At the 1936 Berlin Olympics — staged by Adolf Hitler as a showcase for Aryan supremacy — African American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals (100m, 200m, long jump, 4x100m relay), becoming the most successful athlete of the Games. His victories were a powerful repudiation of Nazi racial ideology, witnessed by 110,000 spectators in the Olympic Stadium. The story that Hitler refused to shake Owens' hand became one of the great narratives of sporting history, though the truth was more nuanced. Owens returned to an America that celebrated him briefly but still enforced segregation — he was not invited to the White House and had to enter his own reception through the back door.
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