Major Taylor
Major Taylor, born Marshall Walter Taylor on November 26, 1878, was an influential African American cyclist who became a pioneering figure in sports history. Raised on a farm near Indianapolis, Indiana, Taylor's early life was marked by resilience and athletic talent, excelling in various sports, particularly cycling. He gained recognition as a formidable competitor by winning his first race at the age of fifteen. Despite facing racial prejudice, he established a remarkable career, becoming the first African American world champion cyclist and achieving fame in both the United States and Europe.
Taylor's journey took him from local competitions to significant international victories, where he broke records and garnered respect for his athletic prowess. However, his success was often met with hostility from fellow competitors due to the racial dynamics of the time. His determination and innovative racing strategies allowed him to overcome these challenges, and he became known as a skilled and dignified athlete.
Despite retiring in 1910 after a brilliant career, Taylor faced financial difficulties and personal struggles in his later years. He passed away in relative obscurity on June 21, 1932, yet his legacy endures as a testament to perseverance and excellence in the face of adversity, marking him as a key figure in the history of sports and the fight against racial discrimination.
Major Taylor
Bicycle Racer
- Born: November 26, 1878
- Birthplace: Indianapolis, Indiana
- Died: June 21, 1932
- Place of death: Chicago, Illinois
Sport: Cycling
Early Life
Marshall Walter Taylor was born on a dirt farm just outside Indianapolis, Indiana, on November 26, 1878. His African American parents, Gilbert and Saphronia Taylor, were children of Kentucky slaves.
Marshall was among the youngest of the Taylors’ eight children. To make ends meet, his father supplemented the meager farming income by becoming a coachman for a wealthy white family; the family practically adopted young Marshall. Marshall lived with this family for the next four to five years, experiencing the privileges of the white upper class, including expensive clothes and toys and private tutoring.
From his parents, Marshall learned the value of hard work. From the family that unofficially adopted him, he learned self-confidence and the possibility of expanding his own horizons.
Marshall took to athletics naturally. He earned the respect of his playmates by holding his own in tennis, baseball, football, roller skating, and running. He could also ride a bicycle like the wind.
The Road to Excellence
Marshall’s white benefactors moved to Chicago when the youngster was about thirteen, and Marshall went home to his family’s farm. In his spare time, he taught himself all kinds of bicycle stunts and tricks. Eventually, the owner of a local bicycle shop was so impressed with Marshall that he offered him the job of shop boy. Part of his duties, as a publicity stunt, was to dress up in a full soldier’s uniform and entertain passersby with his nifty stunt riding. From then on Marshall’s nickname became “Major.”
Major began racing bicycles at the age of fifteen. He won his first race, a 10-mile event against amateur male cyclists. He also entered and usually won various boys’ races in Indiana and Illinois. Because of his African American heritage, however, he could not belong to any of the exclusively white bicycling clubs.
Racial prejudice increased in Indianapolis in the late 1890’s. Louis “Birdie” Munger, a white former racer and an Indianapolis bicycle manufacturer who saw potential greatness in Major, took the young cyclist under his wing. Munger invited Major to accompany him when he relocated his bicycle factory in the East, in Worcester, Massachusetts, a city more tolerant of African Americans.
Before Major had turned eighteen, he had gained a wonderful reputation as a graceful yet powerful sprint rider. In his professional debut at Madison Square Garden in New York, he created a sensation by defeating the reigning American sprint champion, Eddie Bald. The “Dusky Wheelman,” as Major was sometimes called, was already on his way to cycling immortality.
The Emerging Champion
At the end of his second year as a professional, Major established his international reputation when he beat the star Welsh cyclist Jimmy Michael. In the process, he broke the world record twice. Major’s tenacious riding style set him apart from his competitors. His popularity with Northern racing fans and promoters soared with each successive victory.
However popular Major was with the racing supporters, he was openly disliked by his fellow professional circuit riders, mostly because he was black—and talented. Fearing that Major’s successes threatened their assumed physical superiority, they conspired to prevent him from winning the national championship by riding against him in combinations. As a group, they could pocket him in, elbow and bump him, and otherwise frustrate any normal racing strategy Major might have used. Major decided to use his famous “gunpowder start,” figuring that if they could not catch him from the start they could not prevent him from winning. It worked.
Major’s natural gifts, combined with his poise, intelligence, and self-control, helped him to overcome the harassment. In 1899, at the age of twenty-one, he won the World Championship Mile; later in the year, and again in 1900, he won the coveted American sprint championship. No American rider before him had attained such a convincing level of excellence.
Continuing the Story
In the early years of the twentieth century, cycling was big in the United States but even bigger in Europe. Major was lured to France to race against the world sprint champion Edmond Jacquelin and also to compete against other national champions throughout Europe.
Major was warmly received by the Europeans. In a short four months he achieved heroic stature, as the press celebrated his splendidly muscled body, his high character, his modesty and courtesy—and his winning ways. He rode in nearly every European capital and soundly beat all the European champions; he also met Jacquelin, losing the first match but winning the second.
Major continued racing for the rest of the decade. Eventually, physical fatigue and the stress of continued racial harassment in the United States, on and off the racing track, forced his retirement in 1910.
With his wife, Daisy, and his daughter, Rita Sydney Taylor, Major, then quite wealthy, continued to live in Worcester for the next twenty years. Former athletes then, however, could not capitalize much on their fame; it was doubly hard for African American athletes, as social discrimination severely limited their opportunities.
Major drifted into poverty as one business venture after another failed. Following his gradual financial collapse, his marriage also failed. He moved to Chicago in 1930, practically penniless. Without bitterness or self-pity, he died two years later in the Cook County Hospital charity ward at the age of fifty-three.
Summary
In his day, the golden age of bicycle racing, Major Taylor was known as the fastest bicycle rider in the world. He was also the only professional African American in an otherwise white sport. The racial harassment he faced on and off the track demanded heroic personal qualities. In spite of these hardships, he became the first African American world champion rider and the second African American world champion in any sport. Major, the gentleman athlete, stands as an example of what it means to pursue and achieve athletic excellence against all odds.
Bibliography
Balf, Todd. Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World’s Fastest Human Being. New York: Crown Publishers, 2008.
Nye, Peter. Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Ritchie, Andrew. Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer. Reprint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Taylor, Major. The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World: The Autobiography of Major Taylor. Reprint. Brattleboro, Vt.: S. Greene Press, 1972.