By Naomi Nix, Chicago Tribune reporter
7:16 a.m. CDT, August 22, 2013
The first day of classes in Chicago is just days away, but the three daughters of Jesse Owens, the African-American hero of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, are not giving up their fight to keep their father's name on a Far South Side school.
Jesse Owens Community Academy in the West Pullman neighborhood was one of 49 elementary schools the Chicago school board voted in the spring to close, with students moving to Samuel Gompers Fine Arts Option School.
But the district is keeping the Owens building open, under the Gompers name, for students in kindergarten through the third grade. Students in the fourth through eighth grades will be taught in the existing Gompers Elementary farther north.
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Jesse Owens' name has been removed from the building, and a marquee near the building reads Gompers South. Owens' daughters, who all live in Chicago, have been loudly protesting the district's move since the preliminary list of school closings came out last spring.
"It is just beyond me as to why they would do something like that," said Owens' youngest daughter, Marlene Rankin. "It is disrespectful."
Jesse Owens spent much of his adult life in Chicago.
His name is one of several with a strong local connection on schools that were closed, among the others being retailer Nathan Goldblatt and physicist Enrico Fermi.
Owens' daughters testified against shutting down the school during hearings last spring. They said they didn't know students would still be using the old Owens building until about two weeks ago.
Last week, Rankin and her two sisters sent a letter asking that the former Jesse Owens school get its old name back to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, CPS Board President David Vitale and two South Side aldermen, Anthony Beale, 9th, and Leslie Hariston, 5th.
In the letter to Vitale, they note that Sept. 12 marks the 100th anniversary of their father's birth. "We can't think of a better gift to Chicago and its schoolchildren than that of restoring the Jesse Owens name to this CPS school," the letter concludes.
Others have expressed support.
"It's one of the great American stories. It would be a great shame for Chicago to forget the story and not continue to tell to the story," said Susan Aaron, a family friend.
Rankin said a representative from Vitale's office let them know Tuesday that the letter was received, but the sisters have gotten no further response.
Schools designated by the district to take in students from schools that were closed all maintained their names. That was the case even when the receiving school's administration and teaching staff moved into the building of the school that was closed.
According to CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll, school renaming is a "community-driven decision, not a (district) decision" and that a decision to change the school's name would be made by the Local School Council.
Gompers Principal Melody Seaton said she would not stand in the way of any decision made by the community on her school's name.
"I have no opinion either way," Seaton said. "That's something for the parents to mobilize and decide to do."
The school that took over for Owens is named after labor leader Samuel Gompers, who co-founded the American Federation of Labor. Gompers was born in London and immigrated to the U.S. In addition to the school, a North Side park was dedicated in his name in 1929, five years after his death.
"We are sure Gompers is as deserving as anyone," Rankin said. "But the point is they removed a name without considering how that impacted the family or the children that it served."
Jesse Owens, an Alabama native who grew up in Ohio, became a national symbol in 1936 when he won four gold medals in track and field events at the Berlin Olympics. His victories were widely seen as an embarrassment to Adolf Hitler, who was using the Games to show off the power of Nazi Germany and Aryan supremacy.
"This was not just a victory for one man, it was a victory against Hitler and what he stood for," said Christopher Reed, a retired history professor at Roosevelt University.
In the late 1940s, Owens moved to Chicago, where he worked in public relations and was a motivational speaker and helped disadvantaged youths. He spent his final years in Arizona, died in 1980 and was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery on the South Side. The school was named in his honor shortly afterward, and a public park in the Calumet Heights neighborhood continues to bear his name.
His daughters think having his name on a school will allow him to continue to serve as an important role model for young people, particularly African-Americans.
"My father was not only a wonderful man but an Olympic hero," said Gloria Owens Hemphill. "It gives them something to think, 'OK, maybe I can do that.'"
nnix@tribune.com Twitter @nsnix87
