Jesse Owens and the Rhetoric of Athletic Achievement
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts CONSTITUTING THE IDEAL AMERICAN: JESSE OWENS AND THE RHETORIC OF ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENT A Thesis in Communication Arts and Sciences by Bonnie J. Sierlecki © 2008 Bonnie J. Sierlecki Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts December 2008 The thesis of Bonnie J. Sierlecki was reviewed and approved* by the following: Jeremy Engels Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Thesis Advisor Thomas W. Benson Professor of Speech Communication and Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric J. Michael Hogan Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences James P. Dillard Head and Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii ABSTRACT This thesis argues that Jesse Owens, Olympic track star and hero of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, has been used as a symbolic figure to rhetorically constitute American ideals through his sporting achievements, and that such a constitution is beneficial in helping various rhetors to accomplish other rhetorical tasks. Beginning with Gerald Ford, who awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Owens, the presidency has consistently and repeatedly upheld Owens as an example of the ideal American in order to reinforce nationalism and to provide citizens with a model for how they ought to live. Through his autobiographies, Owens negotiates the tension between his status as an ideal American and the racial discrimination he experienced by maintaining that he accomplished his athletic feats and overcame hardships through strength of character and by accepting personal responsibility for his success rather than blaming his misfortunes on social conditions. The Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum rhetorically induces a nationalistic argument that Owens‘s athletic achievements in the 1936 Olympics served as a triumph over the Nazi ideology and as an example of a citizen attaining the American Dream, while ignoring ongoing racial tensions in the United States throughout Owens‘s lifetime. Owens and his athletic achievements function as a particularly useful symbol because they allow speakers to accomplish a variety of significant rhetorical tasks: to reinforce American nationalism, to help citizens cope with the disparity between promised American ideals and reality, to re-imagine historical attitudes toward race, and to bolster the myth of the American Dream. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………….1 Methodology ……………………………………………………………………...7 Jesse Owens: ―The Man Who Outran Hitler‖ …………………………………...10 Rhetoric and Sport ………………………………………………………………15 Chapter Outlines ………………………………………………………………...20 Chapter 2. TRIUMPH FOR JESSE OWENS, TRIUMPH FOR AMERICA: THE PRESIDENCY AND THE RHETORIC OF ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENT …………..26 Sport and the American Presidency ……………………………………………..29 The Presidential Medal of Freedom ……………………………………………..33 Gerald Ford: Presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesse Owens ……………………………………………………………………..36 Following Ford‘s Lead: Presidential Rhetoric on Jesse Owens ………………...42 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………...51 Chapter 3. ―THE MAN WHO OUTRAN HITLER‖: ATHLETICISM AND CHARACTER IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF JESSE OWENS …………………54 Rhetoric and Autobiography ……………………………………………………58 Blackthink: My Life as a Black Man and a White Man ………………………...61 Jesse: A Spiritual Autobiography and Jesse: The Man Who Outran Hitler …….71 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………...80 Chapter 4. REMEMBERING THE AMERICAN DREAM, FORGETTING AMERICAN RACISM: THE JESSE OWENS MEMORIAL PARK AND MUSEUM ……………...84 Sport and Memory ………………………………………………………………87 Remembering Jesse Owens: The Jesse Owens Memorial Park and Museum …..95 Conclusions …………………………………………………………………….105 Chapter 5. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………...110 Appendix: Presidential Medal of Freedom Winners in Sport………………………….130 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...131 Notes ……..…………………………………………………………………………….138 iv Chapter One: Introduction Young children often describe professional athletes as their heroes. Perceiving professional athletes to be successful adults, children can recognize admirable qualities in their favorite sporting figures: hard work, determination, passion, talent, the ability to overcome obstacles, sportsmanship, and good character. But athletes are not just praised by children. In a society yearning for positive role models and sources of inspiration, sporting figures are often cited as heroic. Sometimes, these athletes earn their ―hero‖ labels in part from what they have accomplished outside the sporting arena. Lance Armstrong overcame testicular cancer en route to winning the Tour de France an unprecedented seven times. Pat Tillman was admired for walking away from a $3.6 million dollar contract with the National Football League‘s Arizona Cardinals in 2002 to serve in the Iraq War, where he was killed by friendly fire two years later in Afghanistan.1 Many athletes are commended for their charity work and philanthropy, for instance, Tiger Woods. In addition being recognized as one of the greatest golfers in history and being one of the first minorities to break through in the historically elite sport, Woods is also one of the biggest charity draws in professional sports. The Tiger Woods Foundation reported a net worth of $37 million in 2007.2 Other sporting figures are admired predominantly for their athletic prowess, such as Major League Baseball player Cal Ripken, Jr. and his ―iron man‖ streak of 2,632 consecutive games played over sixteen seasons.3 Another example is National Basketball Association star Michael Jordan, often heralded as the greatest basketball player of all time and credited with popularizing the sport around the world. Still, other athletes are respected for being social pioneers in addition to their physical talents. Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron are honored for 1 breaking the color barrier in professional baseball, while Venus and Serena Williams are touted as role models for minority women hoping to excel in tennis, a traditionally white, upper-class sport. Athletes are admired for many reasons and by many people. Even our nation‘s political leaders routinely express their admiration for athletic accomplishments by honoring American sporting figures at the White House in public ceremonies. Some athletes have been officially recognized as American heroes through awards and commemorations. For instance, in 1976, Gerald Ford was the first president to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an athlete by honoring U.S. Olympic track hero Jesse Owens, who won a record four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.4 By presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesse Owens, Ford needed to explain how Owens‘s feats of athleticism merited recognition by contributing toward the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, and/or cultural endeavors—the criteria for bestowing the medal. Thus, Ford had to make a rhetorical connection between Owens‘s athletic achievements and American ideals in order to explain his worthiness of being awarded the Medal of Freedom. To put it more simply, awarding Jesse Owens with the Medal of Freedom meant recognizing Owens as a symbol of what it means to be a good American. Following Ford‘s lead, subsequent administrations have awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to such notable sports figures as Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Arthur Ashe, Hank Aaron, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, and Joe DiMaggio.5 Whether it is the President of the United States or an average American who upholds a successful athlete as deserving of admiration by others, explaining their 2 veneration of the sporting figure requires that rhetorical links be made between athletic accomplishment and widely accepted American ideals. This thesis proposes to study the relationship between sport, athletic achievement, and American ideals—specifically, how are American ideals constituted rhetorically through the celebration of sporting achievement, and for what purposes? To explore this proposition, I will investigate how Jesse Owens, Olympic track and field hero, is repeatedly upheld as an ideal American by different speakers because of his unprecedented athletic accomplishments during the politically charged 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The idea that Jesse Owens symbolically embodies American ideals through his record-setting performance in the 1936 Olympics is an intriguing one, because as a black man, Owens certainly did not fit the prototype of an ideal American. In Heroes Without a Country, Donald McRae points to Jesse Owens and Joe Louis as the two athletes who ―changed everything‖ by becoming the ―first black stars in American sports‖ during a time when America was still deeply segregated.6 At the time, Owens‘s athletic abilities were accounted for in racial terms by Dean Cromwell, the U.S. team‘s sprint coach: ―[T]he negro athlete excels because he is closer to the primitive than the white athlete. It was not so long ago that that his ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle.‖7 Owens was looked down upon, even derided, as a black man. Yet he was also celebrated as an American hero because of his performance in the Olympics. In such a way, Owens poses a curious paradox. By examining how Owens‘s athletic achievements are rhetorically constituted as upholding and reinforcing strong American ideals, we can reveal how such a contradiction is reconciled.