Chapter 10

THE BOYS WOULD GLADLY MAKE HIM WHITE

By the middle of 1898, William Brady believed he had greatness in his midst. It was time, he reasoned, to expand Taylor’s horizons. For race promoters, a top-flight match race could attract big crowds and equally large gate receipts. For riders, there was the potential for significant purses and increased notoriety. For Taylor, it would be time to test his mettle in something new. Beyond the profit potential, Brady had other reasons for wanting to involve Taylor in match races. In nearly every traditional race, he noticed Taylor’s true talent had been impeded by other riders. Because he hadn’t yet been allowed to soar freely, no one knew how fast Major Taylor really was.

A lot of people were eager to find out. So Brady put out a nationwide challenge to every pro rider, including the “big four”: Eddie Bald, Arthur Gardiner, Tom Cooper, and Earl Kiser. “I will match Major Taylor with any man in America in a sprint race for any amount from $1,000 to $5,000,” he announced confidently. Under normal circumstances, riders would have jumped out of their skins for a shot at that kind of purse. Brady employed all the promotional tricks he had learned from his days managing Corbett, yet no one seemed willing to come within a locomotive’s length of Taylor. “I want to race these men,” Taylor told a reporter, “but they choose to ignore me entirely . . .”

His rivals fired back with every conceivable excuse—too sick, too busy, maybe next week. Eddie Bald, who had just agreed to a match race against Tom Cooper for half of what Brady was offering, came right out with it, claiming that competing head to head against a black man “would affect him socially.” Many observers read right through their explanations. Previously, those losing an open race to Taylor could explain it away by claiming they were pocketed or that something beyond their control had been responsible. But in match races, or “races of truth” as they are called, little room for excuses is available to the vanquished. In Taylor’s case, none of the elite riders wanted to risk explaining to their friends and family why they lost a heavily publicized match race to a man born of an “inferior” race.

Believing it was racism pure and simple, Brady was furious at the American circuit chasers. But there was a reason why he was known as “The Fighting Man.” After it became clear that none of the elite American riders would risk the potential shame and humiliation, he sent all the way to Wales for a tiny crumb of a man named Jimmy “Midget” Michaels, who was universally hailed as “the athletic marvel of the century.”

Michaels was a boy-faced, twenty-two-year-old Welshmen who, even soaking wet, rarely tipped the scales at more than 105 pounds. His lithe frame would measure more than five feet but only if he stepped into his much taller wife’s high heels. Michaels was so small and looked so young, a judge had recently kicked him out of a Calaboose because the court did not allow “minors” in the local jail. Yet in 1898, a few years beyond Zimmerman’s peak, Michaels was among the most talked about, written about, and idolized athletes in the world. Along with Corbett and Zimmerman, he was also among the richest.

His initiation into the sport had apparently been inauspicious. “His opponents,” explained Brady, “laughed out loud when they saw this pink-cheeked midget, hardly out of short pants, trotting his wheel around the track to compete with grown men. But once he was in the saddle and digging into the pedals behind his pace,” continued Brady, “he turned into a streaking wonder.”

Unlike Taylor, Michaels avoided the regular circuit races and specialized instead on one thing—paced match races. In this popular niche in which sportswriters judged him “invincible,” Michaels had set many world speed records, incinerating everyone he had ever faced. No one, including puzzled physicians who were brought in to analyze him, could figure out where, within his diminutive body, such incredible power came from. Some wondered if it wasn’t just one giant lung. His global fame was such that before he agreed to ship overseas, he demanded a king’s ransom from Brady—a guaranteed minimum of $22,500, plus purses and promotional fees from bike and tire manufacturers. One of only a few promoters able to underwrite such a venture, Brady, with his partners, agreed to Michaels’s demands.

The timing was right. America was utterly obsessed with speed, and any minute advance in technology or human conditioning that increased a rider’s speed captivated the public. Brady understood this well and was the man most responsible for bringing paced racing to America. In those days before reliable motorcycles, he had hired more than fifty strong “pace” riders to pilot super long bicycles built for anywhere between two to eight men. Paced racing was fast and dangerous. “Take a spill off a speeding bicycle on a hardwood track,” commented Brady years later, “and you’d be better off if you’d stopped one of Joe Louis’s punches.”

Brady sat down with Michaels and Michaels’s agent and ironed out a deal. Brady agreed to pit Taylor against Michaels in a one-mile paced match race, even though paced match races were not part of Taylor’s normal routine. Michaels agreed, and even though he had set a world record for the one-mile, his preference was for middle distances. In mid-August, while waiting for his new Orient bicycle in Worcester, Taylor received a telegraph from Brady ordering him to get to New Jersey at once to prepare for the race. Upon arrival, Taylor worked out at Jim Corbett’s sporting center, a resort nestled in among seven acres of pine trees near the Asbury Park bike track. The Farm, as it was called, had tennis and handball courts, dumbbells, pulley weights, pools, punching bags, masseurs, and Aunt Mary, a fabulous black cook who could prepare any wholesome meals he wanted. The world-famous training grounds had become besieged with so many visitors who wanted to meet the star athletes who worked out there, Brady required them to procure a special pass signed by him.

Though it was the ideal matchup, the match race with Michaels would have to wait until after Michaels responded to a summons to appear before one of his staunchest fans. At the White House waiting to receive him for dinner—along with Dave Shafer, James Kennedy, and William Brady—was First Lady Ida and President McKinley, who had recently given a rousing pro-wheelmen speech before a partisan group of three thousand riders. If it was like most of his meals, Midget Michaels pecked on a light salad. Kennedy, a pleasingly plump man of prime 1890’s stock, surely devoured half the White House. Brady apparently kept his Irish tongue in check for one evening.

Upon his reentry to earth, William Brady paid a visit to the New York newsrooms to charm his old friends. The press, already fascinated with the match-up, didn’t need a lot of prodding. With their coverage, including drawings of expected luminaries (with Zimmerman being one of them), the New York Sun and the New York Journal seemed to find the topic more interesting than the Spanish-American War.

Taylor kicked back and watched a master promoter in action. “I dare say,” he commented after having competed in hundreds of races, “no bicycle race that was ever conducted in this country ever received the amount of space in the sporting pages that this one did.”

On August 28, thousands of fans filed into the Manhattan Beach Velodrome. The only thing keeping it from being a sellout, one editor believed, was the inevitability of another Michaels’s victory. With Taylor, the young black star, competing against Michaels, who women thought “was the cutest thing they ever saw,” the place had a feminine air about it. All the female fawning had apparently gotten to Michaels. “He made so much money and received so much adoration from the ladies,” Brady remembered in amazement, “that his head was badly turned.”

All around the track, large sums of money changed hands, with Michaels as the favorite. Feeling surprisingly confident and flush, Brady sidelined Dave Shafer, Michaels’s manager, and offered to wager a sum seemingly equal to the cost of the Brooklyn Bridge on Taylor’s legs. “Michaels,” said Brady, “will be up against the best man in the world.” Shafer accepted the challenge with a knowing smile.

Without the typical wind gust swirling in from the Atlantic, an unusual stillness permeated the balmy track, causing the first of several signature products to appear. Ladies cooled themselves with silk accordion fans that featured Taylor prominently in the center and nineteen white riders, their arms folded, filling in each fold.

Defeating Jimmy Michaels would mean worldwide fame and fortune for Taylor, and everyone knew it. Tension filled the air. “I have seen enthusiastic gatherings at bike tracks all over the country,” remembered Taylor, “but I never saw one more on edge than the assembly that witnessed the final heat in this great race.”

Out of the gate, Taylor and Michaels broke even. They remained neck and neck through the first of three laps. Right before midstretch, conserving energy for the final push, Michaels purposely faded behind Taylor, hounding him like a dachshund nipping at the heels of a speeding greyhound. Noticing the gap widening and Taylor pressing forward at a relentless pace, Michaels gunned ahead, lopping yards off Taylor’s lead with every turn of his crank. Bending around the final turn of the second lap, Michaels drew up near Taylor again. The hair-raising speed of both men was building and building, bringing the riders near exhaustion.

The two men winged down the final lap at a tremendous pace, one of the fastest in bike-racing history. Taylor glanced to his side and saw Michaels’s tiny legs rotating at an astounding cadence. Mere inches in front of him he saw twenty powerful legs and ten straining pacemen on quintuplets leading them toward the tape. Taylor’s eyes were riveted on the finish line ahead. Waiting there, “bounding about like a rubber ball,” stood Brady, sweat dripping from his brow, stopwatch clenched in one hand, a pinched Cuban cigar in the other.

With a half-lap remaining, Brady noticed Michaels becoming unwound. His hips and shoulders began rocking side to side, legs revving like pistons in a four-cylinder engine. Up in the grandstand Arthur Zimmerman rose to his feet screaming, his temple puckered in sweat.

Taylor’s merciless pace never wavered. His form, in contrast to Michaels’s, remained smooth, graceful, sparrow-like, an eight-cylinder thundering toward the line. Brady then witnessed something he had rarely heard over the years: Taylor cried out to his pacemen for more speed! “Move along!” he hollered. “Move along!” But the pace was too much, and all five pacemen were completely spent. Taylor passed his pacers. Seeing this through his sunken eyes, “face pale as a corpse,” Michaels sat up on his bike and capitulated. He too was spent. Taylor tucked his head down into his handlebars and rushed forward, crossing the line twenty yards in front.

The king of pace racing had been dethroned! At once, Manhattan Beach Track became a noisy, rumbling place, men and women leaping in the aisles. For the first time in his career, Michaels was hissed by the crowd. Taylor circled the track triumphantly as flowers and women’s hats fell near his feet, his stealthy form melting into the crowd, jersey number thirteen flapping in the wind. Brady was feeling emboldened. He ran over to the announcer’s booth and ripped the megaphone away from announcer Fred Burnett. His stentorian voice cut out over the grandstand. “I am announcing a sweeping challenge for another match race between these two men for a purse of $5,000 to $10,000 for any distance up to 100 miles,” he bellowed. “Do you want to see these men race again?” The wildly popular challenge was received with tumultuous applause.

Michaels slinked into his locker room.

Following the race, the crowds piled into streetcars and horse-taxis, stopping long enough to empty Delmonico’s and Sherry’s restaurants of food and drink. Brady tracked down Taylor, congratulated him, and handed him an extra $1,000. “Just a little present from one good sport to another,” he said.

Taylor was ecstatic with his win and Brady’s gesture. Without any obligation to do so, he graciously shared some of his purse with his pacemen, all of them white. He was so thrilled, he even began thanking reporters. “I want to thank your paper,” he told the New York Sun, “for the way you have treated me. No one knows how much I appreciate your good will.”

Agitated, Michaels had made several unusual threats that became revealed in newspapers worldwide in headlines such as MICHAELS MAY QUIT CYCLE RACING FOR GOOD, WILL THEN BECOME JOCKEY–OWNER. Anticipating the potential publicity value, horseman Phil Dwyer grinned. Mindful of the significant investment he had in Michaels, Brady cringed. But after giving him the rough side of his tongue, not to mention the threat of a lawsuit, Brady eventually wrung enough of the obstreperousness out of Michaels to keep him racing a steel steed for most of the next half decade.

If Taylor’s victory over Eddie Bald in his first professional race at Madison Square Garden brought him a degree of notoriety, his conquest over Michaels, known the world over, stopped the presses. The victory, said the New York Sun, “was like an electric shock to many who did not believe a colored man could win.”

Taylor’s stock was soaring. Back at the homestead, phones rang off the hook, letters clogged the mail, and overseas cables congested Brady’s office the likes of which he hadn’t seen since Corbett defeated Sullivan. The offers came from all over America and from the cycling meccas of Italy, Germany, Holland, France, and Australia. Promoters, manufacturers, and cigarette makers now wanted a piece of Taylor. Under his handling, Brady told a reporter, “Major Taylor will develop into a world-beater.”

Taylor seemed to thrive under Brady’s tutelage. With men like Michaels and Zimmerman raking in, by some estimates, healthy five-figure annual incomes—an enormous sum of money in the 1890s—Taylor suddenly had the potential to be among the world’s highest paid athletes. Major Taylor’s victory, proclaimed the New York Sun, “coming as it did just after the unsuccessful efforts of certain race meet managers to debar him from their tracks on account of his color, and for no other reason, has established fortune for him.”

In the minds of many observers, it now seemed unlikely any track owners or race promoters would bar Taylor from their tracks or races. This belief seemed to be borne out the same day Taylor defeated Michaels. Brady received a dispatch from T. Laing, manager of St. Louis Circuit City Track, formally inviting Taylor to an important national meet being held there in October. Laing was the manager who had barred Taylor from his track in 1897, all but crippling his chances of winning the championships.

Putting all distractions out of his mind, Taylor stayed focused on the one goal that had eluded him, his dream since early childhood: to become the sprint champion of America. And that meant winning as many points as possible in the national circuit races.

It was the early afternoon of September 27, 1898, and the owners of New Jersey’s Trenton House Hotel had become curious. Outside, amid a pouring rain, special trains unloaded carloads of riders, valets, and reporters from all over the country for a national meet. But when the doors of the railcars slid open and packs of suited attorneys stepped out with them, it became obvious something bigger than just another bike race was going on.

There was.

Professional bike racing had been experiencing the same challenges professional baseball and horse racing had faced a few years before. Rumors trickled through the peloton that a few “rebels” were contemplating breaking away from racing’s governing body, the League of American Wheelmen. As the season ground forward, the list of possible defectors had grown to a point where a full-scale meeting became necessary.

The movement surprised many racing fans. Sportswriters had raved about how well the LAW was run; some even suggested that bike racing was the best organized of the major sports. Knowing the sheer scope of the league’s racing responsibilities—overseeing a multitude of clubs, riders, track owners, and big money promoters, all with their own unique interest—others weren’t so surprised. The league, some believed, should give up control of bike racing and focus on the monumental task of expanding the nation’s roads.

This September revolution wasn’t the first time the league’s authority had been challenged. But all previous rebellions had been quickly quashed by influential League leaders, often with strong political ties, and the press, who frequently condemned the instigators as naïve and underfunded. But this attempt had more weight behind it. Apparently some riders, promoters, and disgruntled former League employees believed they could do better, and the Trenton House was their staging ground to try to prove it.

Taylor listened intently to both sides, jotting down copious notes. Immediately, several top-level riders appeared poised to jump ship. Taylor decided to hold off until he was convinced the new organization would have the same quality of management and financial backing as the LAW. He had other reasons for pause; rumors that several riders wanted to use a “secret ballot” to anonymously vote him out of the new league began circulating. In the interim, the dark New Jersey skies unleashed buckets of rain on the track, washing out the scheduled races. The meetings carried on into the wee hours of the night. A knot of reporters and racing fans noised about the hotel. It was, one of them wrote, “the most historic day in cycling history.” Because the hotel operator was “anxious” to bar him from its rooms, someone else booked a room for Taylor using his own name. Taylor, who had been kicked out of two hotels in Westbury, Connecticut, a few days before, snuck into the room and laid his head down on a pillow, enjoying one of his last restful nights of the season.

The following day, heavy rain still pounding the track, everyone sped to the Bingham House in Philadelphia for more meetings and a series of races, leaving the Trenton House Hotel gutted. By the morning of the second day of meetings, many riders had signed on to the new organization, which they named the American Racing Cycling Union, or ARCU. From this the National Cycling Association, or NCA, was formed. Taylor was still understandably undecided; the top positions in the new league were going to his chief rivals like Eddie Bald, Arthur Gardiner, Tom Cooper, Floyd MacFarland—many of whom wanted to expel him from the sport. To some observers, it seemed as if the foxes were positioning themselves to watch over the lone hen. Taylor kept vacillating. If most of the top riders defected, he wondered, how exciting would it be racing against a softer field in low-rent races every day? But his treatment from the league had improved since the choking incident, undoubtedly because of Brady’s presence. And he had other considerations. After defeating Michaels, he had been bombarded with offers from manufacturers. The National Board of the Trade of Cycling Manufacturers, siding with the league, announced they would only award contracts to league-sanctioned riders. In addition, Taylor had been working on a European racing junket and the European promoters, having enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the LAW, were not ready to recognize a rebel organization.

Then he had to consider Brady, with whom he was under contract for the entire year. Wanting more control over the sport, Brady’s organization seemed to be siding with the rebel movement and had probably put pressure on Taylor to defect. After agonizing over his choices and seeing several top riders sign on, Taylor, in a move that surprised many, finally decided to join the rebel group. But he did have one condition before signing on: absolutely no Sunday racing. “It’s against my religious scruples,” he told his rivals with conviction. They assured him there would be none. With that, he was admitted to the new organization, despite the fierce objections of several riders, including Floyd MacFarland, Orlando Stevens, Arthur Gardiner, and William Becker, the man who had notoriously strangled him.

The new group set the dates for the final and deciding races. The champion of the 1898 season would be determined at a few key races in Missouri in mid-October. Even though Taylor had beaten Bald ten out of twelve times and had competed in five fewer races, he was just two points behind Bald in the point’s column and led everyone in win percentage (.517). It was coming down to the wire.

As September gave way to October, the wires were clogged with gossip about the real intent of the rebels. This gossip turned into vociferous public finger-pointing. “There are a few followers of the colored boy’s riding,” railed a track writer for the Brooklyn Eagle, “who profess to think that Bald and Gardiner have taken the sensational course just made public to break up the championship table, which it was an even break for first place that Taylor would win, as neither Bald nor Gardiner are in any form to stop him at present.”

Oblivious to the politics of it all, Taylor’s train pressed on. A reporter for the Boston Daily Globe sat nearby. “It is now a case of black and white,” he said.

The gossip chased Taylor west toward the mighty Mississippi. The backstretch at St. Louis’s Monument Track was replete with anecdotes, primarily suggesting that when Taylor signed on with the NCA, he had indeed been hoodwinked. Arriving the day before the races, Taylor headed straight to the hotel where the rest of the wheelmen were holed up. He stood fidgeting in a long line behind his competitors and a slew of visiting racegoers. When he finally made his way to the front desk, the attendant drew the color line, rudely telling him that he would have to find quarters elsewhere.

Agitated and humiliated, Taylor scoured the town for alternative lodging. But in one place after another, he met with the same fate. Given that hundreds of citizens had gone through the trouble of signing a paper demanding that the promoter accept his entry long before he arrived, Taylor was taken aback by this treatment.

Evening neared. Exhausted and hungry, Taylor slid under a swaying elm tree and drowsed, a heavy mass of charcoal clouds drifting overhead. Reduced to temporary homelessness, Taylor’s search for a roof over his head resumed. After a protracted pursuit, he was eventually welcomed into the home of a sympathetic black family outside of town, a long monotonous journey from the track. As accommodating as his black hosts were, Taylor, who was on a strict bike-racer’s diet, didn’t feel it was proper to ask complete strangers to cook special meals just for him. So he trekked all the way to the restaurant at Union Station three times a day to satisfy his nutritional needs. But his stopovers caused a stir with management. On one occasion, he was forced to eat his meal alone in a hot and sweaty corner of the kitchen. By his third visit, they had seen enough of him. Shortly after Taylor sat down, the manager told him, rather curtly, that he was no longer welcome; his restaurant was for whites only. There was a long pause while Taylor internalized what was happening. Anger began building. The manager then ordered the headwaiter, also a black man, to refuse his order. But by this time one of the nation’s most admired athletes, Taylor had become an inspirational force to other blacks. The near-daily stream of articles chronicling his successes as well as his clean, God-fearing lifestyle had an effect on his unfortunate brethren. Some African Americans began questioning their traditional societal position, their usual subservience. The black waiter, at a time when jobs were scarce, took the bold step of standing up to his white manager and refused to obey his order. Voices were raised and harsh words exchanged. The waiter was summarily fired, but his action spread a message far and wide. “I must say,” snarled the Syracuse Standard, “that I think if Major Taylor is good enough to ride with, he is certainly good enough to eat with.”

Despite the harsh treatment, or perhaps from pent-up anger because of it, Taylor found his way to the track and blew the doors off his competitors in the opening heat of the five-mile race. But moments before the peloton lined up for the final heat, with first place up for grabs, a torrential rain doused the track. The crowd scurried for cover. The pouring rain continued throughout the afternoon and into the early evening. As darkness fell, the race announcer’s voice crackled over the track, postponing the final heat. The remaining crowd headed for the exits. Taylor waited patiently while racing officials conferred with some of the riders, the leaders of the new organization, to decide on the reschedule date.

The forthcoming decision would be the beginning of the end of Taylor’s hopes for the national title. The finals, among the most important of his life up to that date, was set for the following day, a Sunday. Taylor was irate. He confronted the group and reminded them of their agreement to avoid racing on Sundays. They pointed to a never-used clause in the bylaws of the new organization: “Where local opinion permits, there shall be racing on any day of the week.” Taylor, whose every waking moment was consumed with either racing or training, had apparently never looked over the fine print in the agreement. He had relied on the word of Bald, Gardiner, and others. “But we entered into a gentlemen’s agreement,” he argued repeatedly.

His argument fell upon deaf ears. The finals were on for Sunday, with or without him.

Neither what he viewed as deceitful competitors nor the splendor of winning the American Sprint Championship was going to break Taylor’s deep-seeded stance against Sunday racing. He had, after all, promised his loving mother he would never race on the Sabbath. Feeling betrayed, he packed his bags for Worcester. Meanwhile, after contesting the final heat in St. Louis on Sunday, the rest of the peloton pushed one hundred miles south to Cape Girardeau for the final major race of the season.

At the eleventh hour, it appeared as if Taylor’s hopes would be revived. While he was preparing to leave town, Henry Dunlop, the race promoter for the upcoming event at Cape Girardeau, corralled him. He said he sympathized with Taylor over the rough treatment he had received at the hands of hotels and restaurant owners in St. Louis. He went on to say that he owned the hotel in Cape Girardeau where all the riders would be staying, and promised Taylor he would receive the same treatment as everyone else had. For Taylor, it was as if a lead weight had just been lifted off his shoulders; his dashed hopes came alive again. With these assurances and the knowledge that a victory could still clinch the title, Taylor sped south to the cape to catch up with the rest of the wheelmen. Long after the other riders had checked in, Taylor stepped up to the counter to register. There stood Henry Dunlop, his pronounced jowls jangling up and down, explaining to Taylor that he had arranged for him to stay with a black family outside town, ignoring his promise entirely. Taylor’s shoulders slumped, and his heart sagged. He reminded him of their arrangement, but was shocked when Dunlop refused to change his mind. Testy words were exchanged. Taylor appealed to some of his fellow riders, but they merely laughed at him.

A horse-taxi transported Taylor on the long trek to the black family’s house, every turn of its wheels intensifying his rage. Once he had settled in, his mind rolled back over the week’s events. He had been lied to by his rivals and by a race promoter. He had repeatedly been denied access to conveniently located hotels, unlike the rest of his competitors. And his all-important diet, one of the keys to his success, had been disrupted after being denied meals. The crisis was escalating. He agonized over his choices. There was a lot more at stake than just the honorable title of Sprint Champion of America. Among the wheel, tire, gear, and bike manufacturers, the Washington Post estimated that Taylor would earn $10,000 in endorsements if he were to win the title.

But after careful reflection, he decided he’d had enough. While the rest of the well-fed peloton rolled out of their fine hotel en route to the track at six o’clock the next morning, Taylor stormed off to the Union Rail Station, stomped up to the ticket counter, and bought a seat on the first train for home. While his train stood waiting, Dunlop, evidently tipped off by someone at the train station, arrived to rub salt into his wounds. If Taylor refused to compete in his race, he warned, he’d be barred from the track forever. Taylor was overcome with feelings of degradation and humiliation. All the backstabbing and inequities had sunk deep into his psyche. Taylor let Dunlop know in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of his “word” and his “hospitality,” and then stomped onto a train pointing east.

As the whistle sounded, Taylor saw Dunlop storm off. The train lurched forward, anger all around it.

In a scene eerily similar to the previous fall, Taylor sat in the swaying belly of an eastward train agonizing over what could have been had he been granted the same treatment as his rivals. Journalists would soon announce the name of the 1898 NCA champion to the nation. And it wouldn’t be Taylor’s.

Taylor brooded. Amid the rocking and clanging, he found a quiet section of the train and sat alone, staring out as the first wave of fall leaves dropped to the ground. As always, nestled in his lap sat the Scriptures. As he thumbed through the pages, perhaps ruminating on the calming message in the words of John, he thought about all the opportunities lost. He surely grasped for hope in verse 14:27, in which all earthly troubles seem smaller, more manageable:

Peace I leave with you;

my peace I give you.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your heart be troubled

and do not be afraid. I am with you.

He finally drew into Worcester. As he emerged from the train, his sense of calm was replaced by a surge of energy, an undercurrent that needed attending. Though some sportswriters and prominent race handicappers considered him to be the unofficial American champion, Taylor felt incomplete, as if he had much to prove.

Upon his arrival home, he retrieved a letter someone had slid into his mailbox. It was a formal notice of his suspension from the rebel organization for abandoning the Missouri races. Any chance of reinstatement seemed improbable and would only be considered after payment of a lofty $400 fine. He tossed it aside apathetically. What’s more, he would learn that Brady’s mighty group, wanting to cash in on Sunday racing, was at the vanguard of the rebel movement.

He had only one avenue to go down. Taylor contacted Chairman Mott and applied for reinstatement into the League of American Wheelmen. If accepted, this would mean access to manufacturer’s contracts. He prayed for the opportunity to prove to a nation of confused racing fans exactly who the fastest man really was. After careful review, Chairman Mott accepted his application for reinstatement. Taylor’s prayer, in the form of a lucrative offer from a well-heeled manufacturer, would soon be answered.

Crisp fall leaves crackled across Philadelphia’s Woodside Park Track. At the end of the previous season when Taylor had faced strikingly similar challenges, he retreated to Worcester to ponder his future as a professional bike racer. But for a few bone-chilling days in mid-November 1898, with most sports fans hunkered indoors for the coming winter, he decided to channel his anger on the track.

Because professional bike racing had broken into two separate entities, similar to the American and National leagues in baseball, the winner of the American Sprint Championship was blurred. A few riders put forth claims as the victor, including Bald and Taylor. Everyone had an opinion. One of the most interesting ones came from a gentlemanly, midlevel rider named Howard Freemen. “I am in a good position to comment on the relative amount of speed possessed by Eddie Bald and Major Taylor,” he said after having had a unique view to the rear of Taylor throughout the year. “During the season, he has been blessed with almost superhuman speed . . . all the boys willingly acknowledge him to be the fastest rider on the track and also a splendid fellow personally, but on account of his color, they cannot stand to see him win over them. If it were possible to make him white,” Freeman continued, “all of the boys would gladly assist in the job.”

The official LAW record lists Tom Butler, a man who stayed with the league, as the 1898 winner. In accepting the trophy Butler must have felt unfulfilled; he was sixty points behind Taylor going into the final races right before the breakup.

So Taylor took up one of the many offers that had begun piling up in Brady’s office following his victory over Midget Michaels. “There’s no sense crying over spilt milk,” he said of the Cape Girardeau incident. Harry Sager and the Waltham Manufacturing Company, manufacturer of the popular Orient bicycle, offered to pay him $500 for each world record he set. He was also offered $10,000, a princely sum in those pre–income tax days, if he spun off the mile in less than one minute, thirty seconds. The current record for the one-mile was an impossible 1:32 3/5 set by Frenchman Edward Taylore, another Brady recruit who added an e to his last name to distinguish himself from Major Taylor.

Compared to the large animated summer crowds, Woodside Park Track had a frigid fall feel to it. Taylor didn’t care. With several official clockers waiting at the line and a glaze of ice forming on the edge of the track, he proceeded to obliterate nearly every world record of note. The first to crumble to the weight of Taylor’s fury was the quarter mile in an astonishing 22 2/5, followed by the half (45 1/5), three-quarters (1:08 2/5), one kilometer (:57 3/5), and two-mile record (3:13 2/5). On fire, Taylor was cashing in on the other end. He then lined up for the record everybody strived for—the one-mile flying start.

Five hundred diehard fans wrapped in winter garb fanned out around the track apron, blowing hot air into their palms. Taylor strapped himself in. Even with the November gales piercing through his cloth cap and blue silks, Taylor broke from the line at a bruising pace. At the half-mile marker, so used to having other riders ringing around him like a school of piranhas, Taylor, looking to both sides, felt a startling realization set in. For the first time in his career, he was alone. With no one to elbow, pocket, or choke him, he felt emancipated, energized, empowered. He was bubbling over.

His torrid pace continued as he bolted around the final turn, his blazing tempo suggesting to everyone that he was on a special ride. With seven furlongs behind him, the mile marker looming up ahead, he cried out for more speed to his pacemen. Their teeth “chattering” from the cold, they couldn’t respond. With the rest of the world seemingly tootling along in slow motion, Taylor took matters into his own hands. He ducked his head and rocketed past his pacemen.

Crossing the line, he and his bicycle turned into a black and blue streak.

The crowd, having just witnessed history, murmured among themselves and peered over to the clockers’ stand. His ribs heaving in and out, Taylor also glanced over. The clockers clicked their fingers down on their stopwatches. The hands told the story: 1:31 4/5. The scant Philly crowd had just witnessed the fastest speed ever achieved by human power. The five hundred fans erupted in enthusiastic applause, sounding more like thousands. Taylor smiled.

If, after his first race at Madison Square Garden and then the Michaels’s match race, there were fans who still didn’t know who Major Taylor was, they surely did now. Newspapers worldwide trumpeted the news. Congratulatory telegrams poured in from every corner of the nation. His exploits, in fact, reached well beyond bike-racing fans. He had not only beaten the fastest man, he had also shaved more than three-and-a-half seconds off the world-record speed of the celebrated horse Salvator, an especially noteworthy accomplishment at the time. “It is a curious fact that last week, when the horse was monarch in New York,” wrote a turf writer for the Evening Democrat, “its silent steel-framed contemporary, the wheel, was monarch in Philadelphia, and succeeded in establishing some records for time that throw all past performances of trotters and runners into total eclipse. “Indeed,” he continued, “the surprising exhibitions of Major Taylor, the crack colored bicyclist, at Philadelphia, have opened the eyes of wheelmen as well as of horsemen.”

Now the fastest man in America, the former horse tender collected his money, hung up his racing togs for the season, and celebrated.

From their homes, many of Taylor’s competitors read the news and winced. For the first time, those who had impeded his progress couldn’t do a thing about it. Setting a plethora of world records without the possibility of interference was, for Taylor, supreme retribution. “With it,” he beamed, “came the sublime thrill that was beyond the power of words to express.” Given a clean trip around the track, remarked Brady, who was eager to have him back with the NCA, “he is simply the fastest man on the track”

Motivated by his year-end Philadelphia fireworks display, Taylor set his goal for the 1899 racing season. As was his style, he set it high. He wanted to go where no African American had gone before. In August, for the first time in several years, the World Championships would be in North America. With so many forces arrayed against him, even the thought of winning cycling’s ultimate prize seemed a long shot. But as the weight of the depression softened during the waning days of 1898, it was abundantly clear that Major Taylor was no ordinary man.