The day Jesse Owens came to Palouse

Jesse Owens is probably the country’s most famous Olympic athlete when you consider the setting where he won his four gold medals.

Owens won the gold in the 4x100 relay, the 220-yard dash, the 220 low hurdles and the broad jump, in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He won more than the four medals, and he won the public relations tug with Adolph Hitler, who was trying to use the games as a way to show the world that the more traditional Aryan athlete was better than anyone else.

Hitler had just come to power and was convinced by Göring that he could use the games for that purpose. 

Owens, a black man, became the darling of the games.

Owens made an attempt to use his fame and athletic achievements for financial gain, but everything he tried failed. He and others concluded that this was true.

One thing Owens tried was to barnstorm the country, demonstrating his athletic skills in small and large venues.

This method to obtain financial achievement was a failure.

One of the places he put on an exhibition was in Palouse.

It must have been about 1938, and the downtown gym was the arena.

There had been regular appearances of exhibition basketball teams the House of David and the Harlem Globetrotters, all successful.

Seems the farmers in Palouse were interested enough to spend money this way, and Owens tried to take advantage of it.

The gym was regulation size with a stage on one end of the gym.

There was a balcony that seated people two deep and chairs filled the gym floor with a wide aisle down the middle.

The front doors remained open and Main Street outside was barricaded off with people stationed there.

After the preliminary fanfare was over, Owens got up against the stage, pointed to the exit and the barricaded street outside.

At the appointed time, Owens took off down the aisle and outside.He was gone in a flash, fully demonstrating his speed.

But this didn’t fly well enough for Owens to make a living out of it.

He received a lot of recognition, some memorials, but never a degree of financial gain that he wanted. He died in 1980.

My Dad used to take me to these events that came to town. He talked about Jesse Owens for a long time.