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Jesse & Luz. How to Respond to a Fascist Parade. [1]

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Date: 2025-05-07

Can’t sleep

I write this on the road in Alabama, between Muscle Shoals and Tuskegee. I can’t sleep—maybe that white BBQ sauce? No, it’s Fascism keeping me awake.

Yesterday, I saw a sign for the Jesse Owens Museum off the highway in this still rural area, and I did a quick u-turn to see where Jesse Owens was born in a sharecropper’s shack in 1913. The museum has a film of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, impressively narrated by Owens himself, describing the events with a newscaster’s precision.

Fascism

But what haunts me are the tens of thousands of Hitler youth crisply lined up in the Hueppe Platz outside the Olympic stadium, chanting Nazi slogans in youthful fervor. I knew that the Nazi Olympics were highly choreographed for filming by Leni Riefenstahl, after her Triumph of the Will. But I had forgotten how much effort Hitler had put into the games, including a long campaign to Aryanize sports in Germany, having his military parading with the Olympic athletes, and how tuned in to symbolism Hitler was.

Every gesture was interpreted or misinterpreted for whether it supported his Third Reich. The French athletes were giving the Olympic salute, not the Nazi one, right? Hitler was visibly upset that the Americans placed their hats over their hearts and refused to dip our flag to him. Hitler didn’t just snub Jesse Owens by refusing to shake his hand; he snubbed all the black athletes from the US who won and met the German winners privately.

Parades

What is it about Fascists and military parades? They love the symbols of power and the adoration of crowds. Are we really going to have a military parade to celebrate our Orange Fascist on his birthday next month? Yes, that’s what disturbs me. How can I sleep with those images of Hitler at the Nazi Olympics and imagining our Mango Mussolini aping him? Oh, I shouldn’t have had that banana pudding.

The Nazi Olympics 1936

Luz Long was born in the same year as Jesse Owens, to a wealthier family in Germany. He only had four siblings. Both Luz and his youngest brother would die in WWII. Like Jesse, Luz had also broken many records before competing here, and their long jump records were within inches.

Jesse was the youngest of ten kids, who all slept on the floor in one room in their shack. His teacher had misunderstood his nickname JC for James Cleveland as “Jesse”, and the undernourished boy didn’t correct her.

We all know, or should, that Jesse Owens led his team with four gold medals, setting an Olympic record in the 100 and a world record in the 200. We might remember that his gold medal for the world record 4 by 100 relay was shared with his teammates, two white and one black, and that Ralph Metcalfe stood on the podium, to make it clear to Hitler that Jesse Owens wasn’t the only black athlete to take medals away from the Nazis in those games.

A simple act of friendship

But for all the choreography, threats of boycotts and political statements, Jesse described how important the simple sportsmanship shown by his friend Luz Long was. Jesse was within a jump of being disqualified before the long jump finals, when his chief rival Luz came over and helped him use the tape to mark his start. In the finals, Luz took the lead with an impressive jump, but when Jesse beat him, Luz was the first to run over and congratulate him.

The unscripted kindness and real friendship between the two athletes was a shocking contrast in black and white before the vast Nazi propaganda. Luz walked arm in arm with Jesse back along the sand, completely ignoring the small man in the high tower box above, later responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and six million others, including Poles, Romani, homosexuals, and political opponents. They took a lap together, angering many in the crowd. The world press loved the images of the two men together, and they genuinely admired each other. Jesse would exchange photos with Luz’s family for the rest of his life, and when Jesse returned to Berlin decades later, he recreated the famous photo of the two of them lying on the grass above with Luz’s son Kai.

Embarrassing Hitler

No, embarrassing Hitler repeatedly at his Nazi Olympics didn’t prevent the slaughter and horrors of the war to come. But in showing athletic excellence at the highest level, Jesse Owens earned the respect of the world, under great pressure, and he and his teammates personally disproved the lie of Aryan master-race superiority. And in earning the respect of a rival German competitor, Jesse Owens and Luz Long also demonstrated friendship between people of different backgrounds, even in the face of state-sponsored hate.

Embarrassing Trump

I understand there are some protests planned for Benito Cheeto‘s birthday. I hope that they contrast the demand for basic human decency against illegal detentions, constitutional rights against abuse of power, and free speech over propaganda. I don’t know what image or story will be remembered from the protests being organized now, but I suspect it will be unscripted, fresh and authentic, perhaps a moment of kindness that captures our shared humanity, against the ridiculous grandiosity of a tyrant’s ego.

Statue of Jesse Owens above the fields his family worked in Alabama, where he ran as a kid.

Yes, I will dream of some unknown protester who finds the perfect way to humiliate our modern Fascist monstrosity. Hitler’s frown conveying his concern that the optics are escaping him, that’s the image I need to see. Now I can go back to sleep.

Thanks for reading.

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