It seems blasphemous that one of the 1936 Olympic Gold medals won by Jesse Owens was sold at auction over the weekend. It’s even more distressing that the man himself was never able to capitalize financially on his achievements in Germany while others can do so decades later.
The medal sold for more than $1.4 million in an online auction that ended Sunday. The buyer, Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle, apparently plans to conduct a nationwide tour of the medal and the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to William Faulkner that he also owns.
The price for the Owens’ medal is said to be the highest amount ever paid for an Olympic artifact. Owens won four medals, and there’s no marking on this medal indicating the competition for which it was awarded.
I believe the medal belongs in a museum, not in a private collection, because it is a part of American history. It exemplifies the accomplishments of not only one man but the history of a people whose contributions have not always been fully recognized. Owens accomplished a feat that transcended athletics – shattering beliefs about African Americans and their abilities.
“(It has) an importance far beyond the sporting achievements of Jesse Owens, which is part of world history,” Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “To put this up for an auction is for me a very difficult decision (to accept).”
And he’s right.
Owens won the medal in an atmosphere of racial hatred and intolerance. Adolf Hitler had tried to get both black and Jewish athletes barred from participating in Berlin. His plan was to use the games to show off the supremacy of his Aryan athletes, the culture they represented, and the frightening world he was trying to manufacture and impose.
The medal was sold by the estate of Elaine Plaines-Robinson, the late widow of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, to whom Owens had given the medal soon after the Games. I can only assume the estate needed the money (minus auction house SCP Auctions’ fees), and felt that it had to sell.
Owens, 23 years old and a track and field star at Ohio State University, won four medals at the 1936 Games – the 100-meter and 200-meter, the 4×100 meter relay and the long jump.
Afterward, the U.S. team was scheduled to compete in other competitions in Europe, but Owens wanted instead to come back home to make some money off his achievements. Infuriated at losing their star athlete, the U.S. Olympic Committee suspended him from amateur competitions, according to the 1990 biography “Jesse Owens” by Tony Gentry. So, he was forced to find other ways to make a living, and support his wife and family.
Owens came home to ticker-tape parades in New York and Cleveland (where he grew up), effusive newspaper articles, along with a snub from then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in a presidential race against Alf Landon, for whom Owens campaigned and gave speeches.
It’s ironic that this one medal has brought a huge sum to someone else while Owens – who lived during an era that heralded his accomplishments but denied him his humanity – was never able to live exceedingly well off his name. After the Games, as he contemplated all of the offers that had been made, he also watched as the tours and movie deals dried up.
“After I came home from the 1936 Olympics with my four medals,” he said, “it became increasingly apparent that everyone was going to slap me on the back, want to shake my hand or have me up to their suite. But no one was going to offer me a job.”
Entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, one of the few African Americans doing quite well in Hollywood at the time, stood by him, though. Robinson befriended him, entertaining him in his home and introducing him to a Hollywood agent. Owens showed his appreciation by giving Robinson one of his Gold medals – the one that was sold at auction.
Robinson outfitted him in a white tuxedo, showed him how to wow an audience and got him a $100,000 contract to front a 12-piece band. In January 1937, Owens was off on tour with the band. He didn’t do much entertainng, he said later in an interview.
“I couldn’t play an instrument. I’d just stand up front and announce the numbers. They had me sing a little but that was a horrible mistake. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. We played theaters and nightclubs all over hell. One-nighters. Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Earle Theater in Philly – that was big time for blacks.”
Owens finally called it quits and went home. He took on several jobs: helped form a Negro baseball league, owned a dry cleaning business, was a playground director, worked as a gas station attendant and raced against thoroughbred horses. He also earned money as a public speaker and worked with public relations firms.
“People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?” Owens said in a 1971 interview. “I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway.”
A heavy smoker for 35 years, Owens died of lung cancer in 1980.
The other three original medals are missing, and no one presumably knows where they are. Ohio State has four replacement medals that were issued by Germany to replace the originals that Owens was said to have lost.
