The Great Depression :: essays research papers

Cut wages, growing unemployment, poverty, and suffering were unforgettable experiences during the bulky Depression of the thirties. Many people learned to face these hard quantify with the help of famous sports figures. They gave hope and to many people hook in what they stood for to them.One of these great sports figures who helped Americans was boxer Joe Louis. In 1936 he fought the world hotshot Max Schmeling and had his first lose. Max Schmeling was a German boxer and the Nazis equated his triumph over Joe Louis as a Nazi superiority over American democracy. Once again the two boxers, Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, fought in 1938 and this time Joe Louis win in the first round. This was an enormous lift for Americans. It was a supremacy for democracy. Joe Louis was overly an inspiration to the African American people. He was a famous African American boxer and had beaten a German boxer who was as Hitler believed the perfect race. This gave the African Americans self-respect and pride in who they were. African Americans pointed with pride to athletes like Joe Louis, who was the world heavyweight boxing champion. (Cayton, Perry, Winkler, 764 ) Louis also went on to fetch a hero for the war effort and gave inspirational speeches.Jesse Owens great accomplishments on the track field made him one of the most famous in history. While on the Ohio State University track team in 1935 he set a world record in the broad interchange (26 feet 8 1/4 ). In 1936 he set a new world record in the 100m. dash,(10.2 sec.). In 1936 as a member of the U.S. track team at the Olympic games in Berlin, Jesse Owens won quaternion gilded medals and set more new world records. This is an authoritative moral buster to the American people, white and black, because once again it showed Nazis were not a superior race. An African American man had won four gold medals. This was humiliating and angered Adolf Hitler . His paramont victory at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin was made e ven more memorable when Adolf Hitler refused to award Owens his four gold medals because he was black. ( Encyclopedia 97 ) This was as much a victory for the American people as for Owens. It was especially important to the African Americans because it was an recognition of his Olympic victories because he was black.