Who Was Jesse Owens?

ISBN-10: 0448483076
ISBN-13: 9780448483078
Author: Buckley, James, Jr.
Illustrated by: Copeland, Gregory
Interest Level: 3-7
Publisher: Penguin Random House

Publication Date: August 2015

Copyright: 2015

Page Count: 112

Series: Who Was...?

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$5.59
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Interest Level

Grades 3-7

Reading Level

Guided Reading: X
Lexile: 880L
Accelerated Reader Level: 5.9
Accelerated Reader Points: 1.0

BISAC Subjects

JUVENILE NONFICTION / Sports & Recreation / Olympics

JUVENILE NONFICTION / People & Places / United States / African American

Description
At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story. Born in rural Alabama under the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Owens's family suffered many hardships. As a boy he worked several jobs like delivering groceries and working in a shoe repair shop to make ends meet. But Owens defied the odds tobecome a sensational student athlete, eventually running track for Ohio State. He was chosen to compete in the Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler was promoting the idea of "Aryan superiority." Owens's winning streak at the games humiliated Hitler and crushed the myth of racial supremacy once and for all.