James \"Jesse\" Cleveland Owens, Who Lived From

James "Jesse" Cleveland Owens, who lived from 1913 to 1980, and Frederick Carl Lewis, born in 1961, have been two of the United State's greatest track stars. Their lives have some similarities and differences.

Jesse Owens was born in Alabama. His parents were sharecroppers, which means they farmed land owned by someone else. His grandparents had been slaves. Jesse Owens had six older brothers and sisters, and his family lived in poverty in his childhood. His family moved to Cleveland when he was young.

He started setting local track records when he was in junior high, and in high school he won state championships three years in a row and set high school national records.

Jesse chose to go to Ohio State University. This school had no track scholarships at the time, and Jesse worked to support himself and his wife while he attended college. He continued to be an outstanding track star, and represented the United States at the Olympics in 1935, held in Nazi Germany.

Owens' performance in Germany was important because Hitler ruled Germany at the time as a dictator. Hitler believed in white supremacy, and Owens helped the United States discredit Hitler's racist beliefs when he won four gold medals.

When Owens was in the Olympics, winners did not receive opportunities to make money with product endorsements or commercials. Owens continued to work at various jobs to support his family, and became very active in working with underprivileged youth in Cleveland and Chicago. He represented the United States as a goodwill ambassador for sports, was a public speaker and organized the ARCO/Jesse Owens Games, which allowed millions of young athletes to compete against each other.

He received the highest award a civilian in the United States can receive, the Medal of Freedom. In an interesting coincidence, Jesse Owens was friends with Carl Lewis's parents.

Another of the United State's greatest athletes is Carl Lewis. Lewis was also born in Alabama in 1961, and his family also moved from the South, to Willingboro, New Jersey, when he was two years old. Lewis had advantages Jesse Owens did not have.

To begin with, through much of Jesse's life, racism was common and often accepted in the United States. Although the United States took great pride in Owens' gold medals in 1935 for giving Hitler a black eye, the truth is that Owens came home to a country that also considered him a second-class citizen based on the color of his skin.

Lewis, born 48 years after Owens, grew up during a time when the United States began to openly reject the concept of segregation. Both of his parents were champion athletes themselves. His mother, Evelyn Lawler, represented the United States for the Pan Am games of 1951. His father was also an athlete, and both parents worked as coaches.

Lewis lived a middle class life but had a later start in his athletic career, not really beginning to show his potential until his senior year of high school. Lewis grew up with Jesse Owens as his hero and role model. He won a total of 9 gold medals during his Olympic career in 100-200m, long jump and 4x100m relay. He got all of those medals in spite of the fact that he couldn't compete in the 1980 Olympics because the United States boycotted the Olympics that year.

The two men lived very different lives. Jesse Owens never gained financially in any significant way from his Olympic achievements, partly because television hadn't become part of American life. Companies didn't pay for athletes to promote their products. In addition, for most of Owens' life, the United States was an overtly racist society. Owens was not welcome in many restaurants and hotels because of the color of his skin in spite of his achievements.

While both men went to high school and college, this was more of an achievement for Jesse Owens for several reasons. When Owens was in high school, many Blacks in the United States either didn't attend high school, or their segregated high school lacked accreditation, making it hard for them to go on to college. Owens not only graduated from high school but also went on to Ohio State University as well as the Olympics.

It could be said that Owens was the more natural athlete. His athletic abilities were obvious by junior high school, and he had set many school records by the time he graduated from high school. By comparison, Carl Lewis had track coaches as both parents. He had extensive and intensive training to become the star athlete he was.

Lewis was lucky enough to be an athlete during a time when winning gold medals meant winning endorsements, so his athletic talents paid off financially as well as personally. Lewis was also lucky to grow up in a period of United States history when the country had finally realized that racism was fundamentally wrong. While racism still existed when he was in school, many racial barriers had been dropped. Equal education for all was the standard and not the exception, and Lewis did not have to worry about such things as not being allowed to eat in restaurants while traveling.

Both athletes have demonstrated not only to youth of their race but to all young people that hard work and discipline will pay off in achievements to be proud of. While one could look at this simply as a race issue, the United States has children of all colors who live in poverty and who struggle to get a good education. While both men demonstrate that sports is one way to succeed, they also both put high value on getting an education, and demonstrated this by graduating from high school and going on to college.