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Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and became a world sensation. However, when he came home - he came home to a segregated America. So segregated in fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited all of the white athletes, but not any of the black athletes. According to Owens, Hitler waved at him...FDR wouldn't let him anywhere near the White House. Hitler also sent Owens a written congratulations and a signed photograph...FDR didn't even send a telegram like he did to the white athletes.
The next president, Truman, also ignored Owens. The first White House recognition that Jesse Owens got was in 1955 when Eisenhower awarded Jesse Owens the "American Ambassador for All Sports."
But it wasn't for 40 years that Owens would get his "Olympic White House invitation." When Ford invited the entire 1976 USA Olympics team to the White House...all races...Ford recalled back to his college days in 1935 as a young football player at the University of Michigan, where he watched rival Ohio State's Jesse Owens break or tie several world records at a track meet in Ann Arbor. Ford was in shock by how impressive Owens had been and recalled that FDR never invited him to the White House.
Ford then extended an invitation to the black athletes that FDR has snubbed.
This wasn't a unique event for Ford. As a college athlete Ford had worked against segregation in 1934 and became best friends with Willis Ward, a black athlete on the team that wasn't allowed to play against southern teams. Ford in protest was going to sit out a game against segregated Georgia Tech, but Willis Ward talked him into playing so they could beat them while Ward was left out. Their friendship lasted into adulthood, as Ford campaigned for Willis Ward a Democrat and Ward campaigned for Ford a Republican.
Wow! Thanks for sharing I used to think of FDR as a great president, but now I'm having second thoughts. It's a shame how things were back then. It's crazy he outperformed all of his white colleagues, and was still not looked at. Somehow now in days everything is about "merit" all of a sudden. Funny how it wasn't back then.
Interesting - although I find it so unlikely that Hitler would have waved to him. Hitler was furious at the time.
That's so disappointing about FDR, but it was Eleanor who was seriously concerned about racial issues. FDR is indeed a great president on many fronts, but he wasn't perfect, and there are certainly some shameful lapses.
Interesting - although I find it so unlikely that Hitler would have waved to him. Hitler was furious at the time.
That's so disappointing about FDR, but it was Eleanor who was seriously concerned about racial issues. FDR is indeed a great president on many fronts, but he wasn't perfect, and there are certainly some shameful lapses.
(You should mention it in the Sports forum, too!)
Considering be was so Superior athletically, and Germany fought hard for that Olympics. I don't doubt he did the same way coaches in the NFL were back in the day.
Interesting - although I find it so unlikely that Hitler would have waved to him. Hitler was furious at the time.
I can believe it. People also don't know that Russia was instrumental to the Union winning the Civil War. I think it was Britain (don't quote me) that was going to interfere on behalf of the Union, and Russia sank their ships. Told them not to interfere with another country's internal affairs.
Interesting - although I find it so unlikely that Hitler would have waved to him. Hitler was furious at the time.
That's so disappointing about FDR, but it was Eleanor who was seriously concerned about racial issues. FDR is indeed a great president on many fronts, but he wasn't perfect, and there are certainly some shameful lapses.
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Originally Posted by Clarallel
Interesting - although I find it so unlikely that Hitler would have waved to him. Hitler was furious at the time.
That's so disappointing about FDR, but it was Eleanor who was seriously concerned about racial issues. FDR is indeed a great president on many fronts, but he wasn't perfect, and there are certainly some shameful lapses.
I can believe it. People also don't know that Russia was instrumental to the Union winning the Civil War. I think it was Britain (don't quote me) that was going to interfere on behalf of the Union, and Russia sank their ships. Told them not to interfere with another country's internal affairs.
Sorry, what does Russia helping the U.S. have to do with Hitler waving to Jesse Owens?
Anyway, I suppose it's perfectly possible that Hitler, mindful of appearances, was trying to seem fair and appreciative by waving.
Yeah, I get it. LMAO...this post is really about Republicans supposedly standing up for blacks, but that’s not the full picture.
See, Eisenhower also said this when African Americans were trying to attend Kansas City schools near their homes:
Quote:
At a White House stag dinner in February 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower shocked the new chief justice of the United States. Earl Warren was Eisenhower’s first appointment to the Supreme Court and had been sworn in just four months earlier. Only two months into his tenure, Warren had presided over oral arguments in the blockbuster school-segregation case Brown v. Board of Education. As of the dinner, the case was still under advisement. Yet Eisenhower seated Warren near one of the attorneys who had argued the case for the southern states, John W. Davis, and went out of his way to praise Davis as a great man. That alone would have made for an awkward evening. What happened next made it fateful. Over coffee, Eisenhower took Warren by the arm and asked him to consider the perspective of white parents in the Deep South. “These are not bad people,” the president said. “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks.”
So Ike may have invited Owens to the White House and appointed him to some meaningless job, but....where was his sympathy for young children that were forced to walk across a humongous dangerous rail yard to go to a school that wasn’t in their neighborhood?
So if you’re looking for a few blacks to come in here and show some gratitude because of a few crumbs, naaahhh...I’ll pass. I’m not giving credit to people for doing what should’ve been done as soon as this nation was freed from Britain in a war that African Americans fought their asses off in...not to mention that the first man to die in that struggle was black.
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