Jesse Owens

CTL-E-5963 · Person · other · 1913–1980

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07199 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5963.

Jesse Owens (James Cleveland Owens, born September 12, 1913, Oakville, Alabama; died March 31, 1980, Tucson, Arizona, of lung cancer, aged 66) was the track athlete whose four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics became the century's most famous athletic refutation of a racial doctrine. His family moved to Cleveland in 1922; at East Technical High School he tied the national 100-yard record of 9.4 seconds as a senior. At Ohio State — in an era without athletic scholarships, working part-time jobs — he produced sport's most famous afternoon: on May 25, 1935, at Ann Arbor, he set three world records and tied a fourth in about forty-five minutes, across the 100-yard dash, the long jump, the 220-yard dash, and the 220-yard low hurdles. In Berlin in August 1936 he won the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and the 4×100-meter relay, the relay in a world-record 39.8 seconds. He came home to segregation and financial hardship. The nation honored him late: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 and a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal in 1990.

The record

• Also known as: James Cleveland Owens

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Jesse Owens entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5963 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche, ranks #751–#1400 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1069). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — the defining Black athlete of the pre-war era; core scope. His Ohio State edge is blocked — only the university's football organization is homed — and documented. Vital status: DECEASED — died March 31, 1980, aged 66 (BlackPast). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): May 25, 1935, Ann Arbor: three world records set and a fourth tied in about 45 minutes (BlackPast; Simple Wikipedia). Some accounts round the afternoon to “four world records” — the set-three-tied-one framing is the standard record and is carried. Berlin 1936: four golds; the 4×100m relay won in a world-record 39.8 seconds. Presidential Medal of Freedom 1976; Congressional Gold Medal 1990 (posthumous). MEDIA: photo HELD (Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5963-jesse-owens.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Sources

• BlackPast, "Owens, Jesse (1913–1980)" (accessed 2026-10-16) — the scholarly project's record: the Oakville birth, the Cleveland move, East Technical, the Ohio State years and the May 25, 1935 records, the four Berlin golds, and the March 31, 1980 Tucson death — https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/owens-jesse-1913-1980/ (primary source · build store)
• Simple Wikipedia, "Jesse Owens" (accessed 2026-10-16) — plain-language corroboration of the 1935 afternoon (three world records set, one tied, in about 45 minutes), the Berlin four golds, and the 39.8-second relay record — https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens (build store)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Jesse Owens', accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5963 · Combined Graph record U-07199 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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