Major Taylor

by Conrad Kerber

  On the hazy Monday morning of June 27, they disembarked from the Sierra at the port of San Francisco. Exhausted from the long voyage, they decided to shake off their sea legs with a few days of relaxation in the city by the bay. They stopped at a nearby hotel, but were immediately turned away. “No blacks allowed,” they were told. They moved farther down Pacific Street. With Daisy holding their crying infant, they were summarily booted off a hotel bus. “No use taking you up,” bellowed the hotel bus runner, “there will be no room for you at the hotel.” They jumped on another bus, but heard the same insulting refrain: “No blacks allowed!”

  Hungry, they set off in search of a restaurant with the same outcome. For hours, they circled in vain with their bulky luggage and new pets, getting dropped off at different restaurants and hotels. A sympathetic police sergeant named Mahoney handed them a list of hotels that accepted blacks. But Taylor would have none of it. “Not my kind of hotels,” he said with a angry glare. Don Walker, on his first visit to America, was appalled at what he was witnessing.

  “So this is America about which you have been boasting in Australia,” he asked quizzically. “From what I have seen, I cannot understand why you were in such a hurry to get back home here.”

  The afternoon pressed on. Major became tired, hungry, and angry. Just then, he heard the low tone of a stranger harassing Daisy, who had light skin, for socializing with a negro. For a brief moment while Major’s blood boiled, a hush permeated the air. Major edged toward the anonymous man, his eyes squinting. Walker, a rugged Aussie who was also becoming agitated by the whole affair, inched forward. Major shooed Walker away. He wanted to handle this one on his own.

  For what may have been the only time in his life, Major, who normally boxed a half hour a day as part of his training, stepped back and launched a punishing right-hand punch toward the man’s jaw. The fight was over before it started. There was the perfect connection of his clenched black fist to a stunned white face, the sudden press of severe pain, the flinging of a white body through the San Francisco air, and the thumping sound of man meeting gravel. For a brief moment, there was complete stillness. Daisy and Walker stood back with their mouths gaping.

  Major’s message was clear. Someone might get by verbally harassing him, but he would never, ever tolerate someone bullying his wife.

  So instead of relaxing for a few days in San Francisco, they pulled themselves together and stalked off to Oakland. There, a midnight sleeper, stocked for a lengthy sojourn to the East Coast, stood waiting. As they sat waiting for their train to snake over the Rockies toward Worcester, Major glared out the window at the dark sky.

  He had reached a breaking point. Eight years of nonstop travel, racking up nearly one hundred thousand miles on hot trains and wobbly ships, living out of a suitcase and sleeping in strange beds in cities all over the world, denied meals, hotels, and access to certain tracks—all this, wrote the Worcester Telegram, “took the heart out of him.”

  The overland sleeper ground forward. By the time it wound out of Oakland, Major was sound asleep.

  Somewhere in the heart of the nation that had both idolized and rejected Taylor, Daisy could rest her head against his shoulder and slide the tips of her fingers into his palm. Major broke down. “I suffered a collapse,” he confessed in one of the few moments where he admitted to a weakness. “This was caused,” he wrote, “by my recent strenuous campaign in Australia augmented by the incidental worries of life.”

  When he returned home to the shocking news that his father had been killed by a speeding train, Major Taylor slipped into a long-lasting depression. In those days before effective medications and quality treatment, he would have to rely on what he had: his faith in God, his caring wife, and his beautiful new child.

  For the better part of the next two and a half years, the shades were lowered on 4 Hobson Avenue while one of America’s brightest lights went dark.

  ___________

  * Every sentence handed down to the American and Australian riders was later reduced. After several inquiries and a great deal of pleading, Lawson’s one-year suspension was eventually reduced to three months, making him eligible for the 1904 World Championships in London, which he won.

  Chapter 21

  LAZARUS

  The fall of 1904 became the fall of 1905. In a separate room inside 4 Hobson Avenue, Taylor’s bicycles, medals, trophies, and newspaper clippings gathered dust. Between 1895 and 1904, his movements could be traced on a near-daily basis through the press. From late 1904 to 1906 while he at times remained hermetically sealed, his name nearly vanished, making reports of his movements sketchy.

  His days spent on the world’s tracks had brought him both tremendous highs and extreme lows, but now he certainly struggled to recall anything except those moments of gloom. Sadness filled the hallway as he ambled by his trophy room each day. And he had no desire to come near his bicycle. To make matters worse, in the fog of his depression, he had all but forgotten, or chose to ignore, a contract he had signed with Coquelle to race in France that season. Breyer and Coquelle refreshed his memory, suing him $10,000 for breach of contract. NCA Chairman A. G. Batchelder, hell-bent on getting back at Taylor for not racing in America over the past few years, sided with the Frenchmen. Eventually the suit would wear on him, but now his body and mind were too jaded to care a fig about it. Besides, his doctor had issued a stern warning: stay away from the racetrack; your mental health is at stake.

  “Little did they [his friends] realize the great physical strain I labored under while I was competing,” Taylor later confessed. “Nor did they seem to realize the great mental strain that beset me in those races, and the utter exhaustion that I felt on the many occasions after I had battled against the monster prejudice, both on and off the track.”

  Daisy’s spirits reflected his. But she began working on him, nudging him out of the darkness of their cloistered interior and into the crisp Worcester air. Knowing his love for automobiles, she surely pleaded with him to take her for rides in their new French car. Eventually, Taylor obliged and turned the crank on their Renault. They must have been quite a sight for the locals to see, whizzing along at the blistering speed of ten–fifteen miles per hour, Daisy struggling to keep her Victorian hat from flying off, evoking curious glares from everyone in town.

  Since the ten-mile-per-hour speed limit was considerably slower than he was used to going on his bicycle, Taylor challenged the restrictive law. After receiving one speeding ticket, the local police seemingly began stalking the world’s fastest man. On one occasion, Taylor, who spoke of becoming an automobile racer, found another mischievous car owner, and together they surely became public nuisances, discharging smoky exhaust, spewing up dust storms, angering horsemen as he had in his youth, and raising a deafening dissonance that scattered horses. These antics, combined with having the audacity to shatter the speed limit again, caused one incensed local magistrate to reform him with a $35 fine.

  Unfortunately for all those who came near him, Taylor seemed to be more adroit at bike racing than auto racing. On one June day in 1905, probably while flouting the speed limit again, he had rammed into a horse carriage carrying two elegantly dressed Back Bay ladies out on a leisurely weekend canter. Their carriage in shambles, a $1,000 lawsuit followed. But this incident did nothing to curb his irresistible penchant for speed. On another occasion, he and a well-known local businessman hit head on coming out of a corner, nearly decapitating each other. Surprisingly, they both emerged uninjured, but Taylor’s mangled car had to be taken to an “auto hospital,” a makeshift shop comprised of former bicycle mechanics who were basically winging it as auto repairmen. On occasion, he tossed little Sydney in the car, hopefully slowing down a few ticks so she might live to see her third birthday.

  Somewhere on those dusty New England roads lined with colorful maple trees, Taylor started to feel alive again. Though he may not have known it then, the healing process had begun. Daisy felt as if every moment with him was on borrowed ti
me. She had seen what had happened to him after eight years of professional racing and worried about his health. She nurtured him, picked fresh vegetables from their backyard garden, cooked him hearty meals, and watched over him. Taylor ate and ate to his heart’s content. His frame filled out.

  Time passed. Amid the soothing rhythms of Worcester far removed from the racetrack and the insistent press, they watched their daughter Sydney grow before their eyes. In the evenings, while stroking the muzzles of his poodle and wallaby and listening to his red-plumed parrot caw “Major! Major! Hallo Boy,” Taylor could finally relax.

  The year 1905 blended into 1906. Taylor began pausing as he passed by his special room, peering toward his memorabilia. With each passing week, the pause grew longer. Eventually he stepped into the room, probably reading a few newspaper headlines he had in his scrapbook: TAYLOR DEFEATS MIDGET MICHAELS. TAYLOR IS WORLD CHAMPION. TAYLOR AVENGES LOSS TO JACQUELIN.

  As 1906 entered its final months, Taylor immersed himself in his collection, at times surely tarrying for hours. He eventually wiped the dust off one of his bicycles, for which he would later write a poem:

  Now as a reward for faithfulness

  My trusty bike has earned its rest

  But not in the attic all covered with dust

  Nor in the cellar to get all rust

  But in my den on a pedestal tall

  Or better still upon the wall

  Where I can see it every day

  And it will keep the blues away

  We rode to win in every race

  Fairly we played in every case

  If life grows dull and things break bad

  Just think of the days we’ve had

  Avid cyclists often say that the passion for riding never goes away; it just lies dormant at times. The sport may in fact have the highest recidivist rate. “You may take a break, but you’ll always come back,” explained one professional rider. “You need the competition, the adrenaline, the endorphins. You’ll miss the flush, relaxed, satisfied feeling when you’re heading home after a long ride with friends on an early summer evening at sunset.”

  For Taylor, this was the first period since his youth that he had been deprived of his life’s passion. He began missing the howl of thirty thousand fans, the drug-like high that only a bicycle race can bestow. Standing alongside his trusty, record-setting machine, he felt something form in him, a sensation he hadn’t felt in years. Since his last racing days in Australia, his fortune had reversed. Physically he had declined, but emotionally he began feeling better. His mind rolled back, positive memories now fighting for space alongside the negative. Subconsciously, he’d hung on to the idea that he might compete again. All he needed was the right circumstances.

  In December 1906, he heard a rap on the front door. It was Coquelle. He was in the States for the Madison Square Garden six-day race, looking for an amicable way to settle their lawsuit. Taylor invited him in and drew up a chair. They talked long and late about the good old days of 1901, especially the Jacquelin match races, still on the tongues of sports lovers in Europe.

  Given that they had enjoyed a harmonious relationship before the lawsuit, Coquelle had surely agonized over his decision to sue the beloved black man. So he put an end to all the reminiscing, then made a startling suggestion: Why didn’t Taylor try a comeback so they could drop this silly lawsuit? For Taylor, the idea was at once brilliant and frightening. The lawsuit—which named Daisy as well—had hung over him like a gigantic rain cloud, so he rejoiced at the thought of watching it disappear. “I wanted the worry of the suit ended,” he sighed, “and to be free from the chance of losing such a sum of money.” Though Taylor hadn’t pedaled a bicycle in over two and a half years, the old friends quickly came to an oral agreement.

  Taylor seemed set to return to the land of his greatest glory.

  But during his absence, the racing world had moved on without him, producing several young powerhouses who were terrorizing racetracks. Could he possibly compete in this new environment? The press got wind of his pending return. Some newsmen thought the idea was preposterous. The comeback, if fruitful, would be unheard of. Several elite cyclists tried, including Arthur Zimmerman, Eddie Bald, and Tom Cooper, but they had met with more humiliation than success. Before the year was out, Taylor would be a comparatively fossilized twenty-nine year old, several years older than most of the young bucks he would be facing. And his body had already been subjected to hundreds of grueling races strung out over thirteen years. In today’s world, he would be near his prime, but in 1907, when the average life expectancy was forty-six for white men and only thirty-two and a half for black men, twenty-nine was considered beyond prime.

  Before signing on the dotted line, Major put the ambitious proposal before the chairman of the board: Daisy. At first she appeared to be terrified at the idea of his going back to the racetrack, the very source of his troubles. But after seeing him mope around for much of the past few years, she seemed all too happy with the idea of booting him out of the house. “I advised him to do it . . . I urged him to take up cycling again,” she told Coquelle understatedly, “because I don’t think it’s good for a man to be idle.”

  On a brisk day in March 1907, Major, Daisy, and their daughter Sydney took a train to New York. They boarded the La Touraine—the French liner that would warn the Titanic of icebergs—and set out on the seemingly impossible mission of regaining his former glory.

  It was like 1901 all over again. Before they had even arrived, the European press corps slipped into overdrive. They reignited the passions of longtime racing fans by reprinting many of Taylor’s past exploits. For new fans, they painted a picture of coming divinity, a Lazarus they were about to bring back from the dead. The Resurrection of the Negro trumpeted Desgrange’s L’Auto, a sports daily made popular in part by Taylor and the fast-growing Tour de France.

  Europe geared up for the return of the legendary black man. Peugeot, Taylor’s new bicycle sponsor, splattered the continent with ads and billboards boasting of its affiliation with the world-famous negro. All across the continent, people sang the words of a new song titled “Le Negre Volant” (The Flying Black Man). A book about him hit shelves. When a group of American tourists staying at the same hotel insisted those “niggers” get out of “their” hotel, the tourists were pilloried without mercy by nearly every reporter and citizen in France. La Vie au Grand Air produced a multipage cover piece highlighting Taylor’s career with nice photos of Daisy and Sydney. “Major Taylor,” they wrote with an air of intoxication, “is with us once more.”

  But few newsmen were prepared for what they saw. Waddling into Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine River with his quaking belly stretching far over his belt stood Taylor, a few meals shy of a portly 200 pounds. Used to seeing him a svelte 160 to 165 pounds, the press was aghast. Some felt uncomfortable broaching the subject. Others proceeded gingerly. “You look as though you have put on a little weight, Major,” remarked one reporter, trying not to make his understatement too obvious.

  The fact was, Taylor had desperately wanted to train in the South before leaving, but the racial climate, including the frequent lynchings, hadn’t changed much since he had been kicked off Southern tracks in 1898. He had to settle for trying to pound his excess weight off on the way over, beating a punching bag silly, while many of his rivals had been training under the swaying palms of the French or Italian Riviera. Unfortunately, clobbering a punching bag was nowhere near enough to overcome years of inactivity.

  Taylor tried to shoo away the press and hunker down for six weeks of training—first a half hour, then forty-five minutes, an hour, and so on. Each day hundreds of puzzled Europeans looked on as he rode around the track, sauntering along at a turtle’s gait. Little by little with each passing week the weight came off: five pounds, ten, fifteen, then twenty. On May 9, he had one final blowout before testing himself in a real race.

  His contract called for a series of six races pitting him against weighty names like Poula
in, Ellegaard, Dupre, Friol, Verri, Van der Borne, and none other than Edmond Jacquelin. On May 10, ready or not, he lined up at the Parc des Princes Track against Poulain. That race, and the series of five races to follow, proved to be the most humiliating of his career. Time and again he raced and lost, sometimes by ridiculous lengths. Coquelle and Daisy would sit in the grandstand each day and watch him go by, cringing at the sad sight of a racing legend getting trounced by a slew of younger riders or those he had previously handled. After his sixth straight loss, Daisy swept up the steps and out of the track.

  Reporters, so used to interviewing Taylor, charged right past him to interview the young victors. Taylor watched them pass, feeling indifferent.

  His stock had fallen through the floor. Had his stock traded on Wall Street, quipped one man years later, it would have been delisted. As expected, the crowds hissed and the press picked at him. Given his racing palmares, Taylor was angered that nearly everyone had all but given him up for dead. After he fell down during one race, some even claimed he had forgotten how to ride a bicycle. As though he was building a dossier on them, Taylor made a mental note of who was writing what, and rolled on.

  Observers were even harder on Coquelle. They chastised him for lugging Taylor, who some viewed as all washed up, back to Europe. How could he sully Taylor’s stellar reputation? Racing fans wanted to remember him as the invincible man he was earlier in the decade, not as an aged has-been. After all the hype, Coquelle read the reports with a tremor in his belly.

  Taylor refused to give up. Hour after hour, day after day, he trained and trained, gradually increasing the length and speed of each session. He knew his body and the ins and outs of racing, and he hadn’t come all the way overseas for leisure rides. At his first race at the age of thirteen, he had learned how to ride and compete. Extreme velocity had become an integral part of him from that moment forward. Because fewer fans began showing up for his workouts, Taylor seemed to be the only one who noticed that he was gaining steam. What had begun as gentle canters around the track were now violent forward lunges at breathtaking speeds. Taylor was singeing the track like a bolt of lightning. His mind and body were in synch, begging to race again.