Chapter 8

BLACK AND WHITE, DARKNESS AND LIGHT

In the spring of 1897, Taylor began the near daily travel routine that would be his life for much of the next fourteen years. It was a rootless existence that would see him logging tens of thousands of miles by rail, chugging up and down the eastern half of the country, pausing in one city after another. Taylor’s goal, and that of all professional cyclists, was to win the American Sprint Championship. This championship was granted to the rider with the most points when the race season ended in the fall. Riders earned points, simply speaking, by winning races during the season. Riders earned the highest number of points by crossing the line first, followed by fewer points for second and third. The total points varied from one race to the next, but were usually 4-3-1 (a year later, in 1898, it would be 6-4-3-2-1). Events that were part of the national circuit provided riders more total points—and usually higher purses—than nonsanctioned events.

Though there were championship trophies for differing disciplines—the half-mile, two-mile, five-mile, and the overall—the most important championship was the one-mile. Thus Taylor’s greatest strength, and indeed his main goal throughout his career, would coincide with the event that held the public’s greatest interest.

As winter snow gave way to spring flowers, one big question loomed over Taylor. Despite his success in his first professional race, or because of it, many reporters believed that the long grind of the six-day race would “kill” his sprint. It seems to have been a common belief at the time; even his own trainers subscribed to it. Taylor set out to disprove this theory.

It didn’t take long. In late May, he won the one-mile open at the popular Charles River Track in Boston. At the Manhattan Beach Track in early June, he won the quarter-mile race in a tight finish and was cheered wildly by the crowd. “The colored boy,” imparted one track writer, “is already making a stir.”

But Taylor’s promising new career was sadly interrupted that June when he received word of his mother’s passing from heart disease. Though his wanderlust had kept him on the move since childhood, a strong bond had nonetheless formed between him and Saphronia. He spoke of her often, kept her abreast of his whereabouts, and sent his race winnings to her whenever he could. Beginning with his earliest days on the farm, she had, in her unique and loving way, instilled in him a strong work ethic and had taught him to be kind and considerate to others. She was responsible for his amiable and modest manners—invaluable traits that helped deflect racism and were recognized and admired by everyone he met. Her lasting legacy would forever live on in him and would soon be shared with the world. Returning to Indianapolis on a June day, Taylor joined his mourning family at her burial. Already behind his rivals, he returned to the track with a heavy heart.

July arrived and on Taylor went to a packed house at a Providence, Rhode Island, track where he picked up a win in the one-mile open and placed second in the half-mile. Afterward, a reporter traveling with the circuit suggested the peloton put to bed any hopes they may have had about Taylor’s sprint being “killed.”

Weeks later in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Taylor took first place and set a long-standing track record for the one-mile. In front of six thousand fans in Reading, Pennsylvania, Taylor defeated Eddie Bald, the reigning American champion, in a heated head-to-head duel, once again causing a stir with sportswriters. “His coming out will cause a ripple of surprise,” wrote one reporter. The following day at Wilkes-Barre, before a record crowd, Taylor humiliated Nat Butler, one of three famous Butler brothers, in the one-mile open race, and placed second in the half-mile. “Taylor is one of the pluckiest little fellows of his race that ever came before the public,” announced the Brooklyn Eagle. “There is no more grueling contest in modern athletics than a first-class bicycle race, and a man who shows such pluck in the terrific fight down the stretch with the acknowledged champions of the sport as Taylor has done is entitled to the admiration at least of all true sportsmen.”

A few months into the racing season, Taylor’s presence on the nation’s tracks was already having an impact on the sport. Wherever he raced, large crowds were gathering. Though Bald still held a sizable lead in the points column, the battle between him and Taylor, who hadn’t competed in as many races because of his mother’s death, was drawing great fan interest. They were fast becoming the sports story of the year as bike racing was enjoying explosive growth. According to several sources, attendance at nearly every other sporting event including baseball, horse racing, tennis, and even yachting had been adversely affected. One very detailed report, issued at the end of 1897, stated that bicycle racing had become the most popular form of entertainment in the United States. Eight million spectators spent $3.6 million to watch 2,912 bicycle races. Promoters, led by Brady’s group, took in $1 million. In July alone, one million paying customers had passed through the turnstiles at the nation’s tracks. Thousands more massed at countless road races.

As the 1897 season pushed into August, attendance would continue to surge and Taylor would be part of it. An important event was coming up, the most significant of his young career. Since 1880, the highlight of the racing season had been the annual convention of the League of American Wheelmen (LAW). With fans pouring in from all over the country, cities clamored to host the event, using it to showcase their cities and often sparing little expense. Boasting over four hundred miles of paved roads, Philadelphia was selected for the eighteenth annual meet scheduled for August 7 and 8.

From the minute they were granted the honors that winter, Philadelphia had been busy. To accommodate what race organizers believed would be enormous crowds, tens of thousands of dollars were spent extending and widening roads. An army of extra personnel had been hired to install extra ticket booths, concession stands, and a new three-lap to the mile wood track made of special pine painted olive green. Grandstand seating was increased from twelve thousand to over twenty-five thousand. In the months leading up to the event, the nation’s papers detailed every aspect of the upcoming races. Next to the World’s Fair, the annual LAW convention was considered the greatest “get” for a city—the Super Bowl of sporting events at the time.

The outlay of the Philadelphia Wheelmen and Brady’s company, which managed the track, did not go to waste. The clanging bells of rolling cyclers began arriving at six o’clock on the morning of August 7 and did not let up until the next day. Special bicycle excursion trains, League of American Wheelmen boats, ferries, and steam and trolley lines disgorged around fifty thousand fans near Willow Grove Track. Thousands more on “century rides” pedaled in from Baltimore, Boston, New York, New Orleans, and as far away as the West Coast and Mexico. It was the largest crowd for any sporting event in American history.*

Every railroad company flowing into Philadelphia had been strong-armed by the LAW into adding extra railcars to house thousands of bicycles free of charge. Every railroad depot, road approach, and waterway teemed with LAW staff members handing out souvenirs, medallions, and programs as fans thronged into the city. Large delegations chugged into town by special Pullman cars from Saratoga, Indianapolis, and Omaha, each armed with reasons why their city should be awarded the coveted prize the following year. Indiana even went so far as to send Supreme Court justices, along with Taylor’s former employer Harry Hearsey, to plead its case.

By race time, Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs had become an endless undulating stream of rims and spokes and humanity festooned in knickerbockers, golf stockings, badges, and other cycling paraphernalia. Once in town, the fans found Philly decked out in all its grandeur. Every club, saloon, and hotel in the vicinity was “filled to the roof” with visitors and had been adorned with bunting in the respective colors of the visiting wheelmen. Unable to find lodging anywhere in the city, visiting salesmen had to turn around and find other cities in which to sell their goods. Several trainers had to sleep on tables and desks in overfilled hostelries. Presses broke down printing programs and papers. “The League of American Wheelmen” shouted the New York Times, “owned the town.”

Because they could earn many times the usual points for winning at the annual convention, nearly all the top riders were present: Champion Bald, Tom Cooper, the famous Butler brothers, Arthur Gardiner, Earl Kiser, William Becker, Walter Sanger, Fred Loughead, Jay Newhouse—some four hundred from all over the nation.

To whittle down the field to a manageable number of the best riders, a series of preliminary heats—like qualifying heats for the Indianapolis 500—were run off. Taylor won or placed high enough in each of them to qualify for the finals, a noteworthy achievement in its own right. The race handicappers, however, still viewed him as an underdog. With Bald leading in the overall standings and Taylor still a beginner, they placed Taylor as limitman, giving him a thirty-five-yard head start as they had at Madison Square Garden.

In the final of the one-mile race, only the strongest riders in the nation remained. Taylor, “his skin covered in perspiration and shining like polished ebony,” looked up from the starting line at the mass of noisy humanity and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The grandstand and surrounding area looked as though it was one continuous spectator. Many visiting reporters couldn’t believe that a black man was actually allowed to race. “The most startling feature of the meet,” wrote the Baltimore Sun, “was the fact that a colored man competed with white men.”

The pistol crackled in the riders’ ears. Taylor preserved his thirty-five-yard lead out of the gate and still led as the entire field veered around the backstretch. Somewhere near the last furlong, Taylor saw three riders closing on him through the corner of his eye. He could barely make out their faces; it was three of the most dominant riders in the country—Bald, Loughhead, and Cooper—all whittling away at his lead. Taylor quickly spun his head forward and gave it all he had for the final stretch. Soon the three powerhouses caught up to him. For a moment, they all bunched together in a furious forward thrust. The quartet of riders, matched pedal stroke for pedal stroke, blazed down the homestretch at a tremendous clip. Behind them, one by one, the rest of the field dissolved.

Up in the grandstand, the immense throng roared, shaking the wooden rafters. Screaming through a megaphone at the top of his lungs, the race announcer’s voice gave way.

For Taylor, though he was in the final scrum of riders, all was not right. Watching near the paddock area, his aquiline nose protruding out over the railing, Birdie Munger must have noticed Taylor’s rookie mistake. When competing against a field of this caliber, there was no room for error. Within yards of the finish line, in the most important race of his young career, Taylor, having spent himself too soon, faltered!

He was close, but he wasn’t there yet. Crossing the line a whisker’s length in front of him rolled Fred Loughhead, Eddie Bald, and Tom Cooper. Taylor finished in fourth place. The crowd settled back into their seats.

Even though he lost in the finals, Taylor’s trip to Philly had to have been gratifying. He had qualified for the finals in a major national meet and had fallen within a length of winning. With more than half a season left, a solid finish could still challenge Bald for overall honors. His every move was closely followed by an admiring press and public. “Little Taylor the colored boy,” wrote one reporter, “is surprising the whole country with his game riding.”

It was time to celebrate. In the evening, it was “Wheelmen’s Night” and Philadelphia exploded into several gigantic bashes. The Belmonts had offered their Fairmont Park mansion for a mammoth lawn fete and bicycle-costumed dance party. Their sprawling yard and every avenue adjoining the mansion was jammed with over ten thousand elegantly dressed women and their escorts. All over town, bands blared, cigars were lit—100,000 at one party alone—and mass quantities of alcohol consumed, keeping the local magistrates busy for weeks to come. “Yes, the wheelmen owned the town,” quipped the Philadelphia Press, and “some of them seem to think they own the earth.”

Taylor surely watched the festivities, including balloon chariots rising skyward while men in parachutes mounted on illuminated bicycles descended onto the track from thousands of feet up. Later, fireworks rose from the track synchronized to Walter Damrosch’s New York Symphony Orchestra.

While Taylor had much to celebrate, some men were secretly gathering, plodding, discussing ways to extinguish the spotlight that was beginning to shine on him.

Dark clouds were already gathering in the distance.

The war between horsemen and wheelmen continued as the summer of 1897 rolled on. For centuries, before the arrival of the steel steed in the 1870s, horsemen singularly ruled the land. In the beginning, when the two sportsmen shared the same tracks, horsemen didn’t feel too threatened, thus a fairly amicable relationship formed. But once the crowds for the bike races rivaled or sometimes exceeded the horse races, the reinsmen began hatching elaborate methods of extracting revenge. By 1897, many of the bike tracks were wooden or concrete velodromes built specifically for bike racing, but a few towns still had the shared dirt or grass tracks.

On August 20, the horsemen—relegated to late morning status—were scheduled to race before the wheelmen at the Rigby Park Track in Portland, Maine, an exceptionally fast horse track. A couple thousand fans massed to watch the little bay horse, Gazette, blow out the field. As previously agreed, the horsemen were then responsible for smoothing out the track and cleaning up any mess their beasts left behind. But following their races, the horsemen saw a huge crowd swelling for the bike races, including the governors of every New England state. Their anger began building. They first took their resentment out on Lee Richardson, an exceedingly popular wheelman specializing in trick riding. When Richardson was in mid-exhibition, they wittingly charged out onto the track on their horses, throwing him off balance and causing him to abandon his act early. “Horses and bicycles don’t jibe very well,” cussed one reporter. But Richardson, a real ladies’ favorite, got the ultimate masculine payback; women hovered around for hours, batting their eyelashes and snapping photos of him, all but ignoring the jockeys. “The graceful young rider has captured the hearts of the fairer sex,” raved an envious Portland Evening Express writer.

The two warring factions came face-to-face. The horsemen apparently had angry dogs on their sides, including a little fox terrier who rode on the backs of some horses and a host of choleric bulldogs who growled at anyone who invaded their airspace. Teeth-chattering snarls, raised fists, and bitter words followed—the type that could only come from the mouths of young jockeys whose masculinity had been challenged. Reporters, hankering to see a good, old-fashioned horseman-versus-wheelman duel, bent their ear to it. “The horsemen did not take kindly to the bicycle boys,” one man wrote, “and some of the remarks that the jockeys and the pool sellers [bookmakers] passed to the riders were disgraceful.” But the horsemen, clearly overmatched by the larger wheelmen, decided to use brains in lieu of brawn. They quickly gathered their belongings, loaded up their prized horses, and hightailed it out of town—sans the track cleanup.

Soon afterward, Taylor arrived by boat with several riders. When they lined up at the starting line, they couldn’t help but notice a few things. First, they saw a record crowd of twenty thousand raucous fans—more than one-half the entire population of Portland, Maine—occupying every seat in the grandstand. Then, they saw a track that looked like it had been used to reenact the Battle of Antietam, everywhere pocked with the hoofprints of large animals. When the traveling cycling journalists who shipped into town with the peloton saw the god-awful state of affairs, they too began carping on behalf of the riders. The track at Rigby Park they claimed, “being owned by the horsemen who have no love for the wheelmen was left in a very rough state.”

Hugging the inner rail so he didn’t have to zig and zag around as many pockmarks, Taylor was once again “the hero of the meet,” taking two firsts and one second and becoming “the star of the afternoon.” Following his victories, Taylor was escorted to the podium where he was introduced to the ecstatic throng. During the ceremonies, with thousands cheering him on, a mighty stench apparently permeated the air, one he surely remembered from his days on the farm. The odor must have been near the awards stand. Perhaps someone had purposely opened the floodgates of horse manure on the wheelmen. Taylor “abashedly” accepted his prize money, bowed to the crowd, and, according to the Daily Eastern Argus, “hurriedly left the stand.”

Meanwhile, somewhere out in Maine’s high country, a trainload of horsemen in their wide berths must have keeled over in fits of laughter. The horse owners, joked the Portland Evening Express, had “roasted the boys pretty hard.”

As the racing season rolled into September, Taylor continued closing in on front-runner Eddie Bald in the points column. At ten August meets, he had finished first four times, second twice, fourth once, and had moved up from eighth place to fourth. With his form improving daily, Taylor stood a chance of challenging the champion—or at least finishing in the top three—when the racing circuit finished in late November.

But as the honeymoon between Taylor and the public grew, so too did the animosity against him from his competitors. “The position of the Negro is a trying one,” wrote Bearings, “for every rider is anxious to top him, owing to his color, and the battle to beat him is waged fiercely day to day.” On the backstretch, as the circuit chasers prepared for the second half of the season, there were whispers that certain riders were out to get him.

Starting in early September, those whispers became reality. At a race in Worcester, Taylor was deliberately crowded into the fence by a group of riders as he led the field around the backstretch. With no room on either side to maneuver, his wheel struck one of the posts, heaving his body to the ground and badly tearing his arms and legs. Scraping himself off the ground, Taylor sidled over to the steward’s stand to lodge a complaint against a big bus of a man named Charlie Wells for fouling him. The stewards agreed and disqualified Wells. Shaken, Taylor nursed his wounds for a week, then prepared to rejoin the circuit.

Upon his return, riders began working in two-man combinations against him: MacFarland and Aker, Johnson and Butler, MacFarland and Stevens (aka “I and Stevie”), and so on through the whole racing fraternity. Taylor was always alone. On September 9, when he caught up to one of the combinations in front of a packed house at the Waverly Park Track in New Jersey, he was shoved over the pole during one of the preliminary heats.

On September 10, also at the Waverly Park Track, Taylor won the opening heat in the one-mile race by two feet. But when it came time for the final heat, he was nowhere to be found. He felt terrified. “I have a dread of injury every time I race” he told a reporter. While thousands of fans hollered “Taylor! Taylor!” down in the locker room several riders were threatening bodily harm if he rode again. These kinds of threats were not to be taken lightly. Taylor told the stewards, but they didn’t seem to believe him. Wanting to avoid serious harm, he switched tactics and insisted that he was too tired to finish the race. The stewards asked Taylor for proof of his claim, but since none of the riders were willing to confess to their own sins, he was forced to ride in the final. “A little more exercise might cure you,” said one steward.

At the starting line, Taylor looked to either side and saw a field of riders glaring at him. Despair and trepidation spread through him. Not his usual aggressive self, he deliberately tucked in behind the pack, puttering across the tape as the lanterne rouge—bike-racing slang for the man who finishes in last place. “I know of no reason the boys should be against me,” he would later lament in his cool and judicious style. “I try to do clean riding without receiving the advantage of anything or anybody. I only ask from them the same kind of treatment . . .” Jay Eaton, one of the few sympathizers Taylor had in the peloton, summarized the treatment Taylor was facing. “Considering the length of time he has been in the game, Taylor has shown as much speed as any other rider . . . yet he is treated as a pariah by the majority of his fellows on the track.”

Dealing with increasing hostility chipped away at Taylor’s finite energy reserves, causing him to lose out on valuable championship points. His rapid ascension in the championship standings suddenly froze. With fall right around the corner and time running out, his dream of becoming the American sprint champion was in jeopardy. Unfortunately, if one was to believe the tea leaves, Taylor’s greatest troubles lay ahead.

Taylor’s train sighed into Taunton, Massachusetts, during the final week of September. He was slated for two days of racing against a field of twelve riders, including second-place Tom Butler and William Becker, a noted rider from Minneapolis. Becker was a big, strapping man and the proud holder of the five-mile American Championship title. To some, he was seen as more than that. Since bicycles hit the streets in the 1860s, a few quack physicians, jealous horsemen, and general doomsayers warned of ill effects from bike riding. Cycling, they claimed, would ruin your eyes, hands, gums, face, heart, wrist, feet, and even your mind. With his muscular body and dashing appearance, William Becker fought back for the cycling industry, becoming a poster child of the real benefits of diligent bike riding. Several newspapers plastered his photo front and center, arms folded, handsome face thrown back in a stately pose, broad chest pushed out, fists planted firmly under his bulging arms.

Journalists filled vast column inches with the virtues of bike riding while simultaneously describing the remarkable physical qualities of Becker. “It’s a pity that the old fogies who rail at cycling and talk of its debilitating effects upon the human body,” ogled one reporter, “have not a chance to see, feel, and examine the splendid muscular tissue developed by W. E. Becker, America’s five-mile champion.”

Since they had been on the same racing circuit all year, Taylor was aware of Becker’s racing exploits and his physical prowess—he’s “as tough as a pine knot,” wrote one correspondent. Throughout the season, Becker, who because of his pathological need for attention, was known to “play to the crowd.” He had watched with silent scorn as huge crowds cheered Taylor on at race after race. Initially his anger was like a pilot light—ever-present but out of sight. But when Taylor’s intense following began stealing some of his thunder, rage, jealousy, and the desire for revenge bubbled inside him like boiling water.

His largest seed of anger may have been planted in Springfield, Massachusetts, a week before Taylor’s arrival in Taunton. By then, Taylor’s popularity had risen off the charts, especially with fans in New England, a region that seemed to be a tonic for his racial ails. Even on a weekday—Tuesday the fourteenth of September—around twenty-five thousand fans, the largest throng in Springfield history, had crammed into the local track. Every hotel and boardinghouse had been filled. Countless neighboring towns had been all but stripped of their citizens. Since the grandstand wasn’t nearly large enough to house everyone, the entire infield had bubbled over with a mass of smothering fans. With Becker—who had been eliminated in the preliminaries—waiting on the sidelines, Taylor, who performed better near his home turf, beat Bald twice. “The black cloud led the way,” wrote one witness.

Becker must have figured he’d seen enough. Until the last week of September, he had held back his fury. But as was often said, hell hath no fury like revenge.

The first signs of a declining summer hung in the air as the field lined up for the start of the One-Mile Massachusetts Open on September 23. Apprehension spread through the peloton. Taylor’s nerves were frayed and everyone noticed it. TAYLOR’S LIFE IN DANGER headlined several papers days before the race. “It’s true . . . they have threatened to injure me,” Taylor confessed, stating some of the most ominous words of his life, “and I expect before the season is out they will do so.”

With the crack of the pistol, the field surged forward, Tom Butler leading the pack, followed by Becker, with Taylor a close third. The three men careened around the track at a terrific pace, the rest of the field slowly inching back, struggling to stay in contention. The positioning remained static as the three leaders veered down the midstretch. Then, like a vulture, Taylor swooped in behind Becker, harnessing the sweeping draft created by his large frame, hoping he would eventually wear out trying to chase down front-runner Butler. Being intimately familiar with Taylor’s inclination to finish with a burst to the inside, Becker inched closer to the inner pole to close off any attempt by Taylor to take over the prized position. With little more than the width of a bicycle separating him and the inner rail, Becker believed he had the inside all but choked off. But behind, as if tethered to him, Taylor was stalking him, waiting for the slightest sliver to open. It did.

Swerving down the final stretch, Becker craned his neck back to gauge Taylor’s position, causing his bike to veer ever so slightly toward the outside. Taylor, who could be utterly fearless on a bike, saw the slender opening and pounced catlike toward the inside, his weight sinking deeper into his saddle. As Becker snapped his bobbing head forward, he felt a strong gust of air, while simultaneously glimpsing Taylor’s lean frame whisking past him on the inside. As he passed, on one side mere inches separated Taylor from the rail and on the other side, no more than the width of a bicycle spoke separated him from Becker. In a flash, Taylor was more than a length ahead of him.

Once again Taylor had broken Becker.

Pandemonium rained down from the grandstand. Thousands of fans shouted as he shifted his sights on front-runner Butler. Becker, recalling all the times this scene had played out throughout the racing season, surely had one thought: It’s happening again! He became unnerved, his eyes swelling with rage. He was riding amok.

Noticing that Butler’s suicidal pace wasn’t fading, Taylor dropped his head down and tore after him. But it was too late. Taylor crossed the line a length behind Butler, with Becker nipping frantically at his heels, finishing third.

Taylor stopped and leaned over his bike, his ribs heaving in and out. Before he had fully recovered from the strain of the intense race, through the roar of the crowd came a loud, masculine voice. Behind him the long, muscular arms of William Becker stretched forward. His open hands lunged in Taylor’s direction, a demonic look washing over his face, an eerie portent of things to come.

Looking forward, Taylor never saw what was coming his way. Becker grabbed him from behind and tried hurling him to the ground. Taylor quickly collapsed under the tremendous force generated from Becker’s sturdy frame. Taylor lay prostrate on the track floor while Becker’s pent up rage and jealousy clamped down like a vise grip around the crook of his neck. Within moments, the weight of Becker’s body and the firm grip around his neck compressed Taylor’s chest and trachea, cutting off the already reduced flow of air to his lungs. A few minutes passed and Becker’s grip had not subsided. Short of breath even before Becker began choking him, Taylor gasped for air, any air. Out from under the jumbled pile, a low, muffled plea for help dribbled out of Taylor’s mouth, dying before reaching anyone.

At first, no one seemed to notice. Then a handful of fans began screaming for someone to help. Soon, a chorus of catcalls spilled down from the grandstand. Before long, chaos ensued. Piles of angry fans trampled out of the stands and tore after Becker. Enraged and oblivious, Becker continued his assault, the sweat from his hair dripping onto Taylor’s jersey. His face was fire engine red, his lips were quivering, and his thick hands were still sinking into Taylor’s neck, seemingly trying to squeeze the life out of him.

The color drained from Taylor’s face. His eyes flickered shut and all resistance halted. His body went completely limp. A pulse of terror spread across the velodrome.

Doctors say a choke hold held for a few minutes causes convulsions, after four minutes brain death. One question droned through the track: Is he trying to kill Taylor?

Within minutes, the police intervened, finally prying Becker off Taylor’s still frame. Agitated fans jeered and lunged at Becker. “Someone ought to give him a sound thrashing,” one man yelled.

Meanwhile, Taylor lay motionless on the track. The compression that at first cut off his breathing threatened to shut off the flow of blood and oxygen to his brain.

To the massed thousands, it must have seemed as if Taylor were dead. Ten minutes had passed and he still lay stock-still. After separating Becker from the angry mob, the police hunkered over Taylor’s flaccid frame desperately fighting to revive him. Today, the rescue breathing part of CPR is a standard lifesaver for choking and drowning victims. But in the 1890s when 10 percent of all violent crime involved strangulation, this effective technique was fifty years away from being discovered.

The life of one of the most likable and promising American sports figures hung in the balance.

An excruciating fifteen minutes passed and Taylor still lay unconscious. The police probably employed all the traditional techniques known at the time—slapping, yelling, striking the soles of his feet, massaging his neck, chest, and diaphragm.

After nearly twenty minutes in a lifeless state, Taylor finally came to. The crowd sighed. With someone’s help, he stood up groggy and discombobulated, hobbling to the locker room where he struggled to regain his senses. The race stewards huddled to decide how to handle the final heats. One of the stewards had the insolence to suggest that Taylor race in the final heat despite nearly having the life strangled out of him. But with his head still in a fog, Taylor was in no condition to even think of it. “I was too badly injured to race,” he later remembered. The stewards eventually came to their collective senses and disqualified Becker. Taylor sat in the dressing room choked up with emotion.

With great apprehension, he later emerged from the dim interior and hobbled to the rail station where he boarded a train. As the throaty, mournful wail of his train clattered west, the sun disappeared.

Word of Becker’s assault spread through racing channels. In a special bulletin, Albert Mott, the bespectacled chairman of the LAW, announced the immediate suspension of Becker pending a full review. Becker’s booming voice barked back, claiming that Taylor had crowded him. Virtually no one who was there bought into his argument.

The newsmen caught wind of the story and lit up the sports pages. Nearly all northern writers were calling for a multiyear ban so that Becker could, as one man wrote, “recover the manhood he seems to have totally lost.” In its daily section devoted to cycling, the New York Times wrote a long piece titled “The Negro in Racing,” in which they first read Becker the riot act, then moved on. “Probably none of the circuit riders has stored up resentment against the Major personally, unless the defeats he has administered to nearly all the circuit chasers may rankle in the breasts of some of the surly disposed, for the little Negro has always shown a very sportsmanlike spirit.” Then the unnamed writer got right to what he believed was the heart of the matter. “It is simply a matter of race prejudice, which is one of the hardest things to eradicate.”

The verdict among the reporters—that Becker should receive a long suspension, possibly forever—was virtually unanimous. But one writer, who at first condemned Becker, suggested Taylor was to blame. “Becker will undoubtedly be punished with a lengthy term of suspension, which he richly deserves,” reasoned a Bicycle World reporter, “but the colored man, the cause of the unpleasantness, will remain just where he is, with the added halo of martyr to stimulate his hearty ill feeling which prevails against him among his rivals.”

A heavy atmosphere awaited the verdict. Everyone knew the outcome would be an important indicator of the league’s feelings on the touchy matter of race in professional bike racing. By imposing a harsh penalty at this early stage of Taylor’s career, one proportional to the gravity of the offense, the league would be setting the stage for what was not acceptable. Conversely, a light penalty would send a message to all riders that the LAW wasn’t going to take the issue seriously, in essence giving the white riders a free hand on the lone black man in the future.

While his allies in the press carried on, Taylor had other reasons to believe severe punishment would be doled out. Just two weeks before, Chairman Mott laid down the law in front of a group of riders at the Manhattan Beach Track. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mott vowed “to rule over the riders with a rod of iron.” He explained to the riders that he intended to be tough on anyone who committed fouls, saying that “a mere disqualification from a race was too small a punishment for foul riding.” He then warned riders that he would not only disqualify them but fine them severely.

Taylor, who remained strangely silent throughout the affair, must have been comforted by Mott’s pledge. If elbowing or crowding would bring serious consequences, an outright assault causing unconsciousness would certainly remove someone like Becker from the tracks for a long time, perhaps even for life as some in the press were demanding.

Refusing to give up on his dream of becoming the sprint champion of America, Taylor scampered off to a race in Cleveland late that evening. By the time his train arrived the next day, he was late. The crowd was waiting. He bolted to the dressing room, tore off his traveling clothes, and changed into his racing togs. Running on raw adrenaline, he proceeded to ride the legs off everyone there.

Days ticked on and still no decision had been reached. All eyes remained fixed on Baltimore and Mott’s office where officials hovered over Becker’s fate. The Washington Post was becoming impatient: “When racing men begin to kill each other on the track, it is time for quick and decisive action on the part of the racing board.”

Finally, on September 27, five days after the notorious assault, Taylor got word that a verdict was about to be rendered.

He could not have imagined what was about to take place.

Chairman Mott stepped out into the Maryland sun and issued the board’s decree. Instead of a life sentence and a stiff fine, as many had predicted, Becker received no suspension and a paltry $50 fine. The floodgates had opened.

Publicly, Taylor remained mute, but internally he had to have been burning up. With his silence, it seemed as if he were trying to solve his problems by ignoring them, a strategy he would pay for later in life. Perhaps he believed he could do nothing about it. Or he thought if he kept improving and crowds kept flocking to see him race, his problems would go away.

Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come. Shortly afterward, Taylor received word that most of the fine had been picked up by a passel of sympathetic white riders, another slap in the face to him. These despicable riders, lamented one Philadelphia writer, “were willing to identify themselves with one of the most disrespectful acts ever perpetrated on an American track.”

Taylor felt alone. Three decades later, memories of the ’97 season and the Becker assault still haunted him. “I found that the color prejudice was not confined to the South entirely, in fact it had asserted itself against me even in and around Boston. It would be difficult for me to narrate all the experiences which I underwent . . . and also to call to mind all the vicious attempts that were made to eliminate me from bicycle racing.”

The northern correspondents wouldn’t let the issue die. In their sports pages near the close of the year, the New York Times concluded that the assault “caused more animated discussion than any event this year.” Clearly Taylor had some important decisions to make about his future as the only black man in a sport ruled by the tight grip of white men. For him, the wheels of justice did not roll on; instead they had stalled one September day on a hardened Massachusetts homestretch.

Following his win in Cleveland, Taylor packed his bags in preparation for what was known as the Southern Extension. Since the American Championship was granted to the rider who had the most points, there was no way a rider could win without picking up points from this Southern circuit. It encompassed one-third of the season.

In October, with or without him, the circuit was scheduled to chug west through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, then move south through Kentucky and Missouri, finally finishing in the deep Southern states of Georgia and Florida on November 20. By then, despite the hostility directed at him, Taylor was still seventh in the standings. If given a fair shake and a good showing during the Southern Extension, he stood a decent chance of a top-three finish.

But the Southern states proved unforgiving for black men in 1890s America, especially one who had been “humiliating” superior white men all season long. If Taylor decided to join the circuit, it would be an audacious move, reserved only for exceptionally ambitious men. “The Southern meets would never stand his entry,” warned one of the traveling cycling scribes, echoing the words of many columnists.

And so, on September 28, special excursion trains stood waiting at the Buffalo, New York, depot. To save on travel and lodging cost for the riders, the league had commandeered a couple of “palace” railcars. One car had a glass observation room stocked with a grand piano; the other was a dining car with waiters, chefs, and “little gyp Pete.” A sawed-off vagabond of unknown origin, little Pete was a mascot-porter who had become popular among the riders because of his willingness to please and his mystical ability to hoist nearly twice his weight. Funded by manufacturers, advance teams arrived in each city before the riders, alerting racing fans of their pending visit.

After inspecting the riders traveling home, two thousand fans stood in a light mist watching Major Taylor, Eddie Bald, and the rest of the field board the Iolanthe and the Pickwick. A haunting tension gripped the train as they rolled west over the plains. In Detroit on the first day of October, one of the first stops on the tour, Taylor was allowed to race. But a certain reticence clung to his racing style—the same one that reared up when he felt danger lurking. He quickly drifted out of the money, watching cautiously as Fred Loughead won the day.

As the railcars loaded with journalists sputtered farther south, Taylor’s worst nightmares were realized. In town after town, including Indianapolis, New Albany, Louisville, and St. Louis, his entries were either refused by racist promoters or shunned by riders who, in cahoots with one another, refused to race against him. After a coldhearted riders’ protest at the bike track in New Albany, Indiana, that included open threats of violence, he was reduced to racing against a horse on a seedy horse track on the other side of town. Dejected and disheartened, he lost. “The colored boy,” one reporter wrote of his decision to leave the New Albany bike track, “thought discretion the better part of valor.” Louisville, the next stop, was a hopeless cause; the owners of the local Fountain Ferry Track not only barred blacks from racing but they wouldn’t allow them to step foot on the track surface for any reason.

Some people were even calling for the color line to be drawn by the press. Bearings began receiving flack for including Major Taylor in their Bearings thermometer, an ongoing gauge of each rider’s total points and win percentage. Taylor was now relegated to reading about the men he had raced against all season, winning purses before idolatrous crowds. “I shall go to France,” he hollered to the Boston Globe in a fit of anger. “There, I can hold my own and will be thought something of, maybe.”

Days passed, then a week, then a month, and Taylor’s point total remained frozen. Meanwhile, Bald, Cooper, Butler and others all saw their point totals rise. When the circuit headed into the deep South, he compared his point totals with the other riders. The spread had widened to the point where there was no chance of catching them even if he was allowed to race. His once prominent name had suddenly gone dark in the papers and in the standings.

The speeding wheel of Taylor’s life had come to a standstill, his dream of becoming national champion and the honor and respect that came with it scattered to the southern winds. Soon the newsmen would splash the news. Eddie Bald, the man Taylor defeated in his first race at Madison Square Garden, was again crowned National Sprint Champion. Taylor’s train sped to Worcester. Out his window, the jagged countryside flickered past. Gazing out in deep reflection, Taylor felt hollow.

Birdie Munger was having the kind of year no businessman cares to have. While Taylor was competing at the annual convention in Philadelphia back in August, hundreds of his employees had gone on strike. The strike had been preceded by a pay cut, which had been preceded by another pay cut. Since the day that Colonel Pope had dramatically reduced the price of his bicycles, Munger had been forced to lower costs on his models to an unprofitable level. There simply wasn’t enough room for hundreds of manufacturers. Without the means to compete against the massive Pope juggernaut, something had to give.

Something did. Standing in his Middletown factory office one summer day, Munger and his partner heard a loud knock. When they opened the door, in walked a large, uniformed man—the kind of brown uniform a person usually saw when he was in trouble. It was a Connecticut sheriff named Brown there to place another lien on his four brick buildings, this time for allegedly failing to pay on a $25,000 loan. Soon after, Munger’s business was placed in the hands of a receiver. Like the auto industry decades later, the bicycle industry was consolidating. In the coming months, the once-thriving Worcester Cycle Manufacturers Company would pass into history.

For the ex-high-wheeler—the most important man in Taylor’s life—the end of an era was near. He would have to find his way in a changing world. While weaving his way in that new world, Munger would have little time for anything else. Sadly, he and Taylor parted ways. Taylor was now without his patron, his surrogate father, his best friend for as long as he could remember.

From his room in Worcester, Taylor watched the clouds thicken. Outside, bright leaves swirled in the cool, fall winds. He mulled over his future. With Munger’s shop in receivership, his options outside of racing had further narrowed. Effectively banned from competing in the latter third of the season, his choices inside racing didn’t look so good either. Over the years, he would see or hear of several cyclists who were either killed or seriously injured from racing. He knew that continuing in an environment so hostile toward him could prove suicidal. Or as some suggested, he could succumb to the intimidation, retreating to the confines of his parents’ farm and the life of anonymity from which he came.

But since the carefree days of his youth, the bicycle was all he had known. On its leather saddle he felt alive and free, liberated from the menial toils of the farm and factory. He had already become a top-ten rider in America, but he wanted to accomplish much more, like someday becoming the fastest bicycle rider in the world, as Munger had prophesized. And there were many places to see, like those exotic, faraway lands Arthur Zimmerman spoke of back at Munger’s bachelor pad.

Professionally, the odds were stacked against him. Baseball and boxing had already rejected the idea of blacks at the professional level. But this was bike racing and Taylor was no ordinary man. When he allowed himself to think freely, emancipated from all attempts to bring him down to where blacks were “supposed” to be, he dreamed big dreams. In those moments, he was not satisfied with mediocrity; he wanted superstardom now and for posterity.

But by the end of the 1897 racing season, no riders wanted a black man to humiliate them in front of thousands of adoring racing fans. Perhaps, as some reporters suggested, it would be best for all concerned if he just left the country. In his anguish Taylor probably lost himself in Zimmerman’s book, a wheelman’s bible at the time. In it were stories of the internationally famous bicycle tracks as well as bicycle row where much of France congregated, including the “pretty Parisian Mademoiselles.” France, the mecca of world cycling, would, he had heard, welcome him with open arms.

In November, the New York Times picked up on his thoughts and highlighted them in an article titled “Taylor Yearns for France.” But going to France now would conflict with his goals. He had always wanted to follow in the footsteps of Arthur Zimmerman, his childhood hero who had first conquered his own country before sailing overseas.

If Taylor was going to continue with his chosen career in the cold, hard world that was 1890s America, he would have to find strength and guidance from others. He needed someone who would shine a light on him when others tried plunging him in darkness—perhaps someone not of this world. Having neither the desire nor the time to manage his racing affairs, he would also need someone of this world with experience in such matters. Major Taylor needed the divinity of almighty God and the tenacity of William A. Brady. Sometime that winter while he lingered in the depths of despair, providence would unite them.

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* The paying crowd at the 1897 League of American Wheelmen convention in Philadelphia was reported to be the largest for any sporting event in American history. For more information, see the Notes section in the back of the book.