The daughters of the Olympic hero, the man who stared down Adolf Hitler, write about his powerful legacy. Owens’s biopic Race is now playing in theaters.
Decades ago, a 22-year-old black man rebuffed the aims of a racial supremacist. Under the gaze of Adolf Hitler, James Cleveland Owens—Jesse Owens—won four gold medals at an international competition intended by its host to showcase Aryan superiority: the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
