Did You Know? Uncomfortable Facts.

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Jesse Owens was an African-American athlete who participated for Team USA in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, during Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and the run-up to World War 2.

Owens went on to win four gold medals, thoroughly crushing and debunking Hitler's race-based declaration of the superiority of German athletes. Owens also became the most famous competitor at the games. (Because of Hitler's racist and anti-semetic policies, two American-Jewish athletes, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were replaced on the American 4X100 relay team.)

While in Germany, Owens shared travel and lodging accommodations with white athletes (which did not happen in segregated Jim Crow America)which the Nazis allowed to give cover to their campaign of persecuting Jews. Upon returning to America, Owens was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City. After the parade, Owens was not allowed to walk through the front door of the Waldorf-Astroria Hotel to attend the reception in his honor. Instead, he had to take the freight elevator. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Yes, FDR) never sent a congratulatory telegram or invited Owens to the White House to congratulate him for his Olympic victory, nor did FDR celebrate any other Black Olympians.

On a limited basis, Owens could help defeat racism abroad, but couldn't escape racism in the "Land of the Free", the good ol' USA.