In 2026, we can expect a great deal of fanfare and perhaps even a revival of interest in the life and times of one of the greatest athletes this country has ever produced: Jesse Owens.
In 1936, Owens traveled to Berlin, Germany, for a Summer Olympics that would be warped by infamy. Used as a way to promote Adolf Hitler’s ascendent Nazi Party, the 1936 Olympics featured nationalistic pageantry the likes of which had never been seen before in the global sporting event.
The running of the torch—the first time it was featured at the Olympic Games—as well as the parade of nations, and the over-the-top opening ceremonies were all products of the office of Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi brain trust even organized the path of the running of the torch through nations and territories they had designs to conquer. This was all designed by the Nazi Party to be the Olympics that would, once and for all, “prove” Aryan greatness to the world.
Internationally lauded Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was ready with plenty of camera crews to make a documentary that aimed to rejoice in the so-called beauty and strength of the Aryan athlete—the widely studied film Olympia.
It was into this rancid stew of racial supremacy that Owens, a Black track and field athlete, bravely entered and resolutely conquered—winning an unprecedented four gold medals. Every time he raced past his competitors, it was a thumb in the eye of Hitler and all of his Teutonic twaddle. This was only part of the incredible drama that surrounded the 1936 Games. (I strongly recommend Jeremy Schaap’s book Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics.)
But if we truly want to understand the history of Owens and those games, maybe in 2025 we should look at the ninetieth anniversary of Owens in the year 1935. That year, a fierce argument raged, led by Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, saying that the United States should boycott the 1936 Olympics. Even though it would be years before the full exterminationist aims of Hitler’s Germany would be known, more than enough organized, political violence had taken place to justify the call for a boycott. White and the NAACP were painfully prescient and on the right side of history.
On the wrong side was the head of the American Olympic Association (later renamed the United States Olympic Committee), Avery Brundage. The man who would come to rule the Olympic Games for decades as chief of the International Olympic Committee was a Hitler sympathizer, and even a supporter. Brundage took a much ballyhooed trip to Nazi Germany in order to return with an eyewitness report, which, shockingly, was glowing with admiration.
Jesse Owens was now in the middle of a political maelstrom. White even wrote Owens a letter asking the twenty-two-year-old not to run. “I fully realize how great a sacrifice it will be for you to give up the trip to Europe and to forgo the acclaim, which your athletic prowess will unquestionably bring you. I realize equally well how hypocritical it is for certain Americans to point the finger of scorn at any other country for racial or any other kind of bigotry.”
White’s call for a boycott was also ringing through the Black press as warnings were issued from their pages about what hosting the games could mean for the promotion of the aims of Hitler’s Germany. As for Owens, he stepped forward in 1935 and said publicly, “If there is discrimination against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics.”
His words went unheeded. Brundage’s Berlin trip had a far greater influence, and by a narrow margin, the Amateur Athletic Union voted to attend the 1936 Games. The stage was then set for Owens to take those Nazi Olympics, make them his own, and become a legend. But this year, let’s remember that in 1935, Owens would have given it all up if it meant racism would be challenged. It’s an example for athletes today about the price some individuals are willing to pay in order for the collective to rise.
