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A Forgotten World Champion
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16280 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1989 |
2,606 Words |
| Author
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Tom Carter
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MAJOR TAYLOR
The Extraordinary Career of A Champion Bicycle Racer
Andrew Ritchie
Mill Valley, Calif: Bicycle Books, 1988
304 pp., $19.95
Mention Major Taylor's name to even the most dedicated sports fan, and the likely response will be, "Major who?"
You will not find the Black Whirlwind's picture looking down on patrons from the walls of sports bars. He is rarely mentioned in sports trivia books or games. And children who grow up wanting to be like Jesses Owens, Jackie Robinson, or Muhammad Ali have never heard of Taylor.
Taylor was the first black world champion in the history of modern sport. His daily life in the United States, Europe, and Australia was chronicled in newspapers in the same way that those of film and sports personalities are followed now.
A biography of Major Taylor by Andrew Ritchie may be what is needed to bring Taylor's name out of obscurity. Ritchie, a journalist and photographer from Scotland (most noted for Czechoslovakia, The Party and the People, a book about the Prague Spring of 1968) became interested in Taylor in 1975 while researching a book on the history of the bicycle. After reading Taylor's autobiography, he realized that Taylor's life was not only fascinating sports history, but a window on his age and on racism in Jim Crow America.
As remarkable as it sounds, Richie's book is the first biography of a man who by any account is a genuine American sports hero and civil rights pioneer.
Unusual childhood
Taylor's parents were the children of freed slaves from Kentucky. His father, Gilbert, fought for the North in a black regiment in the Civil War. After the war, he bought a small farm on the outskirts of Indianapolis and eked out a living for his wife and eight children. Major Taylor was born Marshall Walter Taylor on November 26, 1878, in Indianapolis.
When Taylor was eight, his father, an experienced horseman, was employed by the Southwards, a wealthy white family in the city. Taylor occasionally accompanied his father to work, and in time became fast friends with the Southwards' only child, Daniel, who was Taylor's age. Eventually, Taylor was hired as Daniel's playmate and companion, and he moved in with the Southwards.
In the four or five years that Taylor spent with the family, the boys were dressed alike. They were given the same educational opportunities, and so Taylor learned to read and write. He had access to all Daniel's toys, including his bicycle. And he was welcomed into he neighborhood by the other boys, all from wealthy Indianapolis families. In addition to learning about bicycles, he became comfortable in the world of white people and gained social grace, bearing, and confidence at a young age.
Taylor's daughter, Sydney, explained to Ritchie that her father did not become alienated from his brothers and sisters
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