While I couldn’t interest my son Miles in watching the Olympics with me, I did use the games as an opportunity to educate him a bit about history and heritage. We watched a movie and took some time after to research Jesse Owens.
I wanted Miles to learn about the incredible athlete Owens was. How the Ohio State track star set five world records and tied a sixth during a college track meet in Ann Arbor that witnesses dubbed the “greatest 45 minutes in sports.”
That he did this days after being injured and in less than an hour only makes the story more incredible. The long jump, the 100-yard dash, the 200-meter and 220-yard dash, the 200-meter and 220-yard low hurdles were all events won by Jesse Owens faster or longer than (or as well as) anyone had ever done it. Most of those records stood for decades.
I wanted Miles to know that Jesse Owens wasn’t allowed to be on scholarship due to the color of his skin. The movie we watched, named Race, was very good, but never actually mentioned this fact despite the clever double meaning in the film’s title.
Owens was a father and needed to work to go to college whilst supporting his family. I wanted Miles to know that bigotry isn’t just an emotional obstacle that some have to overcome, it had and continues to have real and measurable consequences.
Miles got to learn about Germany’s history of world aggression, more about the evil of nazis and how they hosted the Olympics in 1936. He got to learn about how a horrible man named Adolph led the people of his country to hate and kill by convincing them that this other religion called Judaism, and the people who practiced it, were a threat to their way of life.
Miles saw the swastika on images of the Hindenburg so we learned about blimps, combustible gasses and modern people who continue to wave the flags and symbols of regimes that lost wars. I had to remind him it happens with both German and American history here in the United States.
He also got to see pictures and a reenactment of Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in Berlin. He got to see Owens on the medal stand, saluting the American flag while those around him saluted Hitler.
Thanks to the Pablo Torre Finds Out show on YouTube, I knew to point out to Miles the oak sapling that Owens is holding in that iconic photo. We took some time to learn how all the gold medal winners received them that year and how Jesse took his back home to Cleveland and planted them.
I would’ve taken the time to explain to him how rare oak trees were in Cleveland during that time given the history of red-lining and its impacts on the lack of parks in lower income neighborhoods, however that seemed too much for my 12-year-old for one night.
It was challenging enough to try to explain to him how Owens may not have been congratulated by Hitler after winning, but he wasn’t applauded by his own president either. FDR didn’t do anything to publicly support or congratulate him.
More than anything, I wanted Miles to learn about the life of the man who said “Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing it." That was Mr. Owens of course.
My son says that Jesse Owens was a good man. I’m proud Miles knows who he is and am convinced beliefs like that will improve the odds he becomes a good man himself. He’s well on his way.
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