WEBVTT - Jim Crow's Impact on Sports 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:16.360 Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:22.080 examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.880 and we're back on the untold history of sports in America. 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.240 I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last time we talked about football, 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.879 the explosion of the game across college campuses, and how 0:00:38.919 --> 0:00:42.800 it became a truly American invention. Today we'll be speaking 0:00:42.839 --> 0:00:45.679 a little more broadly, not about a specific sport, but 0:00:45.839 --> 0:00:48.639 rather an ugly ideology that made its way into the 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.800 world of early American athletics. Today will be examining sport, 0:00:52.919 --> 0:00:55.639 and Jim Crow will be focusing on the stories of 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.520 two African American men, Isaac Murphy the jockey and Marshall 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.400 Major Taylor the Cyclist. Will also look at one of 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.720 the first racially fueled major American horse races, which was 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.360 decided by a photo finish by the way, just f 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.200 y I, and how it ended the existence of the 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:17.160 black jockey, and finally, how white American cyclists banned together 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:21.160 to segregate their sport, which inevitably killed its growth. So, 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:27.160 without any further ado, here's Matt As, someone with a 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:30.520 PhD in American history here is something that I believe 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.360 if you want to understand American history, you need to 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:42.400 understand African American history. And here, very simply is why, 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.440 in my mind, the story of American history is the 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:51.840 story of a clash, a clash between noble words and 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:59.800 ideas like freedom and equality and opportunity and the reality 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:06.480 of oppression or dominance or the lack of freedom. To me, 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.800 the story of American history is the story of this tension, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.400 this tension between rhetoric and reality, between ideas and what 0:02:14.640 --> 0:02:19.160 actually happens. You know, sometimes the gap between rhetoric and 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:24.400 reality is wide. Sometimes it's very thin, or or even nonexistent. 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.600 But nowhere do we see this gap or this tension 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.960 between rhetoric and reality more clearly than in the study 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:39.560 of African American history in the nineteen forties a sociologist 0:02:39.640 --> 0:02:44.760 named Gunner Myrtle. He called this the glaring contradiction, a 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:49.880 contradiction between claims that America is a free, egalitarian, and 0:02:49.920 --> 0:02:56.400 democratic society and the realities of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:01.960 There is a glaring contradiction, he said, between rhetoric and 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:07.440 reality in the United States. Okay, fine, you say, African 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.840 American history is important. But what can sports add to 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.520 this conversation? You know, what can the study of sport 0:03:13.640 --> 0:03:18.080 tell us about this glaring contradiction. Well, the answer is 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:23.360 a lot. I believe that there is no better arena 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.080 in which to study this glaring contradiction, that this clash 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.400 between rhetoric and reality, than in the world of sport. 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:35.960 Look our sports as important as education or housing or 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:42.760 incarceration rates. No, absolutely not. But they are symbolic and 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:48.040 they are revealing. Think of it like this, America is 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:52.480 supposed to be about fairness and equality of opportunity. Well, 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.520 this is exactly what sports are supposed to be as well. 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.760 We celebrate this country as a place of opportunity where 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.240 people can rise and fall based on their merit, and 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:07.240 we celebrate sport for an exactly the same reason you 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:13.040 rise and fall based on your individual ability. In sports, 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:17.400 the playing field is supposed to be leveled. Sporting arenas 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:21.239 are supposed to be the fairest spaces in the land 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:24.839 of the fair So, if you want to measure the 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:29.400 degree to which Black Americans have enjoyed equality of opportunity 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.960 and the extent to which they have been treated fairly 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.640 in this country, I argue that there is no better 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.640 place to look than the world of sport, where people 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:45.200 are supposed to be treated fairly. Now, later in this 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:49.039 course we're going to complicate this idea. We will question 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.320 whether sports actually do provide an accurate barometer for race 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.880 relations in this country. You know, we'll ask the question, 0:04:55.920 --> 0:05:00.599 do black successes in sports actually mean anything? But that's 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:04.560 a story for a different time and era. What I'm 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:08.360 saying to a is that for one hundred years, say, 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:10.760 from eighteen sixty five, which was the end of the 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.520 Civil War to nineteen right in the heart of the 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.080 Civil Rights movement, if you wanted to gauge the extent 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:22.320 to which Black Americans had access to the American dream, 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.880 look no further than how black athletes were treated in 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:31.880 the world of sports. So today we begin by discussing 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.800 race and sport at the end of the nineteenth century, 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:39.960 and specifically we're going to explore sport and segregation. We 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.120 will look at how sports were part of the larger 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.840 story of white supremacy in this nation. So today it's 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.920 about sport in Jim Crow. And just to be clear 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.400 about terms here, when we speak of Jim Crow, we 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:57.120 are talking about a culture of segregation or separation between 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.320 black and white, though a little more generally, Jim Crow 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:05.360 refers to a whole culture in which white Americans are 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:11.320 afforded opportunities that black Americans are not. So let's look 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.640 at how Jim Crow reared its head in sport. And 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:16.040 I guess there are a couple of ways we could 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:18.000 do this. But what I want to do today is 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.800 a little biography as history. I want to tell you 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.880 the story of two black athletes in two different sports, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:30.159 and I think their stories give life to the strange 0:06:30.280 --> 0:06:36.040 career of Jim Crow. All right, let me begin by 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:41.680 telling you about Isaac Murphy. Isaac Murphy raised horses. He 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:46.719 was a jockey, an African American jockey. Isaac Murphy was 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.680 born in eighteen sixty one in Kentucky. This is the 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.080 year that the Civil War began. Though Isaac Murphy was 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.200 not born into slavery, his father and mother were free blacks. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.680 Isaac Murphy grew up on a farm and he was 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.240 a stable hand. He cared for horses, He fed them, 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.760 he rode them, and he as he got older, he 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:12.200 raced them. In eighteen seventy five, when he was fourteen, 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:17.920 years old, he made his professional riding debut. Coincidentally, eighteen 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:21.120 seventy five. This is also the year of the very 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.000 first Kentucky Derby. He wasn't in it, but that's the 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.400 year eighteen seventy five, So there's a nice symmetry here. 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:31.080 I think, you know, thirteen of the fifteen riders and 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.880 that first Kentucky Derby were black, a sign that horse 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:39.160 racing was dominated by black jockeys at that time. And 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.200 it should not be totally surprising, you know, As you know, 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.480 horse racing was a vestige of the era of Southern slavery. 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.280 It had been the enslaved who took care of the horses. 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.240 Slave masters would often race their horses against each other, 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.560 and often it was their slaves who were the jockeys. 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.640 And so after the Civil War African Americans gained their freedom. 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:05.920 In the South, horse racing remained largely a black sport. 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.760 That is, wealthy whites owned the horses and black men 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:16.120 were their jockeys. So Isaac Murphy was one of many 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:20.800 black jockeys in this era. But Isaac Murphy became the 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.840 best of them all, and he certainly deserves consideration as 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:27.200 one of the greatest jockeys of all time. I mean, 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:31.960 if not the greatest, Isaac Murphy won three Kentucky Derby's. 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.679 Isaac Murphy won forty four percent of his races. This 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.079 is the highest percentage ever and a percentage that frankly, 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:45.200 will never be equaled. You know, in eight Isaac Murphy 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:50.720 earned twenty thousand dollars racing horses. Little comparative context, this 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.959 was more than the entire payroll of the Chicago White 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:58.680 Stockings baseball team to be about a half million dollars today. 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.640 And so from his humble beginnings as a stable boy 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:05.839 in Kentucky, Isaac Murphy became one of the most famous 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:10.319 and wealthiest athletes in the United States. He used sport 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:16.640 for social mobility, and through sport, Isaac Murphy became rich. 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:21.120 He was a star, and in the decades immediately after 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:28.840 the Civil War, this was possible for the black athlete. 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.400 Nine was the year of Murphy's most famous race. It 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.240 took place at the Coney Island Racetrack in New York, 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.400 and it was one of the more highly anticipated horse 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.480 races in American history. And it was highly anticipated not 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.520 because it was one of those North South races that 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.720 we talked about. It was highly anticipated because there was 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:54.640 racial tension. This was a race between Isaac Murphy riding 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:59.720 a horse named Salvatore, and a white jockey named Snapper Garrison, 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:04.760 who was riding a horse named Tenny. Isaac Murphy was 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.640 horse racing's top gun, a big time winner in big 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:14.320 time races, but Garrison was the young rising star. He 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.479 was the best of a group of young white jockeys 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.720 who were challenging the long standing dominance of black jockeys 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:26.800 in the sport. And the press absolutely understood this, and 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:31.320 so they described this race not as one between fast horses, 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:36.319 but they described this race as a race war. They 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:40.120 described it as a battle for racial supremacy between the 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:44.640 black and white jockeys. You know, all of this racial 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:49.679 symbolism aside, Isaac Murphy and Snapper Garrison actually had way 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:53.320 more in common than they had indifference. They were both 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:57.839 brash and cocky. They both had a flair for the dramatic. 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.480 I mean, both riders loved to win up by a mile, 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:05.720 but by an eyelash. To me, these two fleets were 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:09.000 much more similar than they were different. But they were 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.000 presented as being opposites because of the color of their skin. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.559 You know, it's all very similar, I think, to the 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.040 way two basketball players in the nineteen eighties, Larry Bird 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.600 and Magic Johnson, the way they were understood. They were 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:28.679 remarkably similar players who were consistently portrayed as being opposites 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.280 solely because of skin color. And we will discuss this 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.440 when we get to the nineteen eighties. But back to 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:42.160 the scene was set, Isaac Murphy versus Snapper Garrison, or 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:48.360 as the press explained it, black versus white. It sounded 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.760 like a great race. The distance was a mile and 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:56.240 a quarter and Isaac Murphy and Salvatore they got out fast. 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.640 They covered the first mile in record time, and with 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.440 only a quarter of a mile left to go, Snapper 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:07.760 Garrison and his horse Tenny, they were hopelessly behind, or 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.079 so it seemed. The finish to this race is one 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.040 of these moments that horse racing fanatics still like to 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:19.040 talk about today, although no one alive today was actually there. Garrison, 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:23.400 the white jockey. He began frantically whipping his horse Tenny, 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:27.880 and Tenny surged and as the thousands of spectators they 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:32.320 were screaming deliriously, Isaac Murphy calmly stood up in the 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:37.120 saddle and started coasting Salvatore toward the finish while Garrison 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.080 writing Tenny. He sprinted and he closed the gap and 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.240 then seemed to pass Isaac Murphy and Salvatore at the 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:50.440 finish line, or did he Both riders claimed they had one, 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:55.320 fans argued over who had one, but using a brand 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.880 new technology the photographed finish, it was determined that Isaac 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:09.280 Murphy had beaten Snapper Garrison. So in June at Coney Island, 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:13.080 Isaac Murphy stood tall in the saddle, and I guess 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.320 I mean that both literally and figuratively. He was at 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:21.120 the top of his sport. What he did not know, however, 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.319 was that the professional black jockey was about to become extinct. 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:33.520 The black jockeys were about to disappear. Black jockeys disappeared 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.600 because white jockeys ganged up on them, and they did 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:41.440 this in a couple of ways. Resenting the dominance of 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.520 black jockeys, White jockeys worked together to gang up against 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.719 the black jockeys on the track. White jockeys conspired to 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.680 box in black jockeys as they raced, or they used 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.480 their whips not on their horses. But on the black 0:13:56.560 --> 0:14:02.479 jockeys while racing. So they used violence, but much more effectively, 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.320 they ganged up on the black jockeys off the track. 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:13.640 In the white jockeys banded together and formed a labor 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:18.319 union known as the Jockey Association, and the white jockeys 0:14:18.560 --> 0:14:24.280 refused to let the black jockeys join the Jockey Association. Look, 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:29.040 white jockeys resented the accomplishments of black jockeys. They resented 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.960 the money that black jockeys like Isaac Murphy were making, 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.320 and so they banded together and they refused to race 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:41.800 against black jockeys. The men who owned the horse racing 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:43.760 tracks in the South, and you know, up and down 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.400 the Atlantic coast, in places like Kentucky and Maryland, they 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.280 followed suit, you know, hoping to lure more paying customers 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.240 to their tracks. They gave in to the demands of 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.480 the white jockeys. Although giving in is the wrong way 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:01.160 to put it. They went along with this scheme. They 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.080 thought they could make the claim that they're gambling sport. 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.840 Horse race sing was more respectable if it was a 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:13.360 sport for whites only. And again, let me emphasize the 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:20.760 year here is a very important year in the history 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:24.760 of race in this country is the year that the 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:29.240 Supreme Court ruled in Plessy Versus. Ferguson. And though this 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.080 case is not about sports, I think it's important to 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:33.960 know what this case is about, and I'm going to 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:38.600 do this very briefly. Plessy versus. Ferguson was a case 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.520 about a black man, Homer Plessy, who broke a new 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.680 Louisiana state law that said that all railroad cars had 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:51.520 to be segregated by race. Plessy rode on a train, 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.280 but he refused to sit in a jim crow what 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.560 we're called back then colored car. He was arrested for 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:02.400 breaking state law, and he sued, and his lawyers argued 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.880 that this Louisiana law forcefully segre gating railroad cars. They said, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.000 this violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the amendment 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.960 that says that all American citizens are entitled to equal 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.480 protection of the law. People are to be treated equally 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:24.000 with regard to the law. And Plus, these lawyers said, 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.040 by segregating Plessy by not allowing him to sit in 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:31.640 the train car of his choice, the state of Louisiana 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:36.640 had violated the Constitution. Well, the Supreme Court came back 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.440 with the decision that said the state of Louisiana can 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:46.440 indeed segregate its railroad cars. Specifically, the court said racial 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:52.640 segregation is constitutional as long as facilities are separate but equal. 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.320 That's where that famous phrase comes from, separate but equal. 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:01.640 This was the legal basis for racial segregation in the 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:09.439 United States. This in was Supreme Court approval for Jim Crow. Though, 0:17:09.679 --> 0:17:15.239 let's be honest, separate was almost never equal. So the 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:19.080 creation of the All White Jockey Association is part of 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.119 a larger movement at this time in which Black Americans 0:17:23.159 --> 0:17:27.399 are being segregated in many aspects of life, in schools, 0:17:28.199 --> 0:17:35.119 public transportation, and hotels and restaurants, and in sports. Now, 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.159 this was most definitely the end for Isaac Murphy. That 0:17:40.439 --> 0:17:44.359 same year, Murphy contracted pneumonia and he died that year 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:49.600 in Lexington, Kentucky, but marks the beginning of the end 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.639 for black jockeys much more generally. A few managed to, 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:58.600 somehow stubbornly hang around. For example, again named Jimmy Winkfield, 0:17:58.639 --> 0:18:02.359 he won the Kentucky Derby in nine o two. But 0:18:02.439 --> 0:18:06.239 Winkfield is the last black jockey to do so, the 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:11.399 very last barred from full membership in the Jockey Association. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.159 Black jockeys were all but e raced from professional horse 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.399 racing a few years later, and they really did not 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.760 return until after the civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties, 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.799 after the break the story of the greatest American cyclist 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:46.320 you've never heard of. So the white jockeys didn't fight 0:18:46.439 --> 0:18:50.319 fair to use a sports term, and neither did the 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:56.199 white wheelmen or bicyclists. Now, let me tell you about 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:03.600 someone named Martial Major Taylor. Major Taylor was the greatest 0:19:03.639 --> 0:19:06.800 cyclist of his era. And this was an era when 0:19:06.919 --> 0:19:10.919 cycling was huge in the United States. You know, if 0:19:10.959 --> 0:19:15.359 we compare how famous someone was in his era with 0:19:15.399 --> 0:19:19.080 how unknown he is today, Major Taylor, at least with 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.559 regards to sports, might be at the absolute top of 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:27.679 that list. In the eight nineties, cycling, oh, it was 0:19:27.719 --> 0:19:32.080 a fat of epidemic proportions, a fad fueled by the 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.359 invention of a new type of bicycle, the rover or 0:19:35.479 --> 0:19:37.919 safety bicycle, which is the type of bicycle we are 0:19:37.959 --> 0:19:43.399 familiar with now. Americans were cycling crazy in the eighteen nineties. 0:19:43.719 --> 0:19:46.119 We'll talk more about this when we get to early 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:50.679 women's sports and athleticism. Part of the boom in the 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.320 interest in cycling was the rise of bicycle racing as 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:59.480 a spectator sport um vella dromes or or cycling race tracks. 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:03.679 They were built throughout the United States and large, massive 0:20:03.679 --> 0:20:07.039 crowds would come out to watch the scorchers, as the 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.959 cyclists were often called scorchers. You know, these scorchers were 0:20:11.959 --> 0:20:15.719 the daredevil speedster heroes of the day, kind of like 0:20:15.879 --> 0:20:20.439 stock card drivers after World War Two. Well, one of 0:20:20.439 --> 0:20:25.279 these scorchers was Major Taylor. He was born in Indianapolis 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.519 in eighteen seventy eight and he grew up working at 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:33.799 a bicycle shop in Indianapolis. In two when he was 0:20:33.879 --> 0:20:37.399 thirteen years old, he entered his first race, ten miler. 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:42.239 He was competing against grown men and he won. And 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:45.560 over the course of the next decade, Major Taylor just 0:20:45.719 --> 0:20:50.679 kept winning and Major Taylor became the American national champion 0:20:50.719 --> 0:20:54.200 and he was the greatest cyclist in the United States. 0:20:55.479 --> 0:20:59.399 Major Taylor was the most recognizable black athlete in the 0:20:59.479 --> 0:21:03.639 United States. He was one of the most recognizable athletes period. 0:21:05.639 --> 0:21:10.039 Cycling was an integrated sport and Major Taylor was on top. 0:21:10.639 --> 0:21:13.840 He was on top of a sport, though that more 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.279 and more was starting to be advertised in terms of 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:21.719 a race war. Like in horse racing, promoters were using 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.919 the rising racial tensions of the era and promoting these 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:31.639 races as black versus white on the velodrome. And then, 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:34.799 just like it had happened to the black jockeys, Major 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.080 Taylor was chased from the sport, at least here in 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:44.520 the United States, state by state, white cyclists they banded 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:48.119 together and they began to refuse to race against black 0:21:48.199 --> 0:21:52.879 cyclist like Taylor. Like with horse racing, the belodrome owners 0:21:52.919 --> 0:21:57.199 and the race organizers they allowed this to happen. The 0:21:57.239 --> 0:22:00.999 white scorchers could not beat Major Taylor on the track, 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:04.200 so they got rid of him. They they segregated him 0:22:04.239 --> 0:22:08.399 out of their sport. American cycling became all white in 0:22:08.439 --> 0:22:11.760 the same era the eight nineties, just as American horse 0:22:11.879 --> 0:22:16.479 racing had, and so Major Taylor had no choice. He 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:18.999 had to go to Europe to race, which he did, 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.959 and where he dominated. He became one of the all 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:26.479 time greats. But that happened in Europe, not in the 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:33.879 United States. But there's a really interesting paradox to this story. 0:22:34.199 --> 0:22:39.839 A tremendous irony I suppose because with the removal of 0:22:39.959 --> 0:22:46.119 Major Taylor from American cycling, the sport actually became way 0:22:46.199 --> 0:22:49.600 less popular. Part of it has to do with the 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:52.839 fact that the automobile came along and auto racing started 0:22:52.879 --> 0:22:57.679 to supplant bicycle racing in the American imagination. But part 0:22:57.719 --> 0:22:59.519 of it has to do with the fact that the 0:22:59.639 --> 0:23:05.720 racial drama in the sport was now gone. Even though 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:10.559 many white Americans were becoming increasingly uneasy with interracial sport, 0:23:11.199 --> 0:23:14.639 and even though many white cyclists they resented the success 0:23:14.719 --> 0:23:19.520 of guys like Major Taylor, the fact is racial tension 0:23:19.679 --> 0:23:23.840 brought intrigue and excitement to the sport of cycling. That 0:23:23.959 --> 0:23:28.480 the issue of race made the bicycle races more interesting 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:33.359 to Americans, And so once the white cyclists succeeded in 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:38.520 segregating Major Taylor out of their sport, cycling was suddenly 0:23:38.719 --> 0:23:43.039 less interesting to the American public. Yeah. With with Taylor gone, 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:46.840 the white wheel men could win more when more races, Yes, 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:51.799 but their sport quickly became less popular and less lucrative. 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:59.239 Here is a straightforward truism about the history of American sport. 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:06.039 Racial tension sells tickets. We will see this over and 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:13.199 over and over in this course. Okay, let me end 0:24:13.239 --> 0:24:16.800 today by pointing toward next time, when we're going to 0:24:16.879 --> 0:24:21.560 return to boxing. Another of the sports at the turn 0:24:21.600 --> 0:24:24.959 of the century that saw black athletes do increasingly well 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:30.119 was prize fighting. For example, there was Canada's George Dixon. 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:33.639 Dixon was the first black man to win a world 0:24:33.639 --> 0:24:37.399 title in boxing. He won the world featherweight title in eight. 0:24:39.399 --> 0:24:43.560 There was Joe Gans from Baltimore, the first African American 0:24:43.679 --> 0:24:46.879 to win a boxing title. Gans won the lightweight title 0:24:46.919 --> 0:24:51.679 in two. A recent retrospective of American boxing just called 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:56.599 Joe Gans the greatest lightweight boxer of all time. So, 0:24:56.719 --> 0:24:59.959 George Dixon and Joe Gans, they are evidence that at 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:02.799 the turn of the twentieth century, more and more black 0:25:02.879 --> 0:25:07.959 boxers were rising to the top. Well, just like we 0:25:08.040 --> 0:25:11.320 saw with horse racing, just like we saw with cycling. 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:15.720 This rise of the black boxers, it was causing anxiety 0:25:15.800 --> 0:25:23.679 among white Americans. In the editor of the New York Sun, 0:25:24.239 --> 0:25:27.799 man named Charles Dana, who was white. He issued the 0:25:27.879 --> 0:25:33.000 following morning to his white readers. He wrote, we are 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:36.879 in the midst of a growing menace. The black man 0:25:37.080 --> 0:25:40.959 is rapidly forging to the front of athletics, especially in 0:25:41.000 --> 0:25:45.519 the field of fisticuffs that is boxing. We are in 0:25:45.560 --> 0:25:50.760 the midst of a black rise against white supremacy. Wake up, 0:25:51.040 --> 0:25:57.439 you pugilists of the white race. That's off for now. 0:25:57.760 --> 0:26:00.560 Next time on the Untold History of Sports in America 0:26:00.959 --> 0:26:05.040 presented by One Day University. The first black heavyweight champ 0:26:05.199 --> 0:26:12.439 in turns American sports upside down. M m hm.