Jesse Owens.

In the 1960s, Owens was invited back to Berlin and given a hero’s welcome at the same stadium where he had won his Olympic medals. The mayor told him that the last time he was there, Adolf Hitler refused to shake his hand, but that day he was proud to give him both hands. Owens then ran a ceremonial lap as the crowd cheered.

Even though he defeated the top German athletes in the 1936 Olympics, the German people liked him. Crowds of 110,000 cheered him in Berlin’s glittering Olympic Stadium, and fans sought his autograph and picture when he walked the streets. In 1982, Berlin renamed the avenue leading to the Olympic stadium Jesse Owens Allee in his honor; his widow and family attended the dedication as guests of the German government.

While Adolf Hitler was not fond of Jesse Owens as a black man per se, he never snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand. Hitler shook hands with only the German winners on the first day of the Olympics, and when Olympic officials demanded that he either shake hands with every medalist or none, he chose not to publicly greet any.

The runner he beat in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Summer Olympics was Jackie Robinson’s brother, Matthew Mack Robinson, who also beat the world record at the time while taking the silver medal.

Owens became famous for beating horses in a 100-yard dash, but there was a trick: they used a starting gun, which startled the horse long enough to give Owens a head start to win.

He won four gold medals in Track & Field 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

He was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983 as a charter member.

During the 1968 Mexico City games, Owens was called in to talk to black athletes to ease tension after the banishment of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. After the meeting, he was seen leaving in tears because he felt unable to reach the more radical athletes who saw him as an Uncle Tom.

Owens was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans.

He once worked for exploitation titan Kroger Babb, traveling with the movie Mom and Dad 1945 with an all-black crew serving African American theaters, delivering a lecture on sex hygiene during intermission.

Ironically, Owens was not originally intended to be part of the relay team in the 1936 Olympic Games. He and Ralph Metcalfe replaced Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jewish members of the 1936 Olympic track team.

In 2014, Eric Brown, British fighter pilot, stated in a BBC documentary that he witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulating him. Additionally, a 1936 Baltimore Sun article reported that Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself.