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Color finesse le vs pi1/4/2023 ![]() ![]() The bigoted comments, along with the fact that the world’s grandest sporting event was allowed to be hosted by the Nazis in the first place, illustrate an uncomfortable truth for advocates of sports. Metcalfe finished just one-tenth of a second behind him to win the silver medal. “This is a view that conveniently disregards the fact that one of these colored athletes is a Phi Beta Kappa scholarship man, one is in medical school, one a law student and the others are meeting the requirements of American college life.”Īmericans Jesse Owens (left) and Ralph Metcalfe (right) during the 400-meter relay at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. is to theorize that these represent a race of American helots, more nearly akin to the panther and the jack rabbit than to their Aryan competitors,” he wrote. “The best the Nazis have been able to do with the racial problem created by Jesse Owens & Co. Louis Lyons, a columnist from the Boston Globe, was one of the few white American journalists to challenge the slurs spewed by observers from both sides of the Atlantic, responding with actual facts. “It was not that long ago,” Cromwell said of the black athlete, “that his ability to spring and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle.” Mack Robinson won the silver in the 200, four-tenths of a second behind Jesse Owens, at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.Īmerican assistant track coach Dean Cromwell claimed black athletes had an advantage over more “refined” white competitors. “I myself would never shake hands with one of them.” “The Americans ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting their medals be won by Negroes,” he replied in anger. ![]() When Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth, suggested to Adolf Hitler that posing for a photo with the champion Owens would be good publicity, Hitler was repulsed by the idea. When black Americans emerged as the stars of the Berlin Olympics’ first days of track competition, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that “white humanity should be ashamed of itself.” He meant not only for losing, but for even allowing black people to compete. If black people were victorious, that “proved” they had unfair advantages as a subhuman race. If black people performed poorly, that “proved” white people were superior. Stereotypes and hate were so deeply ingrained that any fact or fiction could be used to confirm them. ![]() In their minds, there was no way for black people to win the truth didn’t matter. Second, the performance of these black athletes didn’t change those who believed in white supremacy, in either Germany or the United States. Perpetuating the idea that Owens alone shined not only robs others of their due, but leaves the impression that African American greatness at the ’36 Games was an exception rather than the rule. The entire African American contingent, not just Owens, took the world by storm. team earned 14 medals in Berlin, eight of them gold, one-fourth of the U.S. In all, the 18 African American members of the U.S. Metcalfe joined Owens on the 4×100 relay team. In the 200, black teammate Mack Robinson won the silver, four-tenths of a second behind Owens. In the 100, black teammate Ralph Metcalfe finished just one-tenth of a second behind him to win the silver medal. First, Owens wasn’t the only African American star in Berlin, even in his own events. A black man’s incredible success in a crucible of hate served as the ultimate rejection of the idea of white supremacy.īut this conventional wisdom is an oversimplification on two levels. In the decades to come, Jesse Owens’s record-setting performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the gold medals he won in the 100-meter sprint, 200-meter sprint, long jump, and 4×100 relay would be celebrated as a powerful rebuke of Adolf Hitler. ![]()
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