Disproving Hitler: African-Americans In The 1936 Olympics

Disproving Hitler; African-Americans in the 1936 Olympics

I. Introduction

A. Hook: “the Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians."stated the President of the American Olympic Committee Avery Brundage. He stated this when there was ongoing questioning if the United States Olympic team would boycott the Games that were being lead by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler due to the rise of a viewpoint that did not coincide with the American team's outlook on racial qualification. (Ockerman).

B. Thesis: In the 1936 Summer Olympic Games that were ran by Hitler and the Nazis, there was tremendous success by African American track and field athlete Jesse Owens and various other African-American Athletes, enhancing the significance and

Hitler’s Olympics: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime ran Germany and helped modernize the Games, but they also pushed their Aryan chauvinistic viewpoint. A. New Advancements. The 1936 Berlin Games modernized the games . and brought in new technology and traditions still happening today.

1. For the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the 1936 Berlin Games were able to be spread to a wider audience. The Games were televised for the initial time, being viewed all around the Berlin area (“Berlin 1936”).

2. The tradition of the Olympic torch being relayed from Olympia, Greece to the host city is a tradition everyone knows. The first Olympic Games to introduce this torch relay was the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics (“Berlin 1936”).

3. The 1936 Olympics were the first modern Olympics to put politics and nationalism into the games. These controversial aspects have continued on from 1936 to present day (Ockerman).

4. The 1936 Olympic Games also used telex transmissions to transmit results. The Games also used zeppelins to transfer newsreel to other European Cities. These games were very technologically advanced and started the movement of modern Olympics (“Berlin 1936 Olympic

Because of Jesse Owens success at the Olympics, he was promised various deals with companies. However, very few of them were truthful with their words (Schaap 234).

C. Conclude/Transition: Jesse Owens and other African-American athletes had great success at the 1936 Summer Olympics. They helped bring to light issues of race back home in America even if not every American understood their accomplishments.

IV. Enhancing African-Americans’ relevance in the sports industry topic sentence: In America black athletes were still not treated as equally as white athletes, but the athletic performance of African-Americans in the 1936 Berlin Games helped show these inequalities.

A. Impact on Americans. These performances helped show white America that just because Jesse Owens and other athletes had more pigment in their skin, they still need to be treated with respect and dignity.

1. The hypocrisy of Americans was made clear when Owens returned home and was praised by both white and black press for proving Hitler’s bigoted views were not true, but he still had to abide by American laws segregating him from the white male (Schaap