1 Chapter 0 Who Was Jesse Owens

Who Was Jesse Owens?

Who Was Jesse Owens? In rural Alabama, Jesse Owens sprinted across farmland and ran along dirt roads. He ran to the fields where he picked one hundred pounds of cotton a day. He ran to the orchards where he and his large family picked fruit from the trees. He ran with friends, playing games when they were not working alongside their parents.

Jesse ran because it made him feel free. "I always loved running," he later said. "It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet." "Jesse would run and play just like everyone else," his cousin Mattie Taylor said

of those days of playing in Alabama. "But you could never catch him." No one ever did catch Jesse Owens. The young man who began running barefoot in those Alabama fields became one of the greatest sprinters in history. At the 1936 Olympic Games, he won four gold medals and became an international hero. Jesse Owens started running when he was just a young boy, and he never stopped.