At the U.S. track and field Olympic trials in 1948, long jumper Herb Douglas knew just where to look in the stands for inspiration. His idol, Jesse Owens, was watching the events to decide the group that would compete at the London Games.

Twelve years earlier, Douglas was a 14-year-old Black athlete showing promise as a sprinter and long jumper, the same events in which Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and helped crumble Adolf Hitler’s plans of furthering Nazi “master race” propaganda.

In a brief encounter, Douglas told Owens about his times and jump distances, and Owens told the teen to keep striving. It became a life-changing moment for Douglas. And on that sultry mid-July day in 1948 in Chicago, Douglas had a chance to nail down a spot on the Olympic team.

“In that small way, I was following Jesse,” said Douglas, who won a bronze medal in the long jump in London and went on to honor Owens by creating two international sports awards in his name.

Douglas, who died April 22 at a health-care facility in Pittsburgh at 101, had been the oldest living U.S. Olympic medalist.

Douglas was quick to note, however, that even Owens’s fame could do nothing against the racism of the time. In London, Douglas and the other Black male athletes on the U.S. track team slept apart on cots in a military Quonset hut, he said. When they returned home, their medals and achievements brought only momentary status.

“Put yourself in my position,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2020. “You couldn’t go down and sit on the first floor of your local movie theater. You had to go to the back. Down South, African Americans had to go to the back of the bus. You can understand why African Americans held together and were working to beat the world.”

At the Olympics — the first held since 1936 because of World War II — Douglas was among three Americans to the make the long jump finals, along with Willie Steele and Lorenzo Wright. Later that afternoon at Wembley Stadium, Steele was nursing an ankle injury. But his first jump was an Olympic record, 7.825 meters (25 feet, 8 inches.) No one else was close.

Douglas took the bronze with 7.545 meters (24-9), just behind the silver medalist, Theodore “Bill” Bruce of Australia. (Wright, who finished fourth, won a gold medal as part of the 4×100 meter relay.)

“I think I would have been better in ’44,” said Douglas, who was 26 at the London Olympics, “but I got four more years and I didn’t stop training.”

He often recounted what kept him going. It was that brief meeting with Owens when he was 14.

Owens had come to Douglas’s hometown, Pittsburgh, to speak at a high school and campaign in the failed presidential run of Alf Landon, a Republican governor from Kansas. Douglas’ mother took him to the event. As Owens was leaving, Douglas was standing by the door and caught his attention.

“I told him that I ran track in junior high school, did 21 feet, 8 inches in the long jump, ran the 100 in 10.4, high-jumped 6 feet. He told me that was better than he did at my age, and keep up the good work,” he recalled.

They would reconnect years after the London Olympics. Douglas phoned Owens at his home in Chicago when he passed through for his job meeting with beer and liquor distributors.

“We talked every week for 20 years until he died in 1980,” Douglas told the New York Times in 1985. “I felt I should do something to memorialize his career. I always tried to imitate him. He was a giving man.”

Douglas founded the International Amateur Athletic Association in 1980, which for more than two decades held an annual dinner to aid the Jesse Owens Foundation and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The association’s Jesse Owens International Trophy Award, bestowed for athletic excellence and humanitarian work, was given to many U.S. Olympic gold medalists including long jumper Carl Lewis and diver Greg Louganis. Other recipients included middle-distance runners Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and Sebastian Coe of Britain.

Another prize was created in 1993 by Douglas, the Jesse Owens Global Award for Peace, for world leaders who helped advance sports. Winners include Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, who was a U.N. secretary general.

Douglas maintained close bonds with his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, and established a scholarship. He also became a mentor to track stars such as Edwin Moses, gold medalist in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, and Roger Kingdom, who won gold in the 110-meter hurdles at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

Douglas pushed Kingdom to get his bachelor’s degree, which he did from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002.

“We developed such a bond,” Kingdom told the university’s news site, “that I started to call him ‘Daddy Herb.'”

‘I STUCK WITH TRACK’

Herbert Paul Douglas Jr. was born on March 9, 1922, in Pittsburgh. His father, who was blind most of his adult life, ran a parking garage and his mother cared for the home.

Douglas, who was the first Black basketball player at his high school, said he quit the team after teammates refused to pass him the ball.

Douglas attended Xavier University of Louisiana before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh on a football scholarship. He became the second Black player to score a touchdown against Notre Dame. “I got more (media) coverage out of that than winning an Olympic medal,” he recalled.

One of his coaches, Wes Fesler, suggested to Douglas in 1946 that his future was in track rather than football. “So,” Douglas said, “I stuck with track.”

Douglas graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1948 and stayed at the University of Pittsburgh for a master’s degree in education in 1950.

He began working for the Pabst Brewing Co. and, in 1963, joined Schieffelin and Co., a New York-based wine and spirits importer, that became part of Möet Hennessy USA. He rose to become vice president.

Douglas served as executive producer of “The Renaissance Period of the African American in Sports,” a 2014 documentary.

Douglas’s son, Herbert P. Douglas III, died in 2022. Douglas is survived by his wife, the former Minerva Brice; a daughter; four grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren. Douglas’s death was announced by the University of Pittsburgh and no cause was given.

Douglas was the oldest U.S. Olympic medalist, but not the eldest Olympian. Among the centenarians was another longer jumper who competed in 1948, Yvonne Chabot-Curtet of France, who is 102. She also was in the 1952 Games in Helsinki.

“When you get to this age,” Douglas said in 2020, “what is the most important thing? It’s not always money. It’s memories.”

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