By Sebastian C. Romero, Assistant Entertainment Editor & Assistant Photo Director
Since Black History Month is under way, The Pulse is writing about people that should be appreciated during this month, and beyond. I’m going to be writing about a person who set a World Record in the long jump at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and also went unrivaled for 25 years. That person who did it all was a person named Jesse Owens.
Owens was born in Alabama on Sept. 12, 1913. As a kid, he was a sickly child. He was one out of 10 sons, and he often couldn’t help his father and brothers out on the fields, because he was too frail. But even though Owens was too frail to help out on the fields, but it didn’t stop him. By high school, he was excelling as an athlete to the point where his coach said that he seemed to float over the ground every time he started running.
He also excelled athletically in college, breaking three world records in one day at Ohio State University before the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin where he achieved a lot. Owens won four gold medals at the Olympics that year by doing the 100- and 200-meter dashes.
Owens was a heavy smoker. On March 31, 1980, he died due to lung cancer. He was 66. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was also posthumously awarded with the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990.