Marshall Taylor

Childhood and introduction to cycling

Marshall Walter Taylor was the son of Gilbert Taylor, a Civil War veteran, and Saphronia Kelter Taylor. His parents migrated from Louisville, Kentucky, and settled on a farm in Bucktown, a rural area on the western edge of Indianapolis, Indiana. Taylor, who was born on November 26, 1878, in Indianapolis was one of eight children in the family that included five girls and three boys. Around 1887, his father began working in Indianapolis as a coachman for the Southards, a wealthy white family.^[1][2][3][4]

When Taylor was a child he occasionally accompanied his father to work. Taylor soon became a close friend of the Southards's son, Daniel,^[4] who was the same age. From the age of eight until he was twelve, Taylor lived with the family and along with Daniel was tutored at their home. Taylor's living arrangement with the Southards provided him with more advantages than his parents could provide; however, this period of his life abruptly ended when the Southards moved to Chicago, Illinois.^[5][6][7][8] Taylor, who remained in Indianapolis, returned to live at his parents' home and "was soon thrust into the real world."^[4]

The Southards provided 12-year-old Taylor with his first bicycle. By 1891 or early 1892, he had become such an expert trick rider that Tom Hay, an Indianapolis bicycle shop owner, hired him to perform bicycle stunts in front of the Hay and Willits bicycle shop. Taylor earned $6 a week for cleaning the shop and performing the stunts, plus a free bicycle worth $35.^[5][2][9] It is likely that Taylor received his nickname of "Major" because he performed the cycling stunts wearing a military uniform.^{[5][n 1]}

Harry T. Hearsey's bicycle shop in Downtown Indianapolis in 1896, where Taylor worked as a bicycle instructor

Taylor left the Hay and Willits shop in 1892 or early 1893 to take a job as head trainer for Harry T. Hearsey's bicycle shop in Indianapolis, teaching local residents how to ride. About two years later, while working at Hearsey's shop, Taylor met Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, a former high-wheel bicycle racer who owned the Munger Cycle Manufacturing Company, a racing bicycle factory in Indianapolis. (Munger later established the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory in Worcester, Massachusetts.) With a shared interest in bicycle racing, the two became friends and Munger hired the teenaged Taylor to work odd jobs that included sending Taylor to area high schools and colleges to train cyclists and promote Munger's line of racing bicycles.^{[11][12][13][14]} Munger had also "made up his mind to make Taylor a champion" and coached him to become a racer.^[15] While working for Munger, Taylor joined the See-Saw Cycling Club, an all-black cycling club in Indianapolis.^[16][17]

Early years and East Coast move

Taylor began entering amateur bicycle races around 1892, while in his early teens, and continued until 1896, when he became a professional racer. Although he competed in road and track races during his amateur career, Taylor excelled in the track sprints, especially the one-mile (1.6 km) race.^[18][19] Taylor won his first cycling race, a ten-mile (16 km) amateur event in Indianapolis in 1892.^[20] He received a 50-minute handicap (head start) in the road race because of his young age. Taylor also traveled to Peoria, Illinois, to compete in another meet, winning third place in the under-16 age category.^[21][19]

Taylor encountered racial prejudice throughout his racing career from some of his competitors. In addition, some local track owners feared that other cyclists would refuse to compete if Taylor was present for a bicycle race and banned him from their tracks.^[22] In 1893, for example, after 15-year-old Taylor beat a one-mile amateur track record, he was "hooted" and then barred from the track.^[15]

Major Taylor won his first significant cycling competition on June 30, 1895, when he was the only rider to finish a grueling 75-mile (121 km) road race near his hometown of Indianapolis. During the race Taylor received threats from his white competitors, who did not know that he had entered the event until the start of the race. A few days later, on July 4, 1895, Taylor won a ten-mile road race in Indianapolis that made him eligible to compete at the national championships for black racers in Chicago. Later that summer, he won the ten-mile championship race in Chicago by ten lengths and set a new record for black cyclists of 27:32.^{[23][22][24][25]}

The earliest press image of Taylor, around 16 years old, from unidentified 1895 newspaper

In 1895, Taylor and Munger relocated from Indianapolis to Worcester. At that time it was a center of the U.S. bicycle industry that included half a dozen factories and thirty bicycle shops. Munger, who was Taylor's employer, lifelong friend, and mentor, had decided to move his bicycle manufacturing business to the state of Massachusetts,^[15][26] which was also a more tolerant area of the country.^[27]

Munger and Charles Boyd, a business partner, established the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company with factories in Worcester, and Middletown, Connecticut. For Taylor, who continued to work for Munger as a bicycle mechanic and messenger between the company's two factory locations,^[15][28][29] the move to the East Coast offered "higher visibility, larger crowds, increased sponsorship dollars, and greater access to world-class cycling venues."^[30] After Taylor's relocation to Massachusetts, he joined the all-black Albion Cycling Club in 1895 and trained at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Worcester.^[31][32] Taylor is first mentioned in The New York Times on September 26, 1895, as a competitor in the Citizen Handicap event, a ten-mile race on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. Taylor raced with a 1:30 handicap in a field of 200 competitors that included nine scratch riders.^[33]

In 1896, Taylor entered numerous races in the Northeastern states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut. After winning a ten-mile road race in Worcester, Taylor competed in the 25-mile (40 km) Irvington–Millburn race in New Jersey, also known as the Derby of the East. Within half a mile (0.8 km) of the finish line, someone startled Taylor by tossing ice water into his face and he finished in 23rd place. Taylor's first major East Coast race was in a League of American Wheelmen (LAW) one-mile contest in New Haven, Connecticut, where he started in last place but won the event.^[34][35] In August 1896, Taylor made a trip to Indianapolis, where he set an unofficial new track record of 2:11 ​¹⁄₅ for a distance of one mile at the Capital City velodrome, beating Walter Sanger's official track record of 2:19 ​²⁄₅. (Taylor could not compete with Sanger, a professional racer, in a head-to-head contest because he was still an amateur.)^{[36][37][38][39]} Taylor's final amateur race took place on November 26, 1896, in the 25-mile Tatum Handicap at Jamaica, New York. Taylor finished the race in 14th place.^[40][41]

1896: First races

Madison Square Garden II (pictured in 1908) in New York City, the venue of Taylor's first professional race in 1895

Taylor turned professional in 1896, at the age of eighteen, and soon emerged as the "most formidable racer in America."^[15] Taylor's first professional race took place in front of 5,000 spectators on December 5, 1896. He competed in a half-mile handicap event on an indoor track at New York City's Madison Square Garden II on the opening day of a multi-day event.^[42][43] Although the main event was a six-day race from December 6–12, other contests in shorter distances were held on December 5 to entertain the crowd. These races included the half-mile handicap for professionals in which Taylor competed, a half-mile race between Jay Eaton and Teddy Goodman, and a half-mile scratch race. In addition, there were half-mile scratch and handicap races for amateurs.^[44]

Taylor began the half-mile handicap race on December 5, with a 35-yard (32 m) advantage over the scratch racers. He beat a field of competitors that included Tom Cooper, Philadelphia's A. C. Meixwell, and scratch rider E. C. Bald, who represented New York's Syracuse, and rode a Barnes bicycle. Taylor won the race riding Munger's "Birdie Special" bicycle and beat Bald by 20 yards (18 m) in a sprint to the finish.^[45][46][47]

From December 6–12, 1896, Taylor participated as one of 28 competitors in a six-day event at Madison Square Garden. Although Taylor had just become a professional, he had achieved enough notoriety, possibly because of his stunning win on December 5, to be listed among the "American contestants" that also included A. A. Hansen (the Minneapolis "rainmaker") and Teddy Goodman. In addition, many "experts from abroad" participated in the meet such as Switzerland's Albert Schock, Germany's Frank J. Waller, Frank Forster, and Ed von Hoeg, and Canada's B. W. Pierce. Several countries were represented in the event, including Scotland, Wales, France, England, and Denmark.^[44][47]

As the fascination with six-day races spread across the Atlantic from its origins in the United Kingdom, their appeal to base instincts attracted large crowds. The more spectators who paid at the gate, the bigger the prizes, which provided riders with the incentive to stay awake–or be kept awake–in order to ride the greatest distance. To prepare for the event, Taylor went to Brooklyn, where he became a member of the South Brooklyn Wheelmen. An estimated crowd of 6,000 spectators attended the final day of the Madison Square Garden races in December 1896.^[48][49] During these long, grueling races, riders suffered delusions and hallucinations, which may have been caused by exhaustion, lack of sleep, or perhaps use of drugs.^{[50][43][51][n 2]}

Madison Square Garden's six-day event in 1896 was the longest race Taylor had ever entered. After Taylor refused to continue racing on the final day of the long-distance competition, exhausted from physical exertion and lack of sleep, a Bearnings reporter overheard him comment: "I cannot go on with safety, for there is a man chasing me around the ring with a knife in his hand."^[53] Taylor completed a total of 1,732 miles (2,787 km) in 142 hours of racing to finish in eighth place.^[54] Teddy Hale, the race winner, completed 1,910 miles (3,070 km) and took home $5,000 in prize money. Taylor never competed in any other six-day race.^[55]

After Taylor's move to the East Coast in 1896, he initially lived in Worcester, where he worked for Munger, and in Middletown, the site of another of Munger's cycle factories.^[33] Taylor also lived in other eastern cities, such as South Brooklyn, where he once trained,^[44] but it is not known how long he still resided in New York after he became a professional racer.^[56]

1897–1898: Fame and records

Taylor with the Boston pursuit team of 1897; one of the first known photographs of an integrated American professional sports team^[57]

Taylor initially raced for Munger's Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company. After the company went into receivership in 1897 he joined other racing teams.^[58] Taylor competed in his first full year on the professional racing circuit in 1897.^[59] Early in the season, at the Bostonian Cycle Club's "Blue Ribbon Meet" on May 19, 1897, Taylor rode a Comet bicycle to win first place in the one-mile open professional race.^[60] On June 26, he won a quarters-mile (0.4 km) race at the track at Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Taylor also beat Eddie Bald in a one-mile race in Reading, Pennsylvania, but finished fourth in the prestigious LAW convention in Philadelphia.^[61][62][63]

As a professional racer Taylor continued to experience racial prejudice as a black cyclist in a white-dominated sport.^[54] In November and December 1897, when the circuit extended to the racially-segregated South, local race promoters refused to let Taylor compete because he was black. Taylor returned to Massachusetts for the remainder of the season and Eddie Bald became the American sprint champion in 1897. Despite the obstacles, Taylor was determined to race.^[64]

In the early years of his professional racing career, Taylor's reputation continued to increase as he competed in and won more races. Newspapers began referring to him as the "Worcester Whirlwind," the "Black Cyclone," the "Ebony Flyer," the "Colored Cyclone," and the "Black Zimmerman," among other nicknames. He also gained popularity among the spectators.^[65][66][67] One of his biggest supporters was President Theodore Roosevelt who kept track of Taylor throughout his seventeen-year racing career.^[15]

Taylor on the front of the November 1, 1898, edition of the French sports magazine La Vie au grand air

Early in the 1898 racing season Taylor beat Bald at Manhattan Beach, but lost to Eddie McDuffie at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a 30-mile (48 km) paced race. On July 17 at Philadelphia, Taylor won his biggest victories of the season: first place in the one-mile championship and second place in the one-mile handicap races. On August 27, in a head-to-head race with Jimmy Michael of Wales, Taylor set a new world record of 1:41 ​²⁄₅ for a one-mile paced match and beat the Welsh racer to the finish by 20 yards (18 m).^[68][69]

Taylor was among several top cyclists who could claim the national championship in 1898; however, scoring variations and the formation of a new cycling league that year "clouded" his claim to the title.^[15] Early in the year a group of professional racers that included Taylor had left the LAW to join a rival group, the American Racing Cyclists' Union (ARCU), and its professional racing group, the National Cycling Association (NCA). During the ARCU sprint championship in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Taylor, who was a devout Baptist, refused to compete for religious reasons in the finals of the championship races because they were held on a Sunday. As a result of Taylor's decision not to race in the finals at Cape Girardeau, the ARCU suspended him from membership. Taylor petitioned the LAW for reinstatement in 1898 and was accepted, but Tom Butler, who had remained a LAW member after the break-up, was declared the League’s champion that year.^{[70][71][72][n 3]}

During 1898–99, at the peak of his cycling career, Taylor established seven world records;^[27][15] the quarter-mile, the one-third-mile (0.5 km), the half-mile, the two-thirds-mile (1.1 km), the three-quarters-mile (1.2 km), the one-mile, and the two-mile (3.2 km) distances. His one-mile world record of 1:41 from a standing start stood for 28 years.^[54]

1899: World sprint champion

Taylor became the first African American to win a world championship in any sport at the 1899 track world championships at the Vélodrome de Queen's Park in Montreal, Canada

At the 1899 world championships in Montreal, Canada, Taylor won the one-mile sprint, to become the first African American to win a world championship in cycling. Taylor was the second black athlete, after Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon of Boston, to win a world championship in any sport.^[27][39] Taylor won the one-mile world championship sprint in a close finish a few feet ahead of Frenchman Courbe d'Outrelon and American Tom Butler.^[74][75] In addition, Taylor placed second in the two-mile championship sprint at Montreal behind Charles McCarthy and won the half-mile championship race.^{[15][76][77][78]} Because the finals were held on Sundays, when Taylor refused to compete for religious reasons, he did not compete in another world championship contest until 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Taylor lost in a preliminary heat at Copenhagen and did not compete in the finals.^[79]

After Taylor's world championship win in 1899, many claimed that the event "had been a farce, because Taylor had not competed against the strongest riders."^[80] World cycling's governing body, the International Cycling Association (replaced with the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) in 1900), did not allow NCA racers to compete at the world championships in Montreal. As a result, Taylor's accomplishments were somewhat diminished. Because the rival organizations (LAW and the NCA) would not recognize each other, two American champions were crowned in 1899. Tom Cooper was the NCA champion and Taylor was the LAW champion.^[81][82]

In addition to the world championship wins in the one-mile and two-mile distances at Montreal and the LAW Championship, which he won on points, Taylor's victories in 1899 included twenty-two first-place finishes in major championship races around the U.S. Taylor's record-setting times were impossible to dismiss. No other rider had matched the "range and variety" of his winning performances, which made him an international celebrity.^{[15][83][80][84]} In 1899, Taylor made several unsuccessful attempts to recapture his world record for a one-mile paced distance in two "strenuous record-breaking campaigns," before he finally achieved the new world record of 1:19 in November to regain the title of "the fastest man in the world."^[85][86]

For the 1899 racing season, Taylor went to Syracuse and with Munger's assistance he signed a contract to race for the E. C. Stearns Company. Taylor, Munger, and Harry Sager, who was Taylor's bicycle parts sponsor, initially planned to negotiate a deal with the Olive Wheel Company; however, the men were able to work out a more lucrative contract with Stearns, who agreed to build Taylor's bicycles using a chainless gear mechanism that Sanger had designed. The bicycles only weighed about 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and had an 88-inch (2,200 mm) gear for sprinting and a 120-inch (3,000 mm) gear for longer, paced runs.^[87][88] Stearns "also agreed to build Taylor a revolutionary steam-powered pacing tandem, behind which he could attack world records and challenge the leading exponents of paced racing."^[89] Although the tandem was temperamental, it helped Taylor break Eddie McDuffie's one-mile world record on November 15, 1899, with a time of 1:19 at a speed of 45.56 mph (73.32 km/h).^[90] In late 1899, Taylor signed a contract to race with the Iver Johnson's Arms & Cycle Works team of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, during the 1900 racing season.^[91]

1900: American sprint champion

In 1900, when the LAW no longer governed professional bicycle races in the U.S., Taylor's future as a professional racer was in jeopardy. Fortunately, the ARCU and the NCA, who had banned Taylor from competing in their leagues, readmitted him after payment of a $500 fine.^[85][92] Taylor won the American sprint championship on points in 1900. He also beat Tom Cooper, the 1899 NCA champion, in a head-to-head match in a one-mile race at Madison Square Garden in front of 50,000 to 60,000 spectators. In addition, Taylor set world records in the half-mile and two-thirds-mile sprints, and raced indoors using a "home trainer" in head-to-head competitions with other riders as a vaudeville act.^[93][94][95] Taylor eventually settled in Worcester, where he purchased a home on Hobson Street in 1900.^[56]

1901–1903: Europe and Australasia

Taylor racing against Edmond Jacquelin at Paris' Parc des Princes in 1901

Following his record-setting successes in the U.S. and Canada, Taylor agreed to a European tour. In 1901, Taylor made his first trip to Europe, but returned to compete in the U.S. after the conclusion of the European spring racing season. During his European tour Taylor still refused to race on Sundays, when most of the finals were held, because of his religious convictions.^{[96][97][98][99]} It was reported that Taylor took a Bible with him when he traveled and began each race with a silent prayer because of his religious beliefs.^[15]

Taylor was popular among the European race fans and news reporters: "Everywhere he went he was mobbed, talked about, or written up."^[100] In 1901, Taylor won 42 of the 57 European races he entered.^[101] A highlight of Taylor's European tour in 1901 were two match races with French champion Edmond Jacquelin at the Parc des Princes in Paris. Jacquelin won the first match by two lengths; Taylor won the second match by four lengths.^[102]

Taylor also participated in a European tour in 1902, when he entered 57 races and won 40 of them to defeat the champions of Germany, England, and France.^[15] In addition to racing in Europe, Taylor also competed in Australia and New Zealand in 1903 and 1904. In February 1903, for example, Taylor competed in the Sydney handicap for a $5,000 prize. A headline that flashed worldwide was "Rich Cycle Race."^[103] During his world tour in 1903 Taylor earned prize money estimated at $35,000 ($923,352 in 2015 chained dollars).^[101]

1907–1910: Later years

Taylor and Léon Hourlier at a standstill during a race at Paris' Vélodrome Buffalo in 1909

Following a collapse from the mental and physical strain of professional competition, Taylor took a two-and-a-half year hiatus from cycling between 1904 and 1906, before returning to race in France. He set two world records in Paris in 1907 for the half-mile standing start at 0:42 ​¹⁄₅ and the quarter-mile standing start at 0:25 ​²⁄₅. Taylor also returned to Europe for the racing season in 1908 and in 1909. He finally broke his long-standing decision to avoid Sunday races in 1909 when he was nearing the end of his racing career. Taylor's last professional race took place on October 10, 1909, in Roanne, France, in a match race against French world champion Charles Dupré. Taylor won the race, but he did not return to Europe for the 1910 season and retired from competitive cycling.^{[104][105][106]}

Taylor was still breaking records in 1908, but his age was starting to "creep up on him."^[15] He retired from racing in 1910 at the age of 32. When Taylor returned to his home in Worcester at the end of his racing career, his estimated net worth was $75,000 ($1,978,611 in 2015 chained dollars) to $100,000 ($2,638,148 in 2015 chained dollars). Taylor won his final competition, an "old-timers race" among former professional racers, in New Jersey in September 1917.^{[107][108][109]}

Honors and tributes

The memorial to Taylor outside the Worcester Public Library in Worcester, Massachusetts

The Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis was opened in July 1982 for the U.S. Olympic Festival.^[139] Taylor was posthumously inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1989.^[140] In July 2006, Worcester renamed part of Worcester Center Boulevard, a high-traffic street, as Major Taylor Boulevard to honor his athletic feats as well as his character.^[141] In April 2002, Taylor was one of the nine track cyclists inducted into the UCI Hall of Fame, created to commemorate 100 years of the Paris–Roubaix one-day road race and the inauguration of the World Cycling Centre.^[142] In May 2008, the Major Taylor Association commissioned Antonio Tobias Mendez to create a sculpture to honor Taylor. The monument is installed in front of the Worcester Public Library in Worcester, Massachusetts.^[27][143] In 2009, the Indiana Historical Bureau, Central Indiana Bicycling Association Foundation, and the Indiana State Fair Commission installed a state historical marker as a tribute to Taylor near the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. The marker is located at the intersection of Thirty-Eighth Street and the Monon Trail, close to the site where he had set an unofficial track record in 1896.^[39]

A bike path in Chicago is named in Taylor's honor.^[144] In September 2010, Columbus, Ohio, renamed its Alum Creek Trail bike path the Major Taylor Bikeway.^{[145][146][147]} The first of the many cycling clubs named in Taylor's honor was organized in Columbus, in 1979.^[148][149] In 2002, a group of African American students at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, named their Little 500 team in Taylor's honor.^[26] In 2009, the Cascade Bicycle Club community organization of Washington launched The Major Taylor Project, a youth cycling program.^[150]

In popular culture

Actor Philip Morris portrayed Taylor in the 1992 television mini-series Tracks of Glory.^[151] Blues musician Otis Taylor (no relation) recorded "He Never Raced on Sunday," a song about Taylor for his 2004 album Double V.^[152] In 2007, Nike produced the Major Taylor "premium" collection of their most iconic sneakers in a light brown/neon yellow/white colorway.^[153] SOMA Fabrications makes a set of bicycle handlebars called the Major Taylor Bar, which is a replica of 1930s drop handlebar that was named for Taylor.^[154] Dewshane Williams portrayed Taylor in the Murdoch Mysteries episode, Tour de Murdoch.^[155]

Footnotes

References

Bibliography