriage. He put his
Speaker 9: arms around him and we walked down the broad jump
Speaker 9: runway directly in front of Chapley Hitler's 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 back, and all that had come just in
Speaker 1: time for another Olympic Games, Mexico City, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: By that point, Avery Brendage had become the first American
Speaker 1: President of the International Olympic Committee, 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. Owen 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 Kider, 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 glovefists 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 wildheads wearing black socks and gloves and a 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 seen as now the status quote 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. And
Speaker 1: he did. He was received the way you might expect.
Speaker 1: They would not be apologizing. Tommy Smith and John Carlos
Speaker 1: were kicked out of the Olympic village and banned from
Speaker 1: future games. They had faced a conundrum a lot like
Speaker 1: Jesse Owens had thirty two years earlier, but they made
Speaker 1: the opposite choice. Jesse Owens must have felt as if
Speaker 1: his whole life was on trial. I mean, just listened
Speaker 1: to Tommy Smith.
Speaker 15: Had I been a good boy in Mexico, I could
Speaker 15: have probably been a monetarily richer, and I would probably
Speaker 15: have been a bigger figure that I am right now.
Speaker 15: Well yet, and still I would have to fight myself
Speaker 15: from 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, and he began to weep. It
Speaker 1: all hit Owens extremely hard, so hard that he wrote
Speaker 1: a book length response to the Black Power movement. He
Speaker 1: titled it Black think one of a series of books
Speaker 1: he wrote at the end of his life with a
Speaker 1: white co author, and here we find ourselves again at
Speaker 1: louts Long. That book came out just two years after
Speaker 1: the Mexico City Games, but it's almost written like he's
Speaker 1: still there. There's a kind of urgency to it. It's
Speaker 1: like what he wishes he'd said in that conversation with
Speaker 1: John Carlos and Tommy Smith, And what did he wish
Speaker 1: he'd told them a story about a good German loots Long,
Speaker 1: about how his friendship across racial lines was even bigger
Speaker 1: and even more improbable than anyone ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1: At blacks climactic moment, Jesse Owens wrote, don't pass up
Speaker 1: your Olympics and euroluts 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 long, Tom, can you hear me?
Speaker 10: Okay? I can, Yes, Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 1: I had one last question, how did Jesse Owens feel
Speaker 1: about making this story up? Did he ever talk about
Speaker 1: it with anyone? So I called Tom Ecker, once a
Speaker 1: great track and field coach. He trained Sweden for the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight Games. He's something of an Olympic historian.
Speaker 1: He's eighty nine now. He was born the year before
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty six Games.
Speaker 10: I met with Jesse Owens a few times, and then
Speaker 10: I brought into Cedar Rapids where I live, and he
Speaker 10: came here and spoke to a group.
Speaker 6: And he slept in your.
Speaker 10: Daughter's bed, Tom's wife, Carol, Yeah, he slept and he
Speaker 10: slept at our house. Wow, So you guys actually had
Speaker 10: a good relationship. Yeah, we got along, really do well.
Speaker 10: He told a lot of the same stories that I
Speaker 10: love to hear.
Speaker 1: One of those stories, of course, was the Lutslong 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 Lutsloan. Decades later, in Cedar Rapids, Tom says
Speaker 1: he asked Jesse Owens about the jump himself.
Speaker 10: Oh, yes, yeah, I talked to We talked about Lutslan
Speaker 10: and the fact that that most of that was made up,
Speaker 10: he admitted through. Oh yeah, why did he make it up? Oh?
Speaker 10: He well, he he He wanted he wanted to tell
Speaker 10: good stories. He told me that that he wanted to
Speaker 10: just be able to tell good stories, and that that
Speaker 10: was a good story. We all 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 then that one day
Speaker 1: he woke up alone in a strange land and stepped
Speaker 1: out onto a great field in a big glass bowl
Speaker 1: to fight for a country that didn't want him, against
Speaker 1: the people who were most supposed to hate him, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden one of them reached out
Speaker 1: and touched him. Under the circumstances, who's telling the truth?
Speaker 9: We posed as his father and I did on the
Speaker 9: grass of the stadium, and though it may seem a
Speaker 9: little childish, doing it brought back memories of a warm
Speaker 9: interlude in my life when a fellow athletes showed a
Speaker 9: special grace and a special courtesy when I needed help.
Speaker 9: I've experienced many moments of the sun, but perhaps the
Speaker 9: most rewarn was to have Let's long beside me On
Speaker 9: the Winners Platform.
Speaker 1: Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Mattaphaffrey, Kalli Emlyn,
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 Chakherji, Wendy Martin, J. D. Landis, and Lee
Speaker 1: Haffrey for translation help. I'm Ben Mattaphaffrey. For more from
Speaker 1: our nine part series on Hitler's Olympics, head over to
Speaker 1: Revisionist History. Thanks for listening.