Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

But these forces didn’t stand a chance against cycling supporters, like Carlos Martyn, a flamboyant reverend who told a stunned congregation that a woman riding a bicycle would not destroy the home nor eradicate motherhood or grace or delicacy. He suggested that “it would be just as sweet and just as pleasant to make love to a woman wearing bicycle bloomers as to one who does not.” One New York doctor even seemed to credit women’s cycling with the vibrancy of the country. “Cycling had come along just in time to rehabilitate the American woman.” Until then, he suggested, women were in bad condition because their “nervous force was wearing out.”

  Somewhere along the roads of Worcester, the exact time and place left as their own intimate secret, Major Taylor and Daisy Morris first crossed paths. By all accounts, they were immediately smitten, flowing together like water until you couldn’t tell him from her. Considered the best all-around female athlete at her college, Daisy shared Major’s love of sports and often snuck into racetracks without any of the ogling men knowing she was the girlfriend of the world champion black man at whom they were either cheering or sneering. Taylor, with his good looks, gentle persona, ample finances, and worldwide fame, was a sought-after man. Daisy, with her striking beauty, elegance, and intellect, was a desirable woman. Together, they formed a class act. Early in 1901, they would become engaged. In the spring of 1902, they would wed, then move into Taylor’s much fought-for home.

  CHAPTER 13

  AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

  It was a June day in 1900 and the peloton was standing around, the riders’ eyes fixed in glorious disbelief. In the distance, they saw a large black figure waddling toward them. It couldn’t possibly be Major Taylor, they thought; this man was too large about the waist. But it was. After settling into his new home, reuniting with the NCA, and signing a contract with bike manufacturer Iver Johnson, Taylor popped up at his first race with around ten pounds of additional weight. And it wasn’t muscle. For some, ten pounds here or there is insignificant, but for Taylor, who had the type of frame where excess weight congregated in one spot—his stomach—extra weight stood out like a sore thumb. “The Colored Whirlwind,” wrote one reporter, “is almost elephantine.” The NCA riders, many of whom hadn’t seen Taylor for more than a year, couldn’t believe their good fortune. Optimism ran through the backstretch. There was hope after all!

  At the Manhattan Beach Track starting line, with pinched lips and raised brows, they eyed him skeptically. Surely the startman, a long-time fixture at the track, even looked at him oddly before firing the pistol. The field broke in a trundled mess, riders scattering everywhere. Taylor trudged around the first turn, chugged around the far turn, and lumbered toward the homestretch. As he came out of the homestretch, fans watched in astonishment as a handful of also-rans rolled by, leaving him panting. Even old Johnnie Fisher, a middling rider from Chicago, sailed by him. The puzzled crowd, expecting a season full of torrential bursts of speed from the Black Whirlwind, hissed. One New England paper even spelled out his impending doom in bold print: MAJOR TAYLOR IS LOSING HIS LAURELS.

  If the glare from his competitors and the less-than-glowing assessments from the press weren’t enough to shake him into a higher state of fitness, reams of articles hailing the invincible new kid on the block certainly did. Several track scribes who had been full of Taylor stories began singing the praises of a new rider many claimed was greater than all other Americans.

  The man gracing those pages was a young powerhouse named Frank Kramer. Twenty-three months younger than Taylor, Kramer was a six-foot-tall, thick-boned, barrel-chested Indiana native. He was a staid man, with a personality not unlike a rose bush in January. He eschewed late night carousing with fellow riders, preferring instead a life of such rigidity that his neighbors could stare out their windows and watch his bedroom lights flick off at exactly nine o’clock each night. For the curly-haired Kramer, smiling was a superfluous imposition. His stiff gait had a walking-broomstick look to it, implying overcompensation for an old back injury caused perhaps by a run-in with a track pole or being on the losing end of a horse-bucking session.

  On a bicycle, he had a mechanical quality about him as though he was a cybernetic organism, pedaling without a stitch of emotion. Although he would become well-liked, people often teased him about his banality and that ski-slope jaw of his. One tale suggested that the wayward jut of his chin—which earned him the nickname “Chisel-chin”—and his stoicism were so pronounced, people would pass by what they thought was a hat rack, toss their hats his way, only to be stunned when the seemingly inanimate object moved.

  After coming down with tubercular symptoms in his early years, Kramer’s parents rushed him off to New Jersey for its fresh sea air, propped him up on an old high-wheel bicycle, and watched with delight as it helped spin the sickness right out of him. His first race on a regular safety bike, which he lost because of his lingering illness, was about the last race he would ever lose. After the once-frail youth had breezed through the local race circuit, his dominance in the national amateur ranks was so complete, one New York paper predicted “he would earn as worldwide a reputation as Arthur Zimmerman”—a statement which bordered on blasphemy.

  Kramer’s extraordinary riding talent, combined with all the media hype, attracted big money. Pierce-Arrow, a large manufacturer of bicycles and luxury cars, opened its usually tight pocketbook and signed him to a lucrative multiyear contract. By the time he joined the professional ranks at the beginning of 1900, urban legends had already gained traction. Rumor had it that Kramer once outpaced a thoroughbred on an old high-wheeler, and that he had effortlessly passed a locomotive. A lot of people took these stories seriously. “Kramer,” prophesized one track writer, “is expected to clean up the whole bunch.”

  Taylor’s biggest concern was that, in the real world, Kramer had stood up to his top billing; although the season was young, he had run roughshod over nearly every pro he faced. Unfamiliar with Kramer, Taylor read all the hype with great interest, took the reports seriously, and began strategizing. He wouldn’t have much time. Less than a month into the season, people began howling for a match race between the black world champion and the great white hope. On June 30, with little time for buildup, they would get their wish.

  With the match race less than two weeks away, Taylor latched onto his new Iver Johnson bicycle, shooed away the press, went into seclusion at a quiet oval, and trained like mad with trainer Robert Ellingham. Meanwhile, Kramer continued to win and impress reporters. “Kramer,” boasted one writer shortly after another of his victories, “was riding like the wind.”

  On the last day of June 1900, under a blanket of threatening clouds, Taylor drew up next to Kramer on the Manhattan Beach Track primed to settle the issue. Few races meant more to Taylor. Not only did he want to prove his superiority over Kramer on the track, but he also had a bone to pick with Pierce-Arrow, Kramer’s sponsor. Taylor had made overtures at the Pierce headquarters to ride their bikes, but was quickly whisked away. “Frank Kramer,” he was told, “is the king-pin of all bicycle riders in America.” Being a proven rider and world champion, Taylor did not take rejection well. He retreated from the office angry. “If I ever meet Kramer in a match race,” he grunted to himself, “he will have another thing coming.” The entire earth seemed to be shifting toward Frank L. Kramer.

  By carriage, bicycle, trolley, and open-air automobiles, crowds spilled out of the New York, Manhattan, and Knickerbockers Athletic Clubs, streamed down Neptune Avenue, and poured into the track by the sea. Throughout the day, the Long Island, Brighton Beach, and various other railroad companies dropped off thousands of racegoers. Coney Island sunbathers and amusement park visitors stopped what they were doing and walked to the track. Although they were not legally allowed at American tracks (bike racing tried desperately to avoid the same betting scandals that had rocked horse racing), bookmakers trolled neighboring hotels and the Coney Island Jockey Club. While Taylor had always garnered an enormous following from fans, both black and whit
e, plenty were eager to see a white rider restore things to a “more natural order.” They believed they had their man and expressed their confidence by dumping bundles of cash on Kramer to win. “Experts pick Frank Kramer,” wrote at least one paper.

  Taylor emerged confidently from seclusion having trimmed nearly all his excess weight. Kramer, stiff and upright, rolled his gleaming Pierce-Arrow bike to the starting line, threw his mighty legs over his machine, and stared forward. The noisy crowd rose to its feet. The band shushed. The race announcer shouted their names over a profusion of fedoras and colorful ladies’ hats. The pistol cracked in their ears.

  The race was over before anyone could blink. From the finish line, Taylor gawked back under his arm, straining to catch a glimpse of the man many deemed invincible. Everyone filed out. The amusement park filled up again. Coney Island food stand vendors were snowed under with hot dog–chomping racegoers once more. A contingent of Kramer bettors shook their heads, hopped aboard trolleys outside the track, and went home with lighter wallets. “On the whole,” admitted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “Major Taylor is king-pin among the sprinters . . .”

  This would not be the last time, however, that Americans would hear of Frank Kramer. Over the next twenty-two years, whether they wanted to or not, they would get a gigantic earful.

  Since Frank Kramer had already conquered most of the elite American contenders and Taylor had soundly defeated Kramer, only one American had a realistic chance against him. For years, Taylor had tried in vain to arrange a match race against Tom Cooper, the NCA champion of 1899. Back in 1898, even William Brady, with his deep pockets and powers of persuasion, hadn’t been able to convince Cooper to challenge Taylor in a match race. As treasurer of the NCA, Cooper also led the push to ban Taylor in ’98, and had since done all he could to keep him there.

  As June bled into July, track owners, race promoters, and newsmen hounded Cooper. As he had done before, Cooper ducked them. Only after racing fans joined in the chorus, calling him a coward and insisting the NCA strip him of his American championship, did he finally relent. A match race was scheduled for July 13, 1900, at Milwaukee’s racetrack. Race promoters got busy placing ads all over town. They offered a $1,000 purse, which Taylor and Cooper matched with a side bet of another $1,000.

  After years of waiting, it appeared as if Taylor would finally get his wish. While the two men were warming up, however, Cooper took a light spill. He got up, looked down at the track, and complained to track officials. An impromptu meeting with the race organizers was called. Cooper pointed to a splinter in the wooden track and demanded the race be called off. The officials asked Taylor if he was willing to proceed with the race. Taylor didn’t seem to think much of it. Absolutely yes, he said, if Cooper was. All eyes fell on Cooper as he looked down at the splinter, then up at a confident Taylor. He declined. Just then, rain began falling, sending the crowd scurrying.

  The calls for a replacement date from the media and the fans went out immediately. For the next five months, Cooper would duck and weave and delay until he could finally hide no more.

  Taylor rumbled into Indianapolis’s Union Station in the predawn hours of one July morning. The doors flung open and he paraded down the steps, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and surveying the landscape of his native city. Much like he had, the city had matured since the days of his youth when he roamed the meadows near the Southard estate. Intercity electric railways, called “interurban,” and a handful of locally built Duryea automobiles rolled about town.

  It had been years since he last competed in Indiana; on one of his last visits in ’98, he was toasted at several smokers and banquets and had been presented with a medal by young black women. Newsmen stood around marveling at the hometown man turned internationally renowned sports star. They tailed him to the track on Central Avenue, retracing the route he and Arthur Zimmerman took seven years earlier. Taylor was surely struck with pleasant memories as they rolled by Hay & Willits Bike Shop where he once dazzled locals with his trick riding, and the streets where he won his first race at the age of thirteen. But not all memories were rose-colored; vivid still were recollections of his white friends playing without him at the YMCA and being banned from Indiana racetracks, all because of his color. The papers buzzed with news of the race. On July 18, amid inclement weather, a large crowd jammed the modern track to see the local-boy-done-good in the two-mile handicap race. From the paddock, alongside rivals Barney Oldfield, Owen Kimble, Al Newhouse, and others, Taylor scanned the vast throng, fixing his gaze on a familiar face in the front row. There, his father, Gilbert, who had never seen him race, sat perched in a booth along the finish line, his proud eyes gazing back at his son, his wispy, white hair blowing in the wind. With him sat a battalion of his old comrades from the Grand Army of the Republic, bedecked in their Civil War uniforms—blue Schuylkill sack coats, matching vests with shiny gold buttons, light blue Deering trousers, black Carter boots, all topped off with the stately kepi cap embroidered with the Grand Army emblem wreathed in laurel leaf.

  By this time in his career, with a LAW American Championship and a World Championship title in his trophy case, Taylor was usually a deep scratchman at handicap races. Sometimes he was hung out so far behind the rest of the field some folks couldn’t understand it. Unfamiliar with handicapping—the fastest rider starts the farthest behind—his dewy-eyed father became agitated when he saw his son, the lone black man, lined up so far behind his white competitors, he may as well have started the race from across the street.

  The pistol cracked in the air. Taylor moved up from his scratch position and, one by one, began picking off the limitmen who started well in front of him: at fifty yards, Newhouse; seventy-five yards, Owens; one hundred yards, the desperate long shot, Lew Gordon. Taylor was on fire, weaving in and out of traffic, burning up the white pine track to the delight of the crowd. As he sailed down the homestretch, his father and everyone else in the speed-crazed town rose and let out a thunderous ovation. When the hometown darling spun across the line three full lengths ahead of second-place Newhouse, fans emptied the ten-thousand-plus grandstand seats, ran out on the track, and mobbed him.

  Everyone, that is, except his confused father.

  In the midst of his son’s resounding victory, something still gnawed at the senior Taylor. After the awards ceremony, he charged past the paddock and through a double tunnel winding into the dressing room under the stands. Negotiating past eighty-five massage boards, he cornered his famous son in his private locker, complained about his peculiar starting position on the track, then let him have it.

  “Well son,” he grumbled, “there is one thing I don’t understand. That is, if you are the fastest bicycle rider in the world, as the newspapers say you are, why in time don’t you beat those white boys out farther at the finish line?” A tongue-tied silence followed.

  “Well,” Taylor finally retorted, a puzzled tone to his voice, “I won by a couple lengths, didn’t I?

  “Yes,” Gilbert continued, his voice bouncing off the locker room walls, “but I expected to see you leave them so far behind that you could get dressed and come out and see the rest of them fight it out for second and third money.”

  A gathering of startled wheelmen leaned in and eavesdropped, gaining a revealing glimpse into the source of Taylor’s tenacity, competitiveness, and dominating mind-set. “The innocence of old age,” penned the younger Taylor.

  Major Taylor was having one of those days during which a man contemplates finding the nearest border crossing and leaping over. While lounging at his father’s home on a Saturday afternoon shortly after his victory at the Newby Oval, he stumbled upon a letter that had been slid under the front door. He immediately recognized the sender’s name. As he tore the letter open, his mind drifted back to another day shortly after winning his first race when he received a letter from the same man summoning him to appear before him.

  When Taylor, then a jumpy thirteen-year-old, arrived at the man’s office, he was quickly
whisked in by a white, middle-aged businessman who proceeded to grill him with a barrage of questions and overt threats.

  Where had he acquired the name Major? Was this his real Christian name? “You can’t use my name,” the man said, “and furthermore, if you do, I will see to it that you are interned in the Plainfield boy’s reformatory.”

  Taylor bolted out of the building, nearly sobbing.

  And with that, the thirteen-year-old black Major Taylor and the middle-aged white Major Taylor, both somehow living in the same city at the same time with the same unique name, parted ways.

  Some months later, after young Major Taylor’s name started appearing in newspapers because of his racing victories, he received another summons to appear, this time from an Indianapolis law firm.

  And so Taylor, by then fourteen or fifteen years old, journeyed into town and sat around a conference table with suited attorneys. The life of Major Taylor—the white executive—young Taylor was told, was being adversely affected by all the articles in the papers saying he had converted from a prominent business man into a bike racer.

  “You will go back to using your real name of Marshall and immediately refrain from using Major,” they insisted. And just to be sure they got their message across, they upgraded his potential sentence to time in the “Michigan penitentiary,” a reform school for incorrigible boys. Taylor, frightened, agreed to immediately cease and desist from all use of the name Major. But as he was leaving the law offices, he turned his face to them and muttered, “I can’t stop all the kids in town from using my name, but I’ll try.”

  When Taylor, now twenty-one, received the latest summons at his father’s new home in town, he thought that since the name “Major” had appeared in nearly every newspaper in the world, the executive and his attorneys were ready to send him up the river.

  But when black Major Taylor arrived at white Major Taylor’s house in the summer of 1900, he found a cheery executive standing there with his arm extended in a handshake.