Jesse Who?: Race, the Southern Press, and the 1936 Olympic Games

Abstract

This study examines the ways that news of African Americans was presented to white readers in the United States during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. A content analysis of articles and photographs from 83 daily newspapers from 24 states found that whereas newspapers throughout the country exhibited a number of forms of racism, those in the Deep South were particularly aggressive in their anti-African American message. This was accomplished by minimizing and censoring news of Jesse Owens and other successful African American athletes, and by depicting African Americans as Coons, Mammies, and Bucks—minstrel character roles that had been used for decades to marginalize and humiliate blacks. Balanced or conflicting coverage was never offered to readers in the Deep South. Although the story of Jesse Owens remained temporarily unavailable to most readers there, African Americans made the news when they were associated with crime. Meanwhile, readers outside of the Deep South were able to see more of Jesse Owens, the iconic figure who “defeated whites at their own game” while remaining humble and dignified. As such, he was perhaps the first African American athletic figure who defied the traditional minstrel character stereotype.