The theme of this diary is mentorship, and how the recognition and encouragement we get from a coach or teacher, or a friend, or lover or parent can make all the difference. In the comments, I hope readers will share their own stories about the mentors who have helped shape their lives.
Like many of my diaries this one draws on people and events relating to my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. As I’ve often found in my research, there can be surprising personal family connections to history. I’ve found some in this story and shared them in the hope that readers will look for similar connections in their lives and those of their family members.
When I resumed the draft of this long orphaned and frequently delayed diary, which I had started and abandoned several times over the last year, I was unaware that January is international mentoring month www.awarenessdays.com/.… So before the month ends I’ve rushed to finally finish and post it.
Jesse Owens
On May 25th 1935 at the Big Ten championships in Ann Arbor Michigan, over the course of 45 minutes, a 21-year-old Ohio State sophomore named Jesse Owens soared, tying the world record in the 100-yard dash and then setting new world records in the long jump, the 200/220-yard dash and the 200/220 low hurdles. That extraordinary performance, during which a world record was tied and five new world records were set, is widely regarded as the greatest 45 minutes in sports history.www.si.com/...
At the Olympic games in Berlin the next year, Owens would capture the attention of the world as he won gold medals in the 100m dash, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. One of those world records was in the 4x100m relay. The quartet set a time that wouldn’t be bettered for 20 years.
Adolf Hitler intended for the 1936 Berlin Games to be a showcase demonstrating the superiority of the Aryan race. Instead, it was Owens’ achievements that led the people of Berlin and the world to hail him, an African-American, as a hero.
Owens returned to America as national hero.
Jesse Owens path to greatness was never assured. He achieved the success that he did in no small measure because the Cleveland public schools he attended as a young man were inclusive and they provided opportunities for athletic training and encouragement that allowed him to develop measure and test his track and field skills.
Sharecropper’s Son to Olympic Champion
James Cleveland (J. C. or Jesse) Owens was born near the town of Oakville, in northern Alabama, on September 12, 1913. J. C. was the 10th child born to Henry and Emma Owens who were the children of slaves. Like thousands of black and white families throughout the reconstruction South, the Owens were sharecroppers, who lived and toiled on land owned by someone else.
Sharecroppers were provided seed and tools and perhaps a mule and a shack to live in and remained on the land at the mercy of the landowner in exchange for a third to one half each season’s crop raised on the land they farmed. Sharecroppers sold their portion of each year’s crop, generally cotton, and subsisted on food they might hunt, trap. fish, gather, and raise in a garden. With what little money their crop brought, cropper families obtained clothing and other store bought essentials, often from a white owned store where they were more often than not in perpetual debt. Thus tethered to both the land and store in a perpetual cycle of work and debt, cropper families typically lacked any hope for economic geographic or social mobility.
In 1922 , when he was nine years old, Jesse and his family moved from northern Alabama to Cleveland, Ohio (the year my father was born in Cleveland). During the 1910s and 1920s, six million African Americans left the South and moved to the North in what came to be known as the Great Migration en.wikipedia.org/..... That mass migration was propelled both by the collapse of cotton economy due to the boll weevil and by the prospect of jobs in the industrial cities of the north, including St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo and Milwaukee.
That mass migration of black (and white) sharecroppers was prompted initially by the boll weevil, a cotton pest that decimated the southern sharecropping cotton economy. Boll weevils reached southeastern Alabama in 1909. By the mid-1920s, boll weevils were found throughout the cotton-growing regions in the U.S., travelling 40 to 160 miles per year they destroyed cotton crops across the south. To this day, weevils remain the most destructive cotton pest in North America and require constant vigilance to keep at bay www.smithsonianmag.com/....
The Great Migration was also prompted by changes in the world economy that provided increasing job opportunities in the growing industrial cities of the North during World War I. Southern agriculture survived in part by planting peanuts where cotton had once grown, but the new peanut economy didn’t stop the tidal population shift of the great migration.
In Alabama, Owens had walked (or run) 9 miles to attend a one room school that also served as his church on Sunday. Owens noted that as a child growing up in Alabama:
“I always loved running. I wasn’t very good at it, but I loved it because it was something you could do all by yourself, under your own power. You could go any direction, as 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 and the courage of your lungs.”
On his first day of school in Cleveland, in September 1923 at Bolton Elementary School, a teacher asked Owens his name. Owens responded, "J.C." The teacher misunderstood, and so James Cleveland or J. C. Owens became known as Jesse.
The Bolton School was less than a mile from Western Reserve University where my grandparents and later my father and I went to college. The former site of the Bolton School is now occupied by part of the sprawling Cleveland Clinic Hospital complex, arguably one of the world’s finest hospitals (If there is not some interpretive panel or wayside there about Owens, there should be).
The Cleveland Schools that 9-year-old Jesse Owens entered on his arrival in Cleveland in 1922 served more than 140,000 students many of them were the children of European immigrants. Cleveland schools of that era followed an impressive progressive liberal arts curriculum that provided for a well rounded education. The schools initiated extracurricular activities, such as glee clubs, school newspapers, student council, and sports programs to develop "the good character" of pupils. Nine elementary curriculum centers organized an ungraded program for the least capable students and attempted to individualize the curriculum according to each student's abilities and needs as well as training in civics, and opportunities for physical education.case.edu/...
As more African American families moved into the neighborhood around Central High School a clinic was established to study and remedy the educational and social problems of the neighborhood's youth who had been denied access to a decent education in the South. In 1922 the school board also approved the creation of the Major Work Program of special classes for gifted children. Reduced fees increased adult education enrollment to over 10,000 students by 1927. Aided by the Bing Act (1921), requiring attendance until age 18 and graduation from high school, daily enrollment expanded to 144,000 students. Between 1920-30 the school system spent over $18 million to construct 32 buildings. Beginning in 1921 the schools offered children's concerts in cooperation with the Cleveland Orchestra and used Radio (WBOE) as a means of instruction in 1931.case.edu/...
The Cleveland public school physical education curriculum for Grades 1 through 8 that Jesse Owens participated in was published in 1922, the same year his family arrived www.google.com/...
The object of Physical Training as a part of our school work is to assist in developing the pupil physically, socially and ethically in such as way as to make him a thoroughly efficient member of society. It seeks to correct detrimental physical tendencies whether inherited or acquired, to establish and maintain the habit of correct posture, to develop bodily and mental poise, to stimulate organic activity and to assist in developing quick and accurate physical and mental reactions.
physical exercise properly taken develops nerve force which is so essential to successful living. It furnishes experiences which are fundamental in creating in the individual a wholesome respect for his own person, for creating a wholesome respect for the rights of others, for encouraging the spirit of fair play and for inculcating the ideas of co-operation and service.
Whenever possible, running out of door for two or three minutes should be substituted in place of marching, because no single exercise can supplant running out of doors as an introductory and invigorating exercise.
For boys in the 5th 6th 7th and 8th grades the curriculum included competitive a ‘Badge Contest’ consisting of standing broad jump, chin ups and the 50 yard dash. Each school conducted its own tests and boys who received the highest marks were then retested officially. Schools earned badges for the collective performance of their students. The curriculum also provide for team sports, including track and field competitions during the Spring months.
For eight years prior her marriage to my grandfather in 1920, my grandmother Blanche L. Watkins was a physical education teacher in the Cleveland public schools. She had trained as a Phys Ed teacher at Western Reserve University, graduating in 1913. During the 1919 and 1920 school years she taught at Cleveland’s Central High School, which was located about a mile and a half to the west of Bolton Elementary where Jesse Owens would later enroll.
Central High School had offered free public education to Cleveland’s children since 1846. During the early 20th century Central High served both black and white male and female students and included a wide range of subjects, as well as activities and clubs case.edu/.... During the two years when my grandmother taught at Central High, one of the school’s pupils was Langston Hughes en.wikipedia.org/… (a digression for another day).
As I’ve recently discovered, my grandmother didn’t just teach ‘physical activity’ as it was often called then, she helped to develop the Physical Education Syllabus used by all of Cleveland’s Elementary Schools, in Grades 1 through 8.
and so in some part my Gran, Blanche L. Watkins helped shape the environment in which Jesse Owens developed his extraordinary talents as a runner in the years following his arrival in Cleveland in 1922.
Life was hard for the Owen’s family in Cleveland and Jesse had to take jobs after school to help out. At different points, he worked in a grocery store, a shoe repair shop, and as a loader of freight cars. Those after school jobs threatened to derail his prospects as an elite track and field athlete, but encouragement from his coach made a difference, and helped convince Owens that he could manage both to help his family with after school and summer jobs and still run track.
Owens's athletic talent was first noted during his time at Fairmount Junior High School by his track coach, Charles Riley. Aided by Riley’s encouragement and mentorship, Owens gifts as a runner blossomed and he realized a remarkable athletic potential that might otherwise have gone unrealized.
As a student at Fairmount Jr High, under coach Riley’s tutelage and mentorship
Jesse set a new junior high school record when he ran the 100-yard dash in 11 seconds flat. While at Fairmount, he also set records in the high jump and the long jump. As a high school senior at EAST TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL, Owens equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash.
During his senior year at East Tech, he was elected president of the senior class and captain of the track team. Before enrolling in the Ohio State University in 1933, Owens set a new world record in the 220-yard dash and tied the world record in the 100-yard dash at the National Championship in Chicago.
While competing at the Big Ten Conference Championship in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 25, 1935, Owens broke three world records and tied a fourth in an hour, the only athlete to establish multiple new track-and-field world records on the same day.
His long-jump record of 26 feet, 8 1/4 inches stood for 25 years. case.edu/...
Owens triumphs at the Berlin Olympics were know to America through radio broadcasts, illustrated newspaper and magazine accounts and in the newsreels that were shown in theaters before the feature films. Owens was a hero to both black and white Americans throughout the country, and nowhere more so than in his hometown of Cleveland.
Harrison ‘Bones’ Dillard
In 1936 Harrison Dillard, was13-years old Cleveland youth. On the day of Owen’s parade Dillard and his friends gathered along the parade route long before the parade to claim a prime curbside spot. As Owens passed in the open car, he looked down at Dillard and his friends, winked and said: “Hey, kids. How are you doing?” Thrilled by that brief encounter with his new idol, Harrison Dillard rushed home after the parade and announced to his mother:
“I just saw Jesse Owens, and I’m going to be just like him.”
Certainly hundreds of children who saw Jesse Owens after his gold medal performance in the 1936 Olympics wished to grow up and be like him. If willpower alone could result in world class athletic performance, I’d certainly have been a gold medalist like Owens and Dillard, but there is no question that Dillard was inspired by Owens to achieve his athletic potential.
Dillard attended Cleveland’s East Technical High School the same school that Owens had. Owens followed Dillard’s progress in high school and the two runners met again in 1941 while Dillard was preparing for the Ohio state track championships. While chatting, Owens noticed that Dillard’s spikes looked a little worn. He gave Dillard a pair of shoes that he had used in the Berlin Olympics. “I won the state championship in those shoes,” Dillard said later.
Harrison Dillard began hurdling at the age of eight, running in an alley and using the springs from abandoned car seats as barriers.
After high school Dillard entered Baldwin Wallace University in Cleveland. His running career was then deferred by World War II. Dillard was drafted into the U.S. Army serving in the all-black 92nd Infantry Division known as the Buffalo Soldiers. In 1946 Dillard returned to Baldwin Wallace and graduated in 1949.
During 1947 and 1948, Dillard won 82 straight races. However, in the final of the 110m hurdles at the U.S. Olympic trials, he lost his stride and failed to finish.
At the London Olympic games in 1948, Dillard progressed through the heats and reached the final. The 100m finals seemed to end in a tie between Dillard and his American teammate Barney Ewell. The first ever use of a photo finish in the Olympics showed Dillard had won, equaling the World record as well. As a member of the 4 × 100 m relay team, Dillard won a second gold medal at the 1948 London Games.
Four years later at the 1952 Helsinki Games, Dillard saved everything for the 110-meter hurdles, opting to skip the 100-meter dash. When he won gold in the hurdles, Dillard leapt in the air and exclaimed, “Good things come to those who wait!” As part of the US 4 x100 m relay team, Dillard earned his fourth Olympic Gold Medal.
Harrison Dillard attempted to qualify for a third Olympics in 1956, but finished seventh in the trials final and failed to earn a spot on the team.
Dillard once noted that "... one of the beauties of the Olympic Games, is that they occur every four years," . "The athlete who fails in the first, assuming that he can maintain the necessary physical ability plus the emotional and mental ability, has a chance to redeem him or herself. I certainly had that good fortune."
Dillard returned to London to watch the 2012 Olympics. Harrison Dillard remains the only male sprinter to win Olympic gold medals in both the 100m sprint and 110m high hurdles.
Dillard passed away in 2019 after a battle with stomach cancer. He was 96.
The Jesse Owens Trees
Jesse Owens and Harrison Dillard have passed away into history. There is one remaining legacy of Owens triumph in the 1936 Olympics.
Gold Medal winners were given saplings to plant at home on their return from the Berlin games.
The location of the trees Owens planted was a mystery for some time. One of the trees was reportedly planted behind his childhood home, and it was removed later by a development. Another was planted at The Ohio State University, and third at James Ford Rhodes High School in Cleveland where Owen attended track practice.
An English Oak on the campus of Ohio State University may be one of those planted by Owens on his return from the Berlin Games. www.npr.org/...
Currently, the only one of the four Jesse Owens Oaks that is known with certainty to survive is the one Owens planted at Rhodes High School. When that tree began to show signs of age-related distress, a cutting was taken and planted at Cleveland’s Holden Arboretum. A ceremony for that legacy tree was planned for November 2020, but was delayed by covid 19 concerns and is now scheduled for the Spring of 2021 holdenarb.org/…
The Arboretum is one of my favorite places — I highly recommend a visit if you are ever in NE Ohio with time to spare on a nice day.
* my grandmother Blanche Lucile Watkins, a 1913 graduate of Western Reserve University was a physical education teacher at Cleveland Central High School in 1919 and 1920. She helped to write the physical education curriculum for Cleveland public schools grades 1- 8 which was published in 1922, the year my father was born and the year that Jesse Owens family came to Cleveland. www.biomed.amp.ohio-state.edu/webowens/gmthistory.htm
I extend thanks to the Rescue Rangers once again for finding a spot for this diary and allowing prospective readers the extra time it takes to wander through this bit of history.
On a final note, I will point out that my avatar, one of the original castings of Rodin's ‘The Thinker’ (which may or may not have been intended to represent Dante at the Gates of Hell en.wikipedia.org/...,) is located on the steps at the south side of the Cleveland Museum of Art (a fabulous place free and open to the public) about ¼ mile north of the former site of Fairmount Jr High School were Owens once studied and ran.