James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history".

How did Jesse Owens die?

A heavy smoker, Jesse Owens died of lung cancer on March 31, 1980, in Tucson, Arizona. He was 66. Four years after his death, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honour.

What was Jesse Owens sickness?

The son of a sharecropper and the grandson of enslaved people, Owens was a frail child who was often sick from battles with chronic bronchial congestion and pneumonia. Still, he was expected to work, and at the young age of seven he was picking up to 100 pounds of cotton a day to help his family put food on the table.