Negroes in Nebraska

At the Western Conference track meet last May, a Negro sophomore from Ohio State named Jesse Owens won four events and set three world's records in a single afternoon in what experts agreed was the most amazing display of versatility in track & field history. Thereafter, the consensus was that for Owens to lose to anyone this year in either of his two best specialties--100-yd. dash and broad jump --was unlikely. For him to lose in both was almost unthinkable. For him to lose in both to the same man was entirely out of the question. At Lincoln, Neb. last week, the 15,000 spectators at the national championship meet of the Amateur Athletic Union walked out of the stadium rubbing their eyes, for that was precisely what had happened. Entered in four events, Owens had withdrawn from the 200-metre dash and 200-metre low hurdles to give all his attention to the 100-metre dash and the broad jump. A 20-year-old Negro sophomore of Temple University named Eulace Peacock had beaten him in both.

The race, in which Owens was not second but third, a stride behind Negro Ralph Metcalfe, was run in 10.2 sec., which would have been a world's record except for a soft following breeze. In the broad jump Peacock cleared 26 ft. 3 in., 7/8 in. better than the currently accepted world's record and 3/4 in. better than Owens' best last week, but 5 1/4 in. short of the record Owens set last May.

Latest addition to the group of star Negro athletes, Eulace Peacock, like Owens, gave some indication of his abilities as a schoolboy when he won the National pentathlon in 1933. This spring Peacock did little except win the 100-metre dash and broad jump against comparatively mediocre competition at the Penn Relays. Last week was the first time he had jumped 26 ft. Son of a Union, N. J. tar tester, a competent but not brilliant student, Peacock runs without Metcalfe's finishing drive or Owens' smoothness, but with higher knee action than either. After his demonstration last week, the best explanation experts could find for this was the fact that Peacock, running in the East, had been handicapped by slower tracks.

When, two days later, Peacock beat Owens again in a 100-metre invitation race at Crystal Beach, Ont., track experts found another alibi for Owens' defeat in the possibility that he was preoccupied. Fortnight ago he was reported engaged to one Quincella Nickerson of Los Angeles. Last week, the night before his second defeat by Peacock, Owens hurried to a preacher, married a Cleveland beauty-parlor maid named Minnie Ruth Solomon, entrained for Buffalo alone after promising to bring her a ring when he returned. His explanation of the Nickerson episode: "We were at a party and Miss Nickerson asked to see my fraternity pin. I took it off and handed it to her, then stepped into another room for a minute. When I came back she was wearing it. Just before I left the West Coast I asked her for it. She cried a little but handed it over. I got out as fast as I could."

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