African-American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination at the games.

African Americans or Black Americans, also formerly called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group. As defined by the United States census, they are Americans who have ancestry from "any of the Black racial groups of Africa". African Americans constitute the third-largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S., following White Americans and Hispanic and Latino Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. According to annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2024, the overall Black population was estimated at 42,951,595, representing approximately 12.63% of the total U.S. population.