Lecture Date: February 18, 2016
The Hirschler Fleischer Lecture
In 1936, against a backdrop of flying swastikas and goose-stepping storm troopers, an African American son of sharecroppers won an astonishing four Olympic gold medals, and in the process, single-handily crushed Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man and of what happens when sports and geopolitics collide on a world stage.
Speaker: Jeremy Schaap
Jeremy Schaap is an alumnus of Cornell University and the son of legendary sports writer Dick Schaap. He is an eight-time Emmy award winner for his work on ESPN’s SportsCenter and the author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, which was a New York Times best-seller, in addition to Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. His work has been published in Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine, Time, Parade, and the New York Times. According to author Jonathan Eig, “Schaap is a wonderful storyteller, and, like Jesse Owens, he makes the astonishing look easy.” According to Ken Burns, Schaap’s book has added “even more luster to the indelibly heroic achievements of Jesse Owens.”