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Though Owen once admitted, "At times I have come close to violence.
I came closest on the day that Martin Luther King was shot. I had
known and loved Martin long before he came to national prominence.
As I sat grieving, the long buried smell of the Alabama cotton fields
rose to stifle my senses. We’d spent centuries slaving in manure
to grow one man like that, and he has been snuffed out as if he
were a candle."
After
escaping a four-year prison term for non-payment of taxes in 1965,
he was caught in the middle of the black power rows during the Mexico
Olympic games. He became the target when he tried to intervene on
behalf of the US Olympic Committee. There was even conflict at home
with his three daughters into the civil rights movement. Returning
from Mexico he penned the book Black Think, in which he attacked
the black power movement as pro-Negro bigots. It was powerful material
and got a mixed reaction in the black press, so much so that two
years later he published another book called I have changed,
in which, he disowned some of his previous statements and philosophy.
Last
Decade
Throughout
the 70s, Jesse became an Olympic elder statesman, raising funds,
attending banquets, making speeches, becoming what one writer described
as a "Professional good example, a combination of 19th century
spellbinder and 20th century PR man." 1971 started with serious
health problems. He suffered a severe attack of pneumonia, which
almost killed him. This forced him to quit smoking, which he had
enjoyed since his teens.
A
jolt came to Jesse while he was regaining his health. Ralph Metcalfe,
his old rival died of heart attack in 1978. Later that year, Jesse
took ill while filming an American Express commercial and was rushed
to hospital. He was diagnosed with lung cancer, most probably caused
by cigarette smoking. The condition was inoperable and he returned
home in Phoenix, Arizona.
March
31, 1980 was the day when the sprinter took off to the immortal
world touching the final finishing ribbon. Tributes poured in from
around the world. President Carter said, "Perhaps no athlete
better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and
racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and
record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others.
His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas,
and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans."
Amid
heavy snowfall, more than 2,000 people turned out at his funeral
at the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago and the most
poignant line was reserved for one speaker who said, "No doubt
the first man to meet him at pearly gates will be Ralph Metcalfe,
saying ‘I beat you this time’.
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