Black Cyclone Coming

There are a number of athletes I admire for their accomplishments in their sports.  But there is a much smaller number whom I respect equally, or even more, as human beings.  They include Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, Muhammad Ali, Colin Kaerpernick, Simone Biles--and Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor.

Some day, I'm sure, a documentary or biopic will be made about Ms. Biles.  Films have already been made from the triumphs and struggles of Robinson and Ali.  Five years ago, "Battle of the Sexes" focused on King's 1973 match--which she won--against Bobby Riggs.  While it was a good film, I think it also helped to reinforce the tendency to think of Ms. King only in terms of that, and not on, not only of the way she dominated her game as Martina Navratilova and Serena Williams would later on, but also of her advocacy for women and LGBTQ folks. 

But, to my knowledge, Major Taylor hasn't received cinematic canonization.  One reason for that may be that there isn't anybody alive who saw him ride or can even remember how he dominated bike racing to the same degree as the other athletes I've mentioned towered over their sports.  Thus, most people who aren't familiar with the history of cycling or African Americans don't realize that he was the first African American champion of any sport half a century before Robinson set foot on a Major League baseball field.

Clement Virgo (l) and "Major" Taylor

It seems that situation is about to change.  Canadian director Clement Virgo, who also helmed feature films "Rude" and "Lie With Me" as well as the six-part miniseries "The Book of Negroes," has been tapped to direct "Black Cyclone."  The title comes from one of the more flattering nicknames given to Taylor. (As a black man in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, he also was called names that I, someone who isn't exactly profanity-adverse, won't repeat.)  John Howard, a three-time Olympic and four-time U.S. Road Champion cyclist (who also set a land speed record that stood for a decade) will serve as a consultant on the project.

Production is set to begin next year.   

125 Years After Major Taylor, She’s A Milestone

 The Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche has become one of the premier women’s bike races. Since its first edition in 2003, èlite cyclists and teams have used its long climbs in the Alpes Maritimes and high-octane sprints in the Rhône and Ardèche valleys as late-season preparation for the World Championships, held in late September.  The race has also served as a window to up-and-coming riders and teams.

That is why it’s significant that Ayesha McGowan is making her debut in this year’s edition of the race, which begins today.  For years, she has ridden for teams of the Liv brand in the US.  On 1 August, she was promoted to Liv’s top-tier racing team, which competes internationally.

Understandably, for McGowan, “there will be tears of joy” because “the hard work is now paying off.” Last year, Cyclingnews  named her to its Power List of the 50 Most Influential People in cycling.

She was named to that list for, not only her cycling accomplishments, but also her advocacy for more diversity in the sport’s brands, organizations, teams, events and media.  If I were her, I might be crying other kinds of tears for having the need to call for more inclusion, a century and a quarter after Major Taylor won the World Championship and was acknowledged (if at times grudgingly or even with hostility) as the world’s greatest cyclist.

A Juneteenth Freedom Ride In Bronzeville

Lately, there's been much talk about things returning to "normal" or becoming a "new normal" as pandemic-induced restrictions are eased or lifted.

Some aspects of the "new normal" will be welcome.  One, I hope, will be a ride Jason Easterly and Mike Allan took last year and are repeating this year.

Jason Easterly. Photo by Ariel Uribe, from the Chicago Tribune

Easterly is, among other things, a spin class instructor.  Allan was one of his students.  Last spring, when gyms were ordered to close, Easterly took his classes online.  Allan continued his participation.

In the days after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, in the words of Easterly, "we were living in a powder keg." People were "sitting in lockdown, not able to get out" as "our loved ones" were dying.

Allan suggested a bike ride--in person, through Bronzeville, the Chicago neighborhood where he and Easterly live.  They would invite a friends.  A 15-mile route was planned, as was the date:  19 June a.k.a Juneteenth.

They decided to call it the "Freedom Ride," in commemoration on the date in 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to inform enslaved Americans that they were free.  At that time, Texas was the frontier:  There were really no major cities between St. Louis and San Francisco.  The Lone Star State was the last bastion of slavery, as it was the Confederate state farthest from Washington DC.

So the slaves of Texas, the last to be liberated, learned of their freedom some two months after the Civil War ended and two years after Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation.

Apparently, a lot of people in Chicago (and other places) wanted to be liberated from lockdown.  About  200 showed up for that ride.

It will be reprised this Saturday, the 19th.  Riders will meet at noon Wintrust Arena, 200 East Cermak Road, and pedal to Bronzeville and then into downtown.  

Perhaps the “Juneteenth Freedom Ride” will become an annual event—and part of “the new normal.” 

The Real Way To Promote Peace

Although his actual birthday was the 15th, Martin Luther King Jr. day is being observed today in the US.  Like most other holidays, it's been observed on Monday for the past few decades.  I guess it makes more sense for offices, banks and such to close for three consecutive days than on a day in the middle of the week.  And, tell me, who doesn't like three-day weekends?

But I think this is one holiday that shouldn't be only for watching basketball games or taking advantage of sales.  I always try to pay homage to Dr. King, whom I regard as one of the few true American heroes.

I mean, for this alone, I'd give him a holiday--and even the Nobel Peace Prize:

Who could hate after seeing someone so enjoying himself?

A 400-Year Debt

My birthday is 4 July:  US Independence Day.  So, what I am about to say may seem treasonous, or even sacrilegious, to some.

The most important, if not the singular defining, event of US history did not happen on 4 July 1776.  Rather, it occurred 400 years ago on this date.

On 20 August 1619, the White Lion (you can't make this stuff up!) landed in Point Comfort, near present-day Hampton, Virginia.  Of the White Lion's commander, one Captain John Jope, colonist John Rolfe wrote, "He brought not any thing but 20.  And odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Merchant bought for victuals."

The details that would have fleshed out Rolfe's clinical description are lost to history.  Did he mean that  twenty-some-odd black people disembarked from the vessel?  What sort of "victuals" were exchanged for the captive human beings?  Peanuts?  Corn?  Barley?

What is not in doubt is that the dark-skinned arrivals from Africa were the first documented black slaves in America.  This does not mean, of course, that they were the first black slaves in the so-called New World:   Columbus reportedly brought slaves on his second voyage, and some historians argue that there were Africans--who may or may not have been slaves--on this side of the Atlantic even before Columbus' arrival.  But the arrival of black slaves on the White Lion is the first documented importation of African slaves to the soil of what would become the United States.  Moreover, it is the first documented sale of slaves.

The White Lion was not the first ship in which those slaves would be imprisoned on their way from the West Coast of Africa to the East Coast of North America. They started their terrible journey on the San Juan Bautista (really), bound for the Spanish colony of Vera Cruz on the coast of what would become Mexico.

But just a couple of days before the San Juan Bautista would have reached port (Transatlantic journeys in those days typically took about two months), it was attacked by pirates looking for Spanish gold.  Some of those pirates were on the White Lion; the others sailed on the Treasurer, which would arrive in Virginia a few days later.

As James Baldwin has pointed out, African-Americans are the only race of people (save for Native Americans) to be conceived in America.  And, at the time he was writing his seminal essays, the United States was the only nation besides South Africa that had a legal definition for black people--and used it to subjugate them.

I believe, as some black historians and writers believe, that the arrival of slaves (even if they weren't the first) on this date 400 years ago marks the real beginning of American (or at least US) history.  For one thing, it marked the beginning of European subjugation of a land and its people, which would not have been possible (at least under the conditions that prevailed) without the forced labor of black people.  The wealth of this country was built, literally, on the backs of Africans, even in those parts of the country where there weren't plantations and slavery ended before the Emancipation Proclamation.

What is commonly forgotten is that during our Civil War, there were large pro-Confederate contagions in some northern cities.  In fact, New York, which then consisted only of the island of Manhattan, was a bastion of Dixie sentiment, as many of the city's bankers and merchants had ties to the cotton- and tobacco-growing industries of the South.  (In contrast, Brooklyn, which was then an independent city and didn't have the same ties to plantation owners--and where freed and runaway slaves settled in Weeksville and other communities--was staunchly pro-Union.) 

So, no matter where one was at the time of the Civil War--or long afterward--its economy was, in some way or another, a product of slavery.  Everyone in this country is a beneficiary, in some way or another.  I include myself:  My grandparents, as poor as they were, still had more rights in this country than any African (or Native American) had the day they arrived in a port built, at least in part, by the labor of those people who had no freedom--and the profits of those who traded them, or traded with plantation owners, merchants and others whose prosperity built by them.

Of course, it wasn't just our economy that "benefited" from slavery.  The terrible experiences endured by slaves--and their children who were "freed"--were the raw material of some of the greatest art this country has produced.  I am talking, of course, about works by writers like Baldwin and Toni Morrison, but also jazz--the only truly American musical genre besides country and western--which has influenced all of the music, everywhere in the world, that's come along since.

And, finally, it's hard not to think that the "generational trauma" and prejudice experienced by the descendants of slaves motivated some of the greatest athletes this country has turned out.  Forget about "some of":  I am willing to say that the four greatest athletes to come from the United States are Muhammad Ali, Serena Williams, Jackie Robinson and, of course, "Major" Taylor, the incomparable cyclist who became the first African-American champion in any sport.  

The country in which I was born and have spent most of my life owes, I believe,  much more to what took place on this date 400 years ago than most people realize--or I was taught in school.

(In my next post, I'll return to matters more directly about cycling--my own and in general!)

The World's Fastest Man: A Century Before Usain Bolt

I haven't owned a television in about six years.  I do, however, listen to a fair amount of radio, mainly the local public and independent stations.

One program to which I listen pretty regularly is "Fresh Air," which is something like a radio version of 60 Minutes dedicated to the arts or contemporary issues.  A couple of nights ago, "Fresh Air" featured Dave Davies (no, not the Kinks' guitarist) interviewing journalist Michael Kranish, whose latest book just came out.

The World's Fastest Man:  The Extraordinary Life of Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero documents, not only Major Taylor's athletic exploits, but his contributions to the cause of civil rights.  He was, arguably, as dominant in cycling of his era as Eddy Mercx or Bernard Hinault were in theirs, and towered over his sport the way Michael Jordan, Martina Navratilova and Wayne Gretzky did in their primes.  But, perhaps even more important, he was as unflinching in the face of discrimination as Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali were more than half a century later.



I haven't yet read the book, but I plan to. One reason is that, from what I gather in the interview, Kranish's book shows how bicycle racing was the most popular sport in America and much of Europe and Australia during Taylor's time.  Also, he seems to cover in greater detail the discrimination he faced, not only from restaurants and hotels that refused him service, but also from other racers who sometimes even tried to injure him before or during races.  Finally, during the interview, Kranish mentions business ventured that failed--including one from which a white competitor stole his idea after no bank would finance him.

You can listen to the interview here:

Spoke'n Words And Unchained Melodies

Can musicians make music without a musical instruments?

One of the oldest American musical traditions involves musicians doing exactly that.  Now, some might not say it's strictly a musical tradition, but it certainly involves music--and dance and other kinds of performance.  

It originated in Charleston, South Carolina. Actually, Kongo slaves brought a dance called the Juba from their native land.  The Juba involves stomping as well as patting and drumming the arms, legs, chest and other parts of the body.  Later, lyrics were added to it.

If any of this sounds familiar, you've seen what's commonly called the "Hambone."  Slaves weren't allowed to have rhythm instruments because masters believed secret codes were embedded in the drumming.  So, the "Hambone" and related music and dances became one of the primary means of expression for slaves--and for African Americans after the so-called Emancipation.

I like to think of Juba or Hambone as a precursor to hip-hop.

Anyway, it seems that the idea of making music without instruments--or, at least, what most people would think of as instruments--hasn't died. And, as with the slaves, one particular contemporary performer felt the need to make music without guitars, keyboards, saxophones or the like.

Percussionist Reynaliz Herrera probably isn't the first musician to ride a bicycle to street performances.  She, however, grew frustrated with the limits to what she could carry on two wheels.  So, the Braintree (Don't you just love that name?), Massachusetts wondered, "What if I drum on my bike?"  

If you know anything about her musicianship, the question doesn't sound so far-fetched.  Ever since she came from her native Mexico to study music in Canada and, later, Boston, she has wanted to go beyond traditional theories of classical music, she says.  

 

While she cites Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and classical music as her main influences, she says that playing on a bicycle is a return to her own roots.  As a child, she experimented by banging on pots and pans, and created a band with buckets of water in her yard.  That led her to the realization that "everything can create a sound" and that her job is to find out "the qualities of sounds and which sound good together."

What's interesting is how the bicycle is composed of parts that create a range of tones, from high to low, that resemble the parts of a drum ensemble.  For example, she explains, the chainwheel can sound like a bell or snare drum, the freewheel like a high hat and the tire like a kick drum.  Technically, playing a bicycle, she says, is most like playing a xylophone because both require a musician to strike closely-spaced parts spread over a wide area.

Riding Into Public Service, And Through History

He starts every morning with a ride.  He's retired, and the rides are for his health and fitness.

Back in 1965, however, he pedaled to get around.  He was 19 then and looking for a job.  So he pedaled 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers), resume in hand, to someone who might be able to help him.

Now, I should mention that the fact he was doing so in 1965 was significant.  For one thing, relatively few Americans rode bicycles if they were old enough to drive.  For another, Reginald "Reggie" Brown was applying for a job for which his mother was rejected two decades earlier.

She had done military service during World War II.  Still, she didn't get the job in her local post office because it didn't have segregated bathrooms.

Now, as a transgender woman, I know a thing or two about being denied the use of a bathroom--and about not getting a job because of an identity you've always had!  I can understand whatever anger, grief or resignation she might have felt.  And I imagine that those things were on Reggie's mind when he tried to get a job as a mail carrier.

Governor John McKeithen and his staff were so impressed with young Reggie that they passed on his information, and added their own recommendation.  Two months later, he was working as a substitute mail carrier.

As satisfying as the job was, Brown did not see it as an end unto itself.  His goal, he said, was public service, and his real passion and dream was to work in law enforcement.  

Eventually, he joined the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office, where he became the first African American to become a Chief Administrative Assistant and attain the rank of Major.  After 25 years in the office, he was elected to the Constable's Office, where he served another 18 years.  There, he worked on raising standards for the deputies as he started community programs to do everything from raising public awareness of their rights and responsibilities to helping the needy.

He has written My Bicycle Journey.  Proceeds from the sales of that book will go to St. Vincent de Paul charities.  He hopes, however, that its message will benefit everyone.

Who wouldn't be inspired by someone who rode his bike into public service, and through history?

He Played In Peoria--And The World

If you had any doubts that I spent much of my youth reading the wrong kinds of books, I will dispel them now.

Horatio Alger is one of those writers who, it seems, everyone has heard of but no one (at least no one living today) has read.  Although "Horatio Alger story" has become, justifiably, a synonym for "rags-to-riches tale", some of his works are interesting, if not for the quality of the writing, then for the window it offers into the customs and mores of his time.

For example, the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?" had its origin in Five Hundred Dollars, or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret, Alger's 1890 novel.  In it, a group of actors on tour say, "We shall be playing in Peoria" and "We shall play at Peoria."  This meant they were going to play, not only in the north-central Illinois city, but in front of a prototypical American audience.  

Alger's novel came out just as vaudeville was becoming popular in the US.   Travelling vaudevillians appropriated Alger's phrase and, when they used it, meant that they were on the road to success--which, in turn, gave rise to the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?"

Does this mean that Peoria audiences are really tough?  Or does it mean that because it's so representative of "middle America" (whatever that means today) that if it can "play in Peoria", it can play anywhere?

I would tend to believe the latter--or, at least, that it would have been the case in Alger's and the vaudevillians' time.  And vaudevillians weren't the only ones who could gauge their chances of success by how they "played in Peoria."  

Lake View Park--now the site of the Komatsu plant--was once an important, if not the major, stop on the American bicycle racing circuit.  Its half-mile track made and broke cycling careers in the 1890s, the heyday of American bike racing.

One of the folks who became a star in Lake View did so by defeating Tom Butler.  Although only cycling historians know his name today, the rider who defeated him has not been forgotten, for a variety of reasons.

That cyclist "put up a lot of numbers that would be hard to achieve today on a modern bike," according to Tim Beeney.  The Bike Peoria board member and longtime advocate added that this cyclist was "one of the highest-paid in the world at the time he competed."  And, like the ambitious vaudevillians of history as well as Alger's novel, this cyclist found fame throughout America, and the world, after his exploits in Peoria.

The cyclist in question is none other than Marshall "Major" Taylor.  The only athletes I've seen in my lifetime who may have dominated their sports in their time to the degree that Taylor did in his were Eddy Mercx, Martina Navratilova, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan and Serena Williams.

One thing that makes Taylor's accomplishments all the more impressive is the obstacles he faced.  Sometimes he would come to an American city and not be allowed to eat in a restaurant, stay in a hotel--or even to compete in the race that was the reason for his coming to that city! He faced hostility, not only from spectators, but also from fellow racers, who believed that he should not be allowed to compete in--let alone dominate--"their" sport.  He wasn't even allowed to join the League of American Wheelmen!

(I think now of the hate mail and even death threats Henry Aaron received in the 1970s when he was in pursuit of Babe Ruth's career home run record.  He still gets them. I also recall how, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were on track to break the single-season home run record, many people wanted McGwire to finish with the new record.)

More than a century after his victories--and 85 years after his death--it seems that Major Taylor is getting some renewed recognition.  This past Saturday, Peoria-area bicycle clubs paid homage to him 140 years after his birth.  And, earlier this year, cognac maker Hennessy had a TV ad featuring Major.



That ad campaign makes perfect sense when you realize that he was most revered in France, where he went to race in the early 1900s--after he played in Peoria.

And, I suppose you could say he was a sort of Horatio Alger story in that he grew up poor but became very wealthy from his cycling.  Unfortunately, his story didn't have a Horatio Alger ending:  After a series of bad business investments, he died penniless.  

Still, though, he played--and made it, at least for a time--in Peoria, and the world.

Fifty Years Ago Today

Today I am going off-topic.

One of the most tragic events--no, I take that back, the single most tragic event--in the history of the United States took place fifty years ago today.

I am talking about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Now, I don't mean to diminish how terrible were the killings of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X or the unfortunate souls who perished on 9/11.  They were all awful, and it could be said the country and this world weren't the same after them.  

Perhaps I see the murder of MLK as I do because it's the first assassination I can recall clearly.  I have only vague memories of JFK or Malcolm X, and the fall of the Twin Towers doesn't have a single tragic figure that stands out.  But, even at my tender age, I could see that Martin was emblematic (though neither I nor anyone else in my milieu at the time would have used the word) of everything that was necessary and possible.

Martin Luther King Jr. is kissed by his wife, Coretta Scott King as Nipsey Russel, back left, and Harry Belafonte, right, look on in 1963.

America is, of course, not alone in venerating its military leaders.  And I am not foolish enough to believe that this country, or the world, will ever exist without armies and munitions.  But the only hope the human race has, I believe, is to work toward, if not ending, then at least diminishing, the role of the military and war--and indeed all violence--play.  Doing such work, I believe, is inseparable from the struggles for social and economic justice.

That last sentence is something Martin understood, perhaps too well.  When he said as much, in a speech he gave exactly one year before he was gunned down, many of his longtime supporters abandoned him. President Lyndon Johnson championed both civil rights and America's involvement with the Vietnam War.  When Martin denounced the war, some of his supporters took it as an attack on the person who brought to fruition some of the things for which Martin and his followers fought.

Some Americans--including some of my acquaintance, a few of whom are related to me--simply cannot understand why Martin Luther King Jr. is "the only person with his own holiday."  In some states, at least, that is not the case: Lincoln's birthday is celebrated before "Presidents' Day".  But, really, if only one person in the United States of America is to have his or her own holiday, I cannot think of who else that person could or should be.

In short, I feel he is this country's greatest hero, and we are still hurting from losing him.                                                               

Imprisoned In The Mist

I must say, I am really enjoying my morning commutes, now that I go through Randall's Island.  Even the knowledge of what lies beyond does not dampen (pardon the pun) my mood.

In this case, beyond that flock of geese--who are free to go wherever they like--and the fog are the most un-free people in this city.  Yes, Rikers Island is shrouded in that scrim of mist!

Well, almost:  It's hard not to feel down--no, let's say it, angry--when thinking about that place now, during Black History Month.  Instead of slave ships pulling into the harbor (Slavery was legal in New York until 1827.), black people--mostly young and male--are locked up on an island.

I channeled some of that anger into my pedals. And, I assure you, it goes into other kinds of activity!

When They Tried To Bar Major Taylor

This month--February--is Black History Month here in the US.

Mention "black cyclists" and one of the first names that comes to mind is "Major Taylor".

He was the first African-American athlete to win the world championship of any sport.  (Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon was the first black athlete to accomplish that feat.)  Although he was one of the most famous and admired athletes in the world, the "Worcester Whirlwind" was not insulated from racism.

The Worcester Whirlwind, circa 1900. From wikipedia.

The city from which Taylor's nickname was derived--Worcester, Massachusetts--was one of the centers of the Abolitionist movement.  Even so, not everyone there welcomed him with open arms.  When he bought a house in the well-to-do Columbus Park enclave, alarmed white neighbors tried to buy it back from him.

Even if you're the best in the world, you can't stop fools from being foolish.

Even so, life was better for him in Worcester--and in the rest of the Northeast--than it was elsewhere in the US.  While he won pretty much every race and award that could be won in his home region, he could not advance his career unless he won in other parts of the country. Two things conspired against him:  One, owners and promoters of races and tracks in the South banned him--and all other black cyclists--outright. Second, in 1894, just as Taylor's career was in ascendancy, the League of American Wheelmen--then the governing body of bicycle racing--voted to ban blacks.  Some have speculated that the ban was specifically aimed at Taylor, who, even at the age of 17, was beating his white challengers, some of whom were far more experienced than he was.

(The LAW is now known as the League of American Bicyclists.)

That ban, of course, closed other doors for him.  There were, however, a number of races--mostly in the Northeast--that allowed him to compete.  And, of course, he went to Canada:  In 1899, he won the World Championship for the one-mile sprint in Montreal.  

(Interesting aside:  In 1946, Jackie Robinson played for the Montreal Royals, which was the top minor-league team of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Fans in Montreal embraced him, as they did Taylor half a century earlier.)  

But even in the relative tolerance of his home region, Taylor encountered hostility.  He was often denied lodgings and food on account of his color, and white racers turned into pure-and-simple thugs when riding against him: One opponent hauled him off his bike and choked him into unconsciousness.

In the racial atmosphere of that time, the only way Taylor could advance his career was by racing in Europe.  He, in fact, had a number of offers to participate in races and join teams, especially in France.  He was grateful for the opportunities but would not accept them at first:   In Europe, many races were held on Sunday, as they are now.  Taylor had become a devout Baptist after his mother's death and would not race on the Sabbath.

Some of the offers he received were lucrative, to say the least.  When pleas and urgings from prominent African-Americans as well as cycling fans had no effect on him, black newspaper editors of the time published what we would now call "fake news"--saying that his religious scruples had been conquered by Mammon--or editorials speculating that such a thing would happen.

Of course, it didn't.  Finally, in 1901, a French team offered him a contract that specified he wouldn't have to race on Sunday.  He accepted, and before he even mounted a bicycle on the other side of the Atlantic, he was treated to a hero's welcome. 

An American in Paris.

Europeans were as impressed with his dignity and grace as they were with his athletic prowess.  He did much to help improve the level of European racing, not only by his presence, but also by mentoring young racers.  Here is one account of such tutoring, from his autobiography:

  I recall that on my first trip to Europe in 1901 I saw a French youth, whose name was Poulain, ride in an amateur event at Nantes, France. He was very awkward as he rode about the track, but something about him caught my eye, and I became interested in him at once. At the close of the race I made several suggestions to him, adjusting his pedals, and handle bars, and giving him some advice on how to train. I stressed clean living upon him, and told him in conclusion that if he trained carefully and lived a clean life, I would predict that some day he would beat all the amateurs of Europe and the professionals as well.

  When I returned to France in 1908 this same Poulain, who in the meantime had won the amateur and professional championships of France, defeated me in a special match race. Imagine my surprise at the conclusion of this event when my conqueror told me who he was. The laugh certainly was on me. I did manage to bring him into camp, however, after I reached by best form.

"The laugh was certainly on me." How could they not love someone with such an attitude?  Unfortunately, not everyone in his home country felt the same way.

Who's Going To Make What Great Again?

Today I took two short rides: before and after having lunch with my mother and a friend of hers, of whom I am fond.

My rides took me through alongside creeks, swamps and woods, as well as through small-town streets lined with shabby houses and suburban subdivisions full of houses that are imitations or parodies, depending on your point of view, of structures built by Spanish, French and English settlers to this area.

Once again, the weather was delightful.  At one point, I even saw two frolicking fawns just yards away from me, and white herons that ambled even closer.  People seemed relaxed, even if they were doing home repairs or yardwork.  The kids were happy, of course:  They had the day off from school.

The reason is that today is the holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 88 yesterday.  He didn't live to see his 40th birthday, and many of the people for whom he fought had even shorter lives that ended as tragically as his.  A few years ago, a student of mine who is about a decade older than I am, and grew up in Jacksonville--about 105 kilometers (65 miles) from where I am now--told me about one of those victims: a relative whose flaming body dangled from a tree in Mississippi.  As a little girl, she saw that.

It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that from 1882 until 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state in the Union.  I don't think it would cause much consternation to say that the next states on the list were Georgia, Texas, Alabama and Arkansas.

Florida is right behind them.  The "Sunshine State", however, had the highest per-capita rate of lynchings among the states from 1880 through 1940.  In fact, Florida's lynch rate, in proportion to the population, was more than double that of Alabama and nearly four times that of Texas!

Today, as I rode through the subdivisions, and the ramshackle houses, I saw many "Trump:  Make America Great Again" campaign signs.  In fact, I even saw a couple in a trailer park.  I don't recall seeing so many campaign signs for any candidate still standing on lawns, or tied to signposts or windows, so long after an election as I saw today.  

Now, I am sure that some of those who voted for Trump--and, perhaps, a few who didn't--are resentful that King gets "his own" holiday: something no other individual  in the US has.  Or, to be precise, no other white individual has.

I can understand, even if I don't condone, what they feel:  that they are losing "their" place in society to "privileged" minorities (which, of course, can include LGBT people as well as any number of racial and ethnic identities--as well as "the 51 percent minority"). One thing my own experience has taught me is that privilege is something you don't know you have until you lose it, and the process of losing it is painful and can cause intense anger and resentment.

What are students learning these days?

What I can't understand, though, is something I saw on a news program this morning: People who claim that if King were alive today, he would have supported Donald Trump's election to the Presidency.  I tried to understand their arguments, but those of the Flat Earth Society  actually make more sense to me.

Of course, cycling and writing have made more sense to me than all of those things ever could.  So did those fawns and herons I saw.

5 Cyclists, From The Big Apple To The Capital--In 1928

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that one of my passions, besides cycling, is history.  And you know that among my particular interests are the history of women and ethnic and racial minorities in cycling.

Well, I have just stumbled across an account of female African-American long-distance cyclists.   Never before had I heard or read any mention of it.  And were it not for the work of an enterprising PhD student, it probably would still be another forgotten episode of history.

Today Marya McQuirter is an historian at the Smithsonian Institution.  Two decades ago, she was doing research for her dissertation on the history of African-American women in Washington, DC in the first half of the twentieth century when she found these names: Marylou Jackson, Velva Jackson, Ethyl Miller, Leolya Nelson and Constance White.

Photograph by Addison Surlock.  Originally published in Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, 1928.  Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Learning about those women changed Ms. McQuirter's life.  She wanted to understand, as fully as possible, not only what they did, but what might have motivated them.  To do that, she took up cycling.  But being a cyclist wasn't just a role she played and abandoned once she finished her dissertation:  She took cycling classes with the Washington Area Bicycle Association.  Now she teaches those same classes as a Licensed Cycling Instructor certified and supported by the League of American Bicyclists.

What did learning about five women who might otherwise have been forgotten do to inspire Marya McQuirter to become such a dedicated cyclist?  They rode their bicycles from New York City to Washington, DC over three days.  Doing 400 kilometers (250 miles) over that span of time is certainly an accomplishment for just about any cyclist, of any age or background, at any time.  

But those intrepid women--who were African-American, as is Ms. McQuirter--took their ride over Easter weekend in 1928.  Yes, you read that right.

Now, those of us who are cyclists would probably think first about how their ride was made more difficult because of the less-advanced state of bicycles at that time, as well as road conditions (Sometimes there were no roads!)  and the lack of amenities in some areas.  If you know a bit about history, you might think about the fact that they were women:  Even though bicycles may have done more than anything else to liberate women, as Susan B. Anthony declared, the vast majority of long-distance cyclists were, and are, male.   The six-day races popular at that time were almost entirely a white male preserve, even some three decades after Major Taylor won cycling's World Championship.

According to Mc Quirter, though, one of the things that made their journey unique--and the women who undertook it so courageous--is that they were African-American women going from the North to the South.  

When they set out from the Big Apple, "the Great Migration" in the other direction had been in full swing for more than a decade.  Almost overnight, neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and other northern cities became havens for African-Americans fleeing the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the oppression of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states.  And, at that time, Washington--the nation's capital, no less--was as segregated as Atlanta, Birmingham or any other Southern city you can name. (Many would argue that it is just as segregated now, half a century after the end of Jim Crow.)

According to McQuirter, the Fearless Five returned to New York by train.  Most likely, they would have taken the Baltimore and Ohio or the Pennsylvania Railroad.  On her Facebook page, McQuirter points out that, starting in 1897,  "Pennsy" allowed passengers to take their bikes on the train with them for free.  If only Amtrak had such a policy!

Massacre In South Carolina: The Confederate Flag Still Flies

Today I’m not going to stick to the topic of this blog.  Instead, I want to talk about something that, I’m sure, you’ve heard about by now:  the massacre inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina .

One of the cruelest ironies is that members of a Bible study group—including the church's pastor, who also happens to be a  South Carolina State senator—in one of America’s oldest historically black churches were gunned down by a young white man who sat with them on the eve of Juneteenth— a few days after the 800^th anniversary of King John issuing Magna Carta.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

A century and a half after slaves in South Carolina and Texas and other states got word that they were free men and women, a young man hadn’t gotten the message that the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees all citizens, regardless of their skin color, the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights).  Heck, he didn’t even get the message that there’s no such country as Rhodesia anymore.  He was simply acting from the same sort of ignorance, the same sort of hate, that left earlier generations of young African Americans hanging from trees or at the bottoms of rivers.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

More than a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, in the state in which the opening shot of the US Civil War was fired, a young man entered a Bible Study group and waited for the “right” moment to shoot someone nearly as young as he is, people old enough to be his parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents.  He shattered the peace and sanctity they found in what, for many generations of African-Americans—and, perhaps, for those members of the Bible Study group—has been their closest-knit, if not their only, sanctuary.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitiol.   

From the church's website.

A pastor was killed along with a deacon and laypeople.  Families lost sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers; friends lost friends and people lost spouses and other loved ones.  They loved and were loved; they raised families and were raised by families.  And they contributed to the lives of their communities through their professional and volunteer work, and the loves and interests they shared with those around them.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

Dylann Storm Roof, in an instant, ended the lives of Rev. (and Sen.) Clementa Pickney, Mira Thompson, Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, De Payne Middleton, Ethel Lance and her cousin Susie Jackson. All of them, one hundred and fifty years after Juneteenth.

And a Confederate flag in front of the State Capitol hasn't even been lowered to half-mast.

50 Years After Malcolm X

On this date fifty years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom.  Today the site of the Audubon, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, is a laboratory for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  I have ridden by it many times and, in fact, once went inside the Ballroom.  Every time I passed or visited the site I thought, however briefly, about his importance, not only to the history of the US and the world, but in my own life.

I first read Malcolm’s autobiography when I was about twenty.  It was around the same time I discovered African-American writers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston—and when I first heard Bob Marley.  In one way or another, they all not only expressed the burning desire to be free, but also made oppression—which is to say, the things that turn people into slaves of all kinds—clear and vivid.

I identified with their wishes and feelings for, as it turned out, reasons very different from theirs.  How could mine not be different?  After all, as difficult as my grandparents’ lives were, nobody brought them here in chains.  Even more to the point, I knew who my grandparents and their grandparents were, even though I had never met the latter.  So, even though I knew that so much of what I learned in school was a whitewashed (Yes, I am conscious of that word choice!) version of the truth, I wasn’t—couldn’t be—conscious of it in the profound way that Malcolm and all of those black writers and artists were. 

So, in my own clumsy way, I reacted to the injustices that persisted long after Malcolm’s murder and the deaths of the others I’ve mentioned though their polemics, rhetoric, rhythms, intuition and sense of irony.  What I did not understand was that they could use those tools or gifts or whatever you want to call them because they mastered them in ways that exact terrible, terrible costs.  (Baldwin has written that any people who has a language of their own has paid dearly for it.) What I could not understand was that I was paying my own dues, as it were, but I did not yet understand what I was paying for.  So I borrowed anger, grief, pain and a very dark kind of humor in my own feeble attempts to come to terms with why I could not live the kind of life for which I was being trained—or why anyone should want that kind of life.

So why am I mentioning such things on this blog?  Well, for one thing, being a cyclist has freed me from a lot of things.  I think of all of the time and money I didn’t have to spend on buying, fueling, maintaining and parking cars.  That is part of the reason why I have been able to live in New York and spend time with things I love:  I didn’t have to work in some job or in some business that would have destroyed my psyche or other people’s lives.  Being a cyclist when it wasn’t fashionable also, I think, has made me less vulnerable to propaganda and groupthink, if it hasn’t made me a better critical thinker or more creative person (though I think it’s done the latter for me). 

Of course, for me, freedom has meant living as the person I am.  Anyone who cannot live with integrity and with dignity is a slave or a prisoner or worse.  One way I identify with Malcolm is that it took him as long as he did to truly come into his own, even if he accomplished a lot else before doing so.  His descent into slavery, as it were, came when, in spite of his academic success and oratorical skills, his eighth-grade teacher mocked his dream of being a lawyer. When he, as an inmate in the Charlestown (MA) Penitentiary, became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, he found a voice.  However, it took him much longer, I think, to find his voice.

Our voice, if you will, is how we express our authentic selves in the world.  For some, it is in their careers or vocations.  For others, it is in creative work or performing:  I think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar as his voice.  Others express it through a passion or relationship.  Actually, I think that for most of us, our “voice” is a combination of the things we do and are.  Whatever it is, if it isn’t authentic, we’re still slaves or prisoners.  For me, that is the real importance of Malcolm X’s life and work.