Cornelius Johnson was part of a coterie of African American athletes who attended the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a direct challenge “to confront and disprove the Nazi propaganda of racial inferiority.” On the first day of competition, he won a gold medal, setting an Olympic record for the high jump. When Hitler refused to personally congratulate him as he had the first two gold medal-winners, the Olympic committee declared that Hitler could not pick and choose who to congratulate. So Hitler halted the practice at the cost of removing himself from the center of attention, thus giving Johnson a second victory.
In addition to their medals, all gold medalists were given potted oak trees, symbols of German identity long predating Germany’s political unification, much less the Nazis. Johnson’s acceptance of the tree was in no way an acceptance of intentions behind the gift. “He was proud and happy about his success, and the tree was a very personal memory he brought back and decided to take care of,” Mayer explains.
So he planted the tree in his family’s backyard, at the time at western edge of Los Angeles. Winning Olympic gold had no impact on Johnson’s subsequent life, and he died as a merchant seaman a decade later. But his parents kept the tree growing, although it was all but forgotten by the world until Mayer rediscovered it in 2014, instantly recognizing it as “the undisputed giant of the neighborhood.”
“The tree’s current significance, especially when connected to the story of an African American athlete, stands in stark opposition to what the Nazis aimed to symbolize during the Olympic Games,” Mayer reflects. To generate saplings for his exhibit in collaboration with the Huntington Botanical Garden, Mayer faced a choice between cloning Johnson’s tree, producing a genetically identical copy, or growing a hybrid from an acorn, “likely cross-pollinated with a native Californian oak.” Reflecting on the options in terms of purity versus mixed heritage, led him to opt for the hybrid, “embracing the complexity and richness it represents.”