Olympic flashback

During the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens won four gold medals in Berlin: He came in first in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump and was part of the 4×100-meter relay team that also took gold. Owens’ success was a poke in the eye of Adolf Hitler, who had hoped the 1936 games would serve as a showcase his Aryan propaganda.

The column below, published Aug. 15, 1936, my father chided Hitler, whom he described as a “one-time Austrian house painter” and a “pervert,” who snubbed Owens. He cited news reports that while Hitler had “received and congratulated in his private quarters the German winners, he was conspicuously absent from his box when the occasion arose that he should extend similar felicitations to the American Negro winners.”

It remains unclear whether the reports of Hitler’s snub are true. The LA Times recently included the story as one of the “Top Ten Olympic Controversies.”

“Perhaps the most enduring myth of the Olympic Games is that Adolf Hitler refused to extend a congratulatory handshake to Jesse Owens, a claim for which Olympic historians have found no supporting evidence. It is clear that Hitler was neither pleased nor impressed by the four gold medals Owens won, even as the German crowd cheered him loudly and mobbed him for pictures and autographs. As Owens pierced the Nazi myth of Aryan superiority, his home country acted with regrettable caution, replacing two Jewish sprinters on the U.S. team. Owens got a hero’s welcome upon returning home, yet as a black man he had to ride the freight elevator to a New York hotel reception in his honor.”

My father’s Aug. 15 column was published the week my grandmother, Malvina Alkins, died. Guest columnists appear in the “Dottings” space in the two issues that followed.

“It is not news to those of you that read Mr. Ray’s columns that he has been an inspiration for many men who later found success in the field of journalism,” wrote Romeo Dougherty, whose bio describes him as a “well-known sports and theatrical writer.”

“To be considered worthy to take his place for even a week makes me feel that I have not labored in vain…,” he wrote in a guest column published Aug. 22, 1936.

“In the splendid showing of our boys in the Olympic Games,” Dougherty added, “we have practically sapped the climax and proved conclusively that we are worthy of being considered in every branch of athletics we seek to enter.”

Today, athletes spanning the African diaspora are representing countries across the world, including Germany.