A hero is someone who can endure and overcome major challenges to achieve greatness. A hero is focused and determined on working hard and I believe Jesse Owen is one of such men. James Cleveland Owen was born in Oakville, Alabama and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio as the seventh of the eleven children of Henry and Emma Owens. He was given the name Jesse by a teacher in Cleveland who did not understand his accent when the young boy said he was called J.C. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior-high track coach at Fairview Junior High, who had picked him off the playground and put him on the track team. Since Jesse worked in a shoe repair shop after school, Riley allowed Jesse to practice before school instead. As a student in a Cleveland, Ohio, high school, Owens won three events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships in Chicago. On May 25, 1935, while competing for Ohio State University (Columbus) in a Western (later Big Ten) Conference track-and-field meet at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Owens equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 sec) and broke the world records for the 220-yard dash (20.3 sec), the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 sec), and the long jump (8.13 meters [26.67 feet]). .He married his longtime high school sweetheart, Ruth Solomon, in 1935. Together they had three daughters, Gloria, Beverly and Marlene. In 1936 Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the 1936 Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using these games to prove to the world that the German “Aryan” people were the dominant race. Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of racial superiority and depicted ethnic Africans as inferior or even non-human. Owens incredible performance winning four gold medals was a surprised to many. On August 3, 1936 he won the 100 dash by defeating Ralph Metcalf, on August 4 he won the Long Jump (after some friendly and helpful advice from German competitor Luz Long, that Owen should place a towel in front of the take-off board. Leaping from that point, Owens qualified for the finals, eventually beating Long). On August 5 he won the 200 yard dash and was later added to the 4 x 100 men’s relay team. He won his fourth on August 6 (his performance wasn’t duplicated until 1984 when Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the 1984 summer Olympics). It was of no surprise that, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium (some claim this was to avoid having to shake hands with the African-American, but according to a spokesman, Hitler’s exit had been pre-scheduled). Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. In his autobiography (The Jesse Owens Story, 1970) Owens recounted how Hitler later stood up and waved to him anyway. Owens was cheered enthusiastically by 110,000 people in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium and later ordinary Germans sought his autograph when they saw him in the streets. However back in New York, after the ticker-tape parade in his honor, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend a reception for him at the Waldorf Astoria. How Unimaginable that this great patriotic citizen(Jesse Owen) who brought fame and glory to America after the incredible success in the Olympic games had difficulty making a living. How funny life could be. He became a sports promoter and entertainer. He would give local sprinters a ten or twenty yards (9.1 or 18.3 meters) start and beat them in the 100 yard (91 m) dash. He also challenged and defeated racehorses, although as he revealed later, the trick was to race a high-strung thoroughbred horse that would be frightened by the starter’s pistol and give him a good jump. His self-promotion eventually turned into a Public relations career in Chicago Illinois. In 1968 Owens received some criticism for supporting the racially turbulent Olympic Games that year. Several years later, on March 31, 1980, Jesse Owens at 66, died in Tucson from complications due to cancer and was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago Illinois. Jesse Owens was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 by Gerald Ford and (posthumously) the Congressional Gold Medal by George H.W Bush on March 28, 1990. In 1984, a street in Berlin was renamed after him. If you are reading this article, you may wonder why I have chosen to qualify the person of James Cleveland Owen as a portrait of success. J.C as he was popularly known, an African American who through all the trials and obstacles remained devoted to is vision, overcome segregation, racism, bigotry to prove to the world that African Americans are not inferior. He proves that true success is determined from within a person and not by colour or race. I choose him a portrait of success worth emulation.

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