Jesse Glover
American judoka (1934–2012)
제시 글러버
- Born
- 15 October 1935, Seattle
- Died
- 27 June 2012, Seattle
- Citizenship
- United States
- Sport
- judo
- Occupation
- judoka
Jesse Raymond Glover (October 15, 1935 – June 27, 2012) was an African-American martial artist. He was Bruce Lee's first student. He met Lee in 1959, as they both attended Edison Technical College and practiced judo with Lee. Glover was a champion judoka. The character Jerome Sprout in the 1993 film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was based on Glover.
Jesse started a Gung Fu class of his own and Leroy Garcia and James DeMile came along and assisted him, which was the first ever independent Jun Fan arts related class. Jesse Glover was not authorized to teach, though he did ask, but Bruce refused (Kung Fu Magazine, 1994, Jesse Glover interview).
Teachers
External links
Facts from Wikidata Q999092 (CC0); quoted introduction from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Data retrieved 2026-10-22.
Data: Wikidata (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.