Who was Jesse Owens? Jesse Owens was an African American man who had a burning passion for the sport of track and field and became a four-time gold medal winning Olympian in the year 1936. You would never have thought that a man like him, who grew up in the dirt and had a life extremely poor family member, would turn into the man you are about to find out about. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Jesse Owens was born on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama, where he started out working in the dry fields, picking 100 pounds of cotton a day. Owens came from a life as a poor farmer's son. His mother was Mary Emma Fitzgerald and his father was Henry Cleveland Owens. Owens was the son of a laborer and grandson of a slave. As he grew up, Owens discovered a passion for running. You would always see him in the barren fields of Alabama running non-stop. Owen's first serious difficulties occurred when he was just five years old, the day after his fifth birthday. Owens had discovered an abnormal lump on his chest that was beginning to bump painfully against his lungs. He had no idea what it could be until it started to progress so he went to his mother and showed her and because the family was so poor, they couldn't find a doctor because the closest doctor was 75 miles away , they wouldn't have enough time to remove it, so his parents solved the problem by performing surgery themselves. As Owens gritted his teeth on a leather strap, his mother used a sterilized, heated kitchen knife to begin the procedure. She made an incision in her sons' chest to remove the golf ball-sized boil. Owens bled for three days and suffered from losing a large amount of blood, but eventually recovered. Later, he stated that he believed he almost bled to death and was very lucky to live. When Owens first started running, he struggled because his lungs were very weak due to childhood bouts, being prone to pneumonia. Owens not only had health problems, but he also struggled in school. Owens had difficulty reading and learning math, those subjects had never been his strong point, but what was, was physical education. He always excelled in that area. He constantly told his classmates to compete with him in sprints. Owens has never been beaten. It was then that coach Charles Riley recognized his extraordinary running ability and wanted to see Owens excel in running. In 1928, he set a new Junior High world record in the high jump at 6 feet and the long jump at 22 feet, 11 ¾ inches. His running career wasn't fully noticed until his high school years. During his high school years he competed against the best high school track and field athletes from around the country. He competed at the 1933 National High School Interscholastic Championship in Chicago, an event that catapulted his career and immediately put him in the spotlight. He gained national attention for setting the world record in the 100 yards and for his impressive performance in the broad jump, which was then called the long jump. He then enrolled at Ohio State University to pursue a career as an athlete. Popularly called the "Buckeye Bullet", he won four individual events at the NCAA Championships in 1935, thus creating a major record. In the early 1900s, most athletes were all white, so when Owens began competing, he was treated differently just for the fact that he wasn't white. When Owens.