Lots of people know that Race, a biopic about Berlin Olympic Games hero Jesse Owens, opens on Feb. 19.
Lots of people know that Owens was an Ohio State University track star and won four gold medals in 1936 while a salty Nazi leader Adolph Hitler threw lots of shade.
How many people, however, know that Owens lived at 18561 Binder, a modest 814-square foot, three-bedroom home, in Detroit’s Conant Gardens community?
Yes, indeed, he resided in the black middle class enclave for several years during the 1940s while he worked for Ford Motor Company.
CAMPAIGN STUMPING IN 1936
After winning gold in Berlin, he campaigned for Alfred Landon, the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. president, against incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During a campaign stop at a church in Black Bottom, the African-American sprinter declared the following about blacks moving to the Democratic Party:
“It is all a mistake. My people are being misled by false promises, but I’m hopeful that they will regain their senses before Election Day. We owe a great deal to the party of Abraham Lincoln and in the privacy of the polling booth most of the colored voters will remember that.”
Owens also attended an October 19, 1936 gala at the famed Graystone Ballroom where St. Antoine Street saloon owner Roy Lightfoot was crowned mayor of Paradise Valley, the vibrant black cultural enclave nestled just north Gratiot Avenue and downtown Detroit.
CONANT GARDENS RESIDENT
From 1942 to 1945, he was director of minority employment at Ford Motor Company and later in a public relations role. The family of five included Jesse, his wife, Ruth, and their daughters Gloria, Beverly and Marlene. Ruth was an active a Girls Scout troop organizer. The daughters attended Atkinson Elementary School on East Hillsdale Street.
The neighborhood was a who’s who of Detroit automotive workers, doctors, lawyers, business owners, teachers and post workers. In fact, Elvin Davenport, famed attorney and future Recorder’s Court judge lived a few doors down. Dr. Lloyd Cofer, the Detroit Public Schools first black counselor and future Mackenzie High School principal, lived two streets west on Norwood. In spite of restrictive covenant clauses in residential deeds that forbidden blacks for becoming homeowners, which was the norm in Detroit, Conant Gardens was an oasis of land and opportunity. During the 19th century a white landowner and abolitionist named Schubael Conant omitted such language from land deeds. As early as 1925, blacks began purchasing lots on unpaved roads, building homes on 300 square-food lots, and creating a tight-knit neighborhoods on streets like Wexford, Norwood, Revere, Kliger and Binder between McNichols and Seven Mile Road.
Owens worked as an assistant personnel director for African American workers. He managed the process of hiring and firing employees as well as settling disputes between workers and management. He rose to the position of personnel director, but lost his job at the end of the war. He was replaced by Willis Ward, a star athlete at Northwestern High School and the University of Michigan. An attorney, Ward played college football with future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford and later became a Wayne County probate court judge.
During the 1940’s, Owens darted back and forth across the country to track events racing local speedsters—and even a horse.
Here’s a 1945 Pittsburgh Courier account penned by sports columnist Wendell Smith:
“In something like ten weeks Jesse has earned approximately $10,000, which is more than he ever earned from all the other enterprises with which he has been connected since he turned professional nine years ago.”
LIFE AFTER FORD MOTOR COMPANY
After being released at Ford Motor Company, Owens opened a sporting goods store in Detroit. But business was not plentiful and Owens went on the road to make money.
“I made a nice chunk of money this summer while on the coast and I think it would be advisable to go into some kind of business,” Owens said at the time in an October 20, 1945 published report in the Michigan Chronicle. “I’m not sure right now just what I want to do.”
Owens raced horses, toured with the famed basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters and the Cincinnati Crescents, a baseball team. The Owens moved west to Chicago in 1949, where he launched a public relations firm and later held executive positions with the Mutual of Omaha Insurance Corporation, the Illinois Athletic Commission, and the South Side Boys Club.
Owens was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George H. W. Bush and during the 1990s two U.S. postage stamps have been issued to honor him.
Jesse Owens died March 31, 1980 in Tucson, Arizona.
Ken Coleman, an author and historian, writes about Detroit black notable figures of the 1930’s, ‘40s and ‘50s in his book Million Dollars Worth of Nerve.
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