Was watching QI yesterday and one of the pieces was about Jesse Owens where they brought up the fact that Hitler didnt single out Owens yet on the flip side FDR never acknowledged his win. What is it with the media etc that ensures we have the wrong facts lodged in our heads?


History News Network

Everyone knows that at the 1936 Olympics Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens. As the story goes, after Owens won one gold medal, Hitler, incensed, stormed out of Olympic Stadium so he wouldn't have to congratulate Owens on his victory.
Such a performance would have been perfectly in character, but it didn't happen. William J. Baker, Owens's biographer, says the newspapers made up the whole story. Owens himself originally insisted it wasn't true, but eventually he began saying it was, apparently out of sheer boredom with the issue.

The facts are simple. Hitler did not congratulate Owens, but that day he didn't congratulate anybody else either, not even the German winners. As a matter of fact, Hitler didn't congratulate anyone after the first day of the competition. That first day he had shaken hands with all the German victors, but that had gotten him in trouble with the members of the Olympic Committee. They told him that to maintain Olympic neutrality, he would have to congratulate everyone or no one. Hitler chose to honor no one.

then meanwhile back in the US


Jesse Owens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, while at the time blacks in many parts of the United States were denied equal rights. After a New York City ticker-tape parade of Fifth Avenue in his honor, Owens had to ride the freight elevator at the Waldorf-Astoria to reach the reception honoring him.[4]

Owens said, "Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."[13] On the other hand, Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself.[14] Jesse Owens was never invited to the White House nor were honors bestowed upon him by president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or his successor Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower honored Owens by naming him an "Ambassador of Sports."

Originally Posted by Dylan2010

Was watching QI yesterday and one of the pieces was about Jesse Owens where they brought up the fact that Hitler didnt single out Owens yet on the flip side FDR never acknowledged his win. What is it with the media etc that ensures we have the wrong facts lodged in our heads?


History News Network





then meanwhile back in the US


Jesse Owens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All true. FDR needed Southern Democrat votes to get his programme passed, and (in spite of Eleanor's protests) adhered to what he thought was the greater good of the country. FDR also refused to support an anti-lynching bill to keep his Congressional supporters in line.

Those Democrats were shocking racists, but the truth is that FDR also needed those votes to get the US ready to face Hitler. The South, no matter what, is also the most nationalist and militaristic part of the US, and supported FDR's against the isolationists.

Those isolationists who were too chicken************************ to prepare for war against Hitler, were also probably the same ones who attacked FDR for toadying to racists.

If you were FDR, what would you have done?

What is it with the media etc that ensures we have the wrong facts lodged in our heads?

Because and in the full knowledge that I will be labelled a conspriacy nut newspapers are there to serve as an organ of the state, an organ that presents itself as wholly independant which they are nor ever were.

If you were FDR, what would you have done?

Not pander to the racist backwoodsmen minority for a start.

Can I just add that I'm a massive fan of the show, the best thing on the telebox.

[QUOTE=Dylan2010;5191576]Was watching QI yesterday and one of the pieces was about Jesse Owens where they brought up the fact that Hitler didnt single out Owens yet on the flip side FDR never acknowledged his win. What is it with the media etc that ensures we have the wrong facts lodged in our heads?



As the saying goes " Never let the truth get in the way of a good story".

Hitlers 'snubbing' of Owens would have been true to foem in any event - however by highlighting how the great 'black US athlete' single handedly destroyed the Nazi myth and embarassed/infuriated Hitler has always been a convenient smokescreen to the fact that Owens went home to a country which legally permitted a large number of States to operate a apartheit system on a par with that of South Africa.

Originally Posted by Picasso Republic

Hitlers 'snubbing' of Owens would have been true to foem in any event - however by highlighting how the great 'black US athlete' single handedly destroyed the Nazi myth and embarassed/infuriated Hitler has always been a convenient smokescreen to the fact that Owens went home to a country which legally permitted a large number of States to operate a apartheit system on a par with that of South Africa.

Not to mention the fact that the Federal government itself enforced racial segregation in the U.S. Army.

I love QI, although I'm not convinced about that thing regarding a hat not retaining more heat.

There's a song by the now very dated band Living Colour about how racists are quite happy to support black musicians and sportsmen and see no conflict with that. Also, for anyone interested in the Jesse Owens story, Paul Robeson's story might be of interest.

Stuff Bruce Springstein and Neil Young, this is how you give the finger to the racist USA...

Originally Posted by Picasso Republic

Hitlers 'snubbing' of Owens would have been true to foem in any event - however by highlighting how the great 'black US athlete' single handedly destroyed the Nazi myth and embarassed/infuriated Hitler has always been a convenient smokescreen to the fact that Owens went home to a country which legally permitted a large number of States to operate a apartheit system on a par with that of South Africa.

Wasn't there words exchanged between a senior nazi and a member of the US delegation highlighting that glaring fact? Or is my memory completly gone?

Nazism came and went but as Muhammed Ali found out, the attitude of towards black olympians persisted somewhat longer