Learning From Crayons

It is 1936. Amer­i­can Jesse Owens seems sure to win the long jump com­pe­ti­tion in the Olympic games. The pre­vi­ous year he had jumped 26 feet, 8 1/4 inches — a record that will stand for 25 years.

As he walks to the long-jump pit, how­ever, Owens sees a tall, blue eyed, blond Ger­man tak­ing prac­tice jumps in the 26-foot range. Owens feels ner­vous. He is acutely aware of the Nazis’ desire to prove “Aryan supe­ri­or­ity.” As a black son of a share crop­per, he knows what it is like to feel infe­rior.

On his first jump, Owens inad­ver­tently leaps from sev­eral inches beyond the take­off board. Rat­tled, he fouls on his sec­ond attempt, too. One more foul and he will be elim­i­nated. At this point, the tall Ger­man intro­duces him­self as Luz Long.

“You should be able to qual­ify with your eyes closed!” he says to Owens.

For the next few moments, the African Amer­i­can and the white model of Nazi man­hood chat together. Then Long makes a sug­ges­tion. Since the qual­i­fy­ing dis­tance is only 23 feet, 5 1/2 inches, why not make a mark sev­eral inches before the take­off board and jump from there, just to play it safe?

Owens does and qual­i­fies eas­ily. In the finals, Owens sets an Olympic record and earns the sec­ond of four gold medals. But who is the first per­son to con­grat­u­late him? Luz Long — in full view of Adolph Hitler.

Owens never again sees Long, who is later killed in World War II.

“You could melt down all the medals and cups I have,” Owens later writes, “and they wouldn’t be a plat­ing on the 24-carat friend­ship I felt for Luz Long.”

Per­haps unknow­ingly, Luz Long taught the world a valu­able les­son. Some­one else put it like this:

“We can learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp ..some are pretty…some are dull…some have weird names…and all are dif­fer­ent col­ors. But they all have to learn to live in the same box.”

So do we.