An Open Letter to a Young Person with an Enemy

Jesse Owens

Most people have heard about my Olympic success in 1936, when I managed to come out of the Berlin games with four gold medals. In particular, a lot has been written about how I won the medal for the broad jump. It was during that event that Adolf Hitler walked out on me. It is said that then, in anger, I fouled on my first two jumps. The whole Olympics for me and for my country seemed to rest on that third jump ... 

Yes, a lot of words have been written about that day. And they've been almost true. I say "almost true" because unless you know the story I'm about to tell, you know only part of the truth. Now let me tell you how it all happened.

The broad jump preliminaries came before the finals of the other three events I was in—the one hundred- and two hundred-meter dash and the relay. How I did in the broad jump would determine how I did in the whole Olympics. For I held a world record in broad jump that only one man had ever come near. That man was Luz Long.

Long was a tall, perfectly built fellow. In preparing for the Games, he had been known to jump over twenty-six feet. This man was something! I knew I would have to set a new Olympic record to beat him.

Long's first jump broke the Olympic record—in the trials! Did it worry me a little? More than a little. He was on his home ground and didn't seem bothered by the pressure. In fact, he'd already done one thing I had always tried to do in every jumping event and race I was in. That was to discourage the competition by getting off to a better start.

I felt I had to make a showing right then. I measured off my steps from the foul board and got ready. Suddenly an American news reporter came up to me. "Is it true, Jesse?" he asked.

"Is what true?" I answered.

"That Hitler walked out on you? That he wouldn't watch you jump?"

I looked over to where the German ruler had been sitting. No one was in his box. A minute ago he had been there. I could add two and two. I was mad, hate-mad, and it made me feel wild. I was going to show him. He'd hear about this jump, even if he wouldn't see it!

I felt the energy coming into my legs and tingling in the muscles of my stomach as it never had before. I began my run, almost in slow motion, then picked up speed. Finally, I ran faster and faster until I was moving almost as fast as I did whenever I ran the hundred yard dash. Suddenly the foul board was in front of me. I hit it, went up, up high—so high I knew I was outdoing Long and every person who had ever jumped.

But they didn't measure it. I had been thinking too hard about setting a record and not enough about form. I'd gone half a foot over the foul board.

On my second jump, I played it safe—too safe. I didn't foul, but I didn't go far enough to qualify. I had just one jump left. I looked around nervously, panic creeping into every cell of my body. On my right was Hitler's box. It was empty. This was his way of saying I was a member of an inferior race who would give an inferior performance. The stadium was filled with more than one hundred thousand people—almost all of them Germans. I felt that they all wanted to see me fail. Worst of all, Luz Long was a few feet away laughing with a German friend of his. I saw him as unconcerned, confident.

Suddenly I felt a firm hand on my arm. I turned and looked into the sky-blue eyes of my worst enemy.

"Hello, Jesse Owens," he said. "I am Luz Long." I nodded. I couldn't speak.

"Look," he said. "There is no time to waste with manners. What has taken your goat?"

I had to smile a little in spite of myself as I heard his mixed-up American phrase.

But I couldn't tell him, him of all people. I glanced over at the broad-jump pit. I was about to be called.

Luz didn't waste words, even if he wasn't sure which ones to use. "Is it what Hitler did?" he asked.

I was thunderstruck that he'd said it. "I—" I started to answer. But I didn't know what to say.

"I see," he said. "Look, we talk about that later. Now you must jump. And you must qualify."

"But how?" I shot back.

"I have thought," he said. "You are like I am. You must do it one hundred percent. Correct?" I nodded. "Yet, you must be sure not to foul." I nodded again, this time a little discouraged. And as I did, I heard the loudspeaker call my name.

Luz talked quickly. "Then you do both things, Jesse. You remeasure your steps. You take off six inches behind the foul board. You jump as hard as you can. But you need not fear to foul."

All at once, the panic emptied out of me like a cloudburst. Of course!

I jogged over to the runway. I measured my steps again. Then I put a towel beside the place I wanted to jump from. That place was half a foot behind the foul board.

I walked back to the starting line. I began my run, hit the place beside the towel, shot up into the air like a bird, and qualified by more than a foot.

The next day I went into the finals of the broad jump. Luz broke his own personal record and the Olympic record, too. Then I—thanks to the talk we had had—flew up into the air to top that. Hours before, I had won the hundred meters in 10.3 seconds. Then afterward, I won the 200 meters in 20.7 seconds and helped our team to another gold medal and record in the relay.

During the evenings that followed, I sat with Luz in his place or mine in the Olympic village, and we formed a strong friendship. We were sometimes as different on the inside as we looked on the outside. But the things that were the same were much more important to us.

We talked about everything from athletics to art, but mostly we talked about the future. He didn't say it in so many words, but Luz seemed to know that war was coming and that he would have to be in it. I didn't know then whether or not the United States would be involved. But I did realize that this earth was getting to be a dangerous place for a young person. After the Games, Luz and I wrote regularly, though the letters weren't always as happy as our talks at the Olympics had been. Times were hard for me and harder for Luz. He had had to go into the German army, away from his wife and son. Each letter expressed more and more doubt about what he was doing. But he felt he had no other choice. He was afraid for his family if he left the army.

The last letter I got from him was in 1939. "Things become more difficult," he said, "and I am afraid, Jesse. It is not just the thought of dying. It is that I may die for the wrong thing. But whatever might become of me, I hope only that my wife and son will stay alive, I am asking you, my only friend outside of Germany, to someday visit them if you are able. Tell them why I had to do this and how the good times between us were."

I answered right away, but my letter came back. So did the next and the one after. I tried to find out about Luz in a dozen ways. There was nothing. A war was on. Finally, when it was over, I was able to get in touch with Luz's wife. I found that he was buried somewhere in the African desert.

Luz Long had been my competition in the Olympics. He was a white man—a Nazi white man who fought to destroy my country. But I loved Luz Long, as much as my own brothers. I still love Luz Long.

I went back to Berlin a few years ago and met his son. And I told Karl about his father. I told him that though fate may have thrown us against one another, Luz rose above it. Luz rose so high above it that I was left not only with the medals that his advice helped me to get, but with priceless knowledge that the only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.