Books with title Jesse Owens

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story. Born in rural Alabama under the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Owens's family suffered many hardships. As a boy he worked several jobs like delivering groceries and working in a shoe repair shop to make ends meet. But Owens defied the odds tobecome a sensational student athlete, eventually running track for Ohio State. He was chosen to compete in the Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler was promoting the idea of ""Aryan superiority."" Owens's winning streak at the games humiliated Hitler and crushed the myth of racial supremacy once and for all.

Introducing new readers to some of history's most interesting and important people, these biographies focus on the pivotal episodes that show what kind of person the subject is (or was) and how he or she came to be famous. Although written in a story format, these books are not fictionalized accounts. A chronology of major events follows the story, along with a brief summary of the subject's life.