Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens, 1936

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort." - Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens had a soft smile and a warm demeanor. He was humble and yet a star, an enormous talent, the best in his track and field events. But what he seemed to care most for was friendship. "Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust," he would say. Jesse was special, and people adored him. He was beloved.

Jesse was born as James Cleveland Owens on September 12, 1913, in Oakville, Alabama, a small town in the southern United States. His parents were sharecroppers, a system of farming in which families worked on land owned by someone else and received a share of the crops as payment. Life for the Owens family was fraught with hardship; they were poor and lived in a region with much racial segregation.

In search of better opportunities, in 1922, the Owens family joined the Great Migration, a mass movement of African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West. They settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where young Jesse encountered a world different from Alabama.