On August 9, 1936, African American track star Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin. In their strong showing in track-and-field events, Jesse Owens and other African American athletes struck a propaganda blow against Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who planned to use the Berlin Games as a showcase of supposed Aryan superiority. However, Nazi newspapers demeaned them by writing of them as “black auxiliaries” of the American team.
