Documentary honors Jesse Owens, Archie Williams and other stars of 1936 Olympics
He is 92 years old and has been breaking racial barriers for most of his life, and he is about the best antidote you could ever find to the toxic rants of Donald Sterling. Not that Herb Douglas, the oldest living Olympic medalist, would make that claim himself. He’s too busy, and too productive, to let the likes of Sterling derail him, and the latest evidence is “The Renaissance Period of The African American In Sports,” a documentary that will premiere at the Walter Reade Theatre in Lincoln Center on May 15.
Douglas is the executive producer of the 22-minute film, which focuses on how the exploits of nine African-American track and field stars in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin not only shredded Adolf Hitler’s Aryan supremacy theory, but had an even greater impact at home.
Douglas was a 14-year-old emerging football and track star in Pittsburgh when Hitler’s Olympics unfolded, a kid who read about the feats of the great Jesse Owens, Archie Williams and Pitt’s John Woodruff in the Pittsburgh Courier, perhaps the most influential African-American newspaper in the country then. In all, nine African-American track athletes hauled in 13 medals — four of them by Owens.
“It really motivated me,” said Douglas, who lives in Philadelphia. “It made us believe that we African-Americans — Negroes at the time — could do as well as anybody. We needed that. There were no African-Americans in baseball, football or basketball. We didn’t have any idols. Then those Games came and it changed everything.”
In introducing the film, Gabby Douglas, gymnastics star of the London Games in 2012 (and no relation to Herb), seconds the opinion, saying that “it’s upon the broad shoulders of these courageous pioneers that we all stand.”
Directed by Bob Lott, a filmmaker who goes back over 30 years with Douglas, the film intersperses footage of the medalists, including Owens, high jump gold medalist Cornelius Johnson and Woodruff, who won the 800 meters in one of the most stirring races in Olympic annals, with commentary from Harrison Dillard, a four-time gold medalist in 1948 and 1952; legendary hurdler Edwin Moses; and Cedric Jones, former NFL receiver and athletic director of the New York Athletic Club.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/score-film-honors-african-american-stars-36-games-article-1.1778208
http://thesource.com/2014/05/17/highlights-from-the-renaissance-period-of-the-african-american-in-sports-premiere/
