The world must rise in unison…
We are often told that politics and sports should never mix.
And yet it is fair to state that this maxim has never stood up to scrutiny — then and now.
Some of the worst leaders — democratic and autocratic — have found popular sports as a means of shoring up their position with the masses.
This was no different for General Franco of Spain as it was for Germany’s elected Chancellor in 1933.
Even though Adolf Hitler had consolidated his grip on power by the time the 1936 Olympiad rolled by, the Fuhrer felt compelled to send the message to the rest of the world that its brand of nationalism was better than everything which had come before it and it came as a rude shock when the African-American —Jesse Owens —irrevocably shattered any notion of Aryan superiority on the running tracks of Munich.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw no contradiction between his policies which excluded Blacks from the enjoying the benefits of the New Deal and using one of its greatest fighters — Joe Louis —to fight the German, Max Schmeling, to prove to the rest of humanity that American exceptionalism was morally superior to Western Europe’s genocidal fascism.