Track & field athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, attracting attention and stirring up controversy as a Black man excelling in a country based on white supremacy under the control of Hitler.
He also had roots in Cleveland where his family moved from Alabama in 1922 as part of the Great Migration and attended East Tech High School and the Ohio State University, where he excelled as an athlete.
Now a new memorial site is being created in University Circle, at the site of the Jesse Owens Olympic Oak Tree in Rockefeller Park. It will include paths, seating, and public art, including memorial markers and quotes from Owens on a podium seat wall.
Local landscape firm DERU is designing the layout, and Tremont-based ceramic artist Angelica Pozo, who created the tile art at the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Memoiral Plaza just a few blocks away, is responsible for the art component. That includes the podium seat wall, which will also feature words about dreams and challenges based on community input she’ll transcribe onto the mosaic.
You can offer your feedback and thoughts for both the design of the new plaza and the mosaic wall here. You can also learn more about the project at this page.
universitycircle.org/jesse-owens-olympic-oak-plaza