Olympic Pride, American Prejudice

PBS America, 8.05pm The success of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Games is a matter of Olympic legend: the black athlete who claimed four gold medals and exposed the host regime’s ideology of Aryan supremacy as nonsense.

But Owens was only one of 18 AfricanAmericans competing in Berlin, and this engrossing feature-length documentary tells their extraordinary story. They had all had to contend with the endemic racism of the US in the 1930s, and then faced the moral quandary of whether to join the boycott called for in response to Hitler’s horrific anti-Semitism before deciding to go.

As Germany turned on a charm offensive and hid the worst excesses of its hateful bigotry, the ‘Black Eagles’ – as the AfricanAmerican men (right) were dubbed – bizarrely enjoyed warm hospitality and freedom on their visit far better than their daily lives back home.