Very recommendable! I thought, I was quite familiar with the Jesse Owens story until now. E.g. I was not aware (or I forgot) that he wrote an autobiography. This is mind boggling!
"... “The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals,” he wrote in his 1970 book, Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man. “The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at. Life is the real Olympics.” ...
You’ll discover that a snub more disgraceful than anything Hitler could have done was “progressive” Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to invite only the white American Olympians to the White House [Indeed, FDR was not such a great president for other reasons as well!] and keep Jesse out. ...
He resisted what he disparaged as “blackthink,” the idea that all blacks should think alike and spend their days in bitter resentment. He was a rugged individualist, not a collectivist fool. He loved America and never condemned the nation for the sins of a few. He never wallowed in victimology. He lived his life according to the Golden Rule. ...
His name is still widely recognized but mostly for what he did in 1936, and not much for what he ever said. That’s unfortunate because Jesse said and wrote many things that deserve attention today. ...
“I’m no scholar in history but I don’t think you have to be a PhD to see the striking, disgusting similarity between all forms of tyranny. Suppressing the personal identity of the individual into some group, the end justifying the means, force instead of freedom. These are what make every despot and potential despot tick, whether it be a Hitler, a George Lincoln Rockwell, a KKK’er, or a black militant…I’ve seen the despotism of the spirit drive out almost everything else good in a man, day after day, sometimes hour by hour, until he’s a fanatic wooden stereotype.” ...
""... But prejudice isn’t violence. I’m not saying bigotry isn’t rotten. But the line between the man who pulls a gun on me and the bigot who pulls a prejudice on me is a thick line. And if we handle them both the same way, we’re trading liberty for the jungle. The man who thinks Negroes are inferior and won’t have anything to do with them is stupid, maybe sick. But in the United States he has the right to be those things as long as he doesn’t back up his ideas as the KKK or the blackthinkers have—with fists and fires and ropes.” ..."
You’ll discover that a snub more disgraceful than anything Hitler could have done was “progressive” Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to invite only the white American Olympians to the White House [Indeed, FDR was not such a great president for other reasons as well!] and keep Jesse out. ...
He resisted what he disparaged as “blackthink,” the idea that all blacks should think alike and spend their days in bitter resentment. He was a rugged individualist, not a collectivist fool. He loved America and never condemned the nation for the sins of a few. He never wallowed in victimology. He lived his life according to the Golden Rule. ...
His name is still widely recognized but mostly for what he did in 1936, and not much for what he ever said. That’s unfortunate because Jesse said and wrote many things that deserve attention today. ...
“I’m no scholar in history but I don’t think you have to be a PhD to see the striking, disgusting similarity between all forms of tyranny. Suppressing the personal identity of the individual into some group, the end justifying the means, force instead of freedom. These are what make every despot and potential despot tick, whether it be a Hitler, a George Lincoln Rockwell, a KKK’er, or a black militant…I’ve seen the despotism of the spirit drive out almost everything else good in a man, day after day, sometimes hour by hour, until he’s a fanatic wooden stereotype.” ...
""... But prejudice isn’t violence. I’m not saying bigotry isn’t rotten. But the line between the man who pulls a gun on me and the bigot who pulls a prejudice on me is a thick line. And if we handle them both the same way, we’re trading liberty for the jungle. The man who thinks Negroes are inferior and won’t have anything to do with them is stupid, maybe sick. But in the United States he has the right to be those things as long as he doesn’t back up his ideas as the KKK or the blackthinkers have—with fists and fires and ropes.” ..."
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