Archdeacon: Dayton long intertwined in the wondrous story of Major Taylor

Carl Cook, who grew up on Germantown Pike and was a multi-sport athlete at Jefferson High School in the mid-1960s, became a prominent cyclist after leaving Dayton, competing in events across the Midwest and South.

He lived in New Orleans for 25 years and was working as part of a hospital’s disaster response team there when Hurricane Katrina devasted the city in 2005.

The deadly storm destroyed much of what he had, including his Italian racing bikes and all his cycling gear and mementos.

For several years after that, he had little to do with the sport.

Now retired and living in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the 76-year-old Cook is immersed in cycling again, especially back here in his hometown where he’s president/vice president of the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Dayton, which is hosting its gala Signature Ride festivities that benefit charity this Friday and Saturday.

The events — a pre-ride Friday and four signature rides and a post-race meal on Saturday — promote camaraderie and healthy living while giving financial support to organizations that aid the community.

In the process, the club also hopes to foster an understanding of Major Taylor, the cycling sensation of the world in the early Twentieth Century who — despite the intense racial discrimination and intimidation he endured with tremendous personal honor, comportment and achievement — gained LeBron James and Jackie Robinson stature and, whose speed and dominance on the track, birthed the nickname:

“The Black Cyclone.”

As Frankie Brown, the former president of the Dayton club and now its treasurer and historian, once told me:

“Major Taylor was one of the most awesome athletes ever, but a lot of people still know nothing about him. He was the first African American to become a world champion in any sport and just the second Black man anywhere to hold a world title. The first was a boxer from Canada.”

She was talking about world featherweight champ George “Little Chocolate” Dixon.

Taylor won the one-mile sprint world championship in Montreal in 1899. It was during a two-decade span when bicycle racing — not football, baseball or recently-invented basketball — was the most popular sport in the land.

With Taylor as the headliner, cycling events sold out Madison Square Garden and drew huge crowds across Europe.

Soon he was one of the most popular and best paid athletes in the world. Consider that in 1905 Taylor earned $30,000, while baseball star Honus Wagner made $5,000.

Taylor had a colorful, almost inconceivable story, and Dayton has been intertwined in it repeatedly for some 125 years.

Edwin Moses, the legendary Olympic hurdler from Dayton, served for many years as the honorary chairman of the national Major Taylor Association and told the New York Times: “What he went through in the 1890s is unimaginable. I couldn’t imagine competing and winning with what he had to put up with.”

Taylor was banned from many races across the nation because of his skin color and the League of American Wheelmen, the governing body of the sport, denied Blacks membership.

In some cities, hotels refused to rent him a room, restaurants wouldn’t serve him and local newspapers ran blatantly racist cartoons depicting him.

When Taylor showed up for a highly-promoted “Black versus White” 30-mile match race in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1898, his competitor, Irish Catholic Eddie McDuffie, entered the track to cheers as the band belted out a popular and derogatory ragtime tune.

But it was during races when things really got nasty. Some competitors would elbow Taylor every chance they got; others would try to wreck him intentionally. Some fans hurled insults and ice at him as he passed by. Others threw nails in front of his tires.

The worst episode happened in 1897 after a race outside Boston.

Taylor had won again, but this time third-place finisher — William Becker — pulled him from his bike and choked him until he was unconscious. For his near fatal assault, Becker drew a $50 fine.

Through it all, Taylor persevered with both honor ― “Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart,” he wrote in his self-published biography in 1928 — and domination.

By 1898, Taylor held seven different cycling world records. A year later he won his historic first world title, a feat that came 48 years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

Along the way he found a guardian angel in Earl Kiser, a white, two-time world cycling champion from Dayton. Just 5-foot-6, but well-muscled, Kiser was known as “The Little Demon from Dayton.”

He raced for the Dayton Bicycle Club and then the Stearns Yellow Fellow team and when he launched the American Racing Cyclists Union, he insisted Taylor be included in all races in America.

Kiser also brought Taylor to Europe where The Black Cyclone became a popular riding sensation — especially in France — and won 40 of his 57 races.

Eventually switching to autos, Kiser set world speed records driving the famed Winton Bullet. His career ended, though, in 1905 when he lost a leg in a race in Cleveland.

He later became a well-known Dayton auto dealer and a real estate developer in Miami Beach.

He has two Dayton streets named after him — Earl and Herbert — and he’s buried in Woodland Cemetery near the graves of the Wright Brothers and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

‘Gone but not forgotten’

Tayor was born in rural Indiana in 1878. His father was a Civil War veteran who later served as a coachman for a wealthy white family — the Southards.

Major — whose real first name was Marshall — became pals with Southards’ son, Dan, and ended up living with the family.

They gave him a bicycle and before long he’d become a talented trick rider. When he was 12, he was hired to do stunts outside of an Indianapolis bike shop.

Because he performed wearing an old Army uniform, people started calling him Major.

A year later the shop owner entered him in a mile race and though competing against adults, the 13-year-old Taylor won. When he started winning regularly, white competitors refused to ride against him and finally he was banned from all races in Indiana.

Another bike shop owner convinced Taylor to go to Worcester, Massachusetts, which was the cycling capitol of the world then and, for a while, a place where he faced less strident racism.

Taylor’s greatest embrace came in Europe and Australia, even though — as a devout Baptist after his mother’s death in 1898 — he refused to race on the Sabbath.

That conviction later inspired the Otis Taylor blues song: “He Never Raced on Sunday.”

While in Australia, Taylor’s wife Daisy gave birth to their only child, Rita Sydney, whose name honored the city where she was born in 1904.

Taylor’s life took a downturn in the late 1920s. Daisy had left him and a series of bad investments, costly medical issues and the stock market crash left him broke.

He died penniless in a Chicago hospital in 1932. His body was unclaimed in the morgue and for 16 years he was buried in an unmarked grave in the paupers’ section of Mount Glenwood Memorial Gardens.

In 1948 Frank Schwinn of the Schwinn Bicycle family and some cycling advocates reburied Taylor in a more prominent section of the cemetery and added a gravestone.

The epitaph on the marker concludes with the lines:

“A credit to his race who always gave out his best

“Gone, but not forgotten.”

More than a bike club

“This is a family story,” Cook said.

“Back when I was prekindergarten — just three or four — my favorite uncle brought a bike home and gave it to me.

“I don’t know if he got it from the trash can or what. It was hand painted and the paint had dripped on it. It was gray. It was ugly, but I loved it.

“It had training wheels on it, but somehow, I got into my grandfather’s toolbox and got the right tool. I took the training wheels off and started riding.

“So, I had a love for bike riding way back then.”

After high school, Cook went to McPherson College, a small school connected to the Church of the Brethren in Kansas. He returned to Dayton and became the first Black professional hired at the Downtown Dayton YMCA when he became an assistant physical director.

Later working at the YMCA in St Louis, he joined the Century Road Club Association team and competed around the country. After moving to New Orleans, he continued to compete with teams there until Katrina hit.

Once relocated in Kentucky, he was making monthly trips to Dayton, where he visited a good friend, Danette Eason, and some of his remaining family members.

Eason had a bike, so he finally got a mountain bike so he could ride along with her. When they both joined the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Dayton, Cook promptly upgraded his bikes and then he and Eason became more involved in the group, which is one of 55 chapters around the world.

“Once I got involved, I found out the whole Major Taylor thing was more than just a bike club. It was a movement,” he said.

Originally geared more to African Americans, it now embraces everyone and all degrees of capability on a bike.

Cook said he was especially drawn to the club because it also gives back so much to the community.

Over the years, the recipients of the Signature Ride funds have included, among others: the House of Bread; the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Dayton; the Wesley Center; The Dakota Center; Mercy Manor; scholarships to Central State; and the Dayton Children’s Hospital bike safety program.

“In the 16 years we’ve had our Signature rides, the club had given out over $48,000 to local groups, I believe,” Cook said.

This year’s non-profit recipients include The Victory Project and The Sunlight Village, both of which aid youth in the community.

Of all the chapters worldwide, Dayton’s – according to the Major Taylor website – is the association’s biggest giver.

This Friday, registration for the events opens at 2 p.m. in Lot D at Welcome Stadium. A 20-mile pre-race ride will be held at 3 p.m.

Saturday’s events include a trio of rides — 18 miles, 40 miles and 62 miles — that begin at 6:30 a.m. A family ride is at 9:45 and is free. Other races cost $30. Registration opens Saturday at 6 a.m.

A post-ride meal ends the day.

But those who take part will be left with something else as well, Frankie Brown once said:

“Major Taylor did a lot of good back when he was racing and now, we want to continue in his name. He showed people you could overcome every obstacle put in front of you and do it with a humble heart and peacefulness. Not bitterness.

“We believe that’s still worth learning.

“Major Taylor’s lessons from 100 years ago still work today.”