Good Morning POU!
This week I’m highlighting amazing athletes that receive little to no recognition in the history books and in some cases, in the sport they played, although their accomplishments are largely unparalleled.
Marshall “Major” Taylor
Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor (26 November 1878 – 21 June 1932) was an American cyclist who won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899 after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination. Taylor was the first African-American athlete to achieve the level of world champion and only the second black man to win a world championship—after Canadian boxer George Dixon.
Major’s biography per the Major Taylor Association:
Nov. 26, 1878 — Marshall W. Taylor is born in rural Indiana to a black couple who moved north from Kentucky around the time of the Civil War.
1886-1891 — Taylor is raised and educated in the home of a wealthy white Indianapolis family that employs his father as coachman. The family gives him a bicycle.
1892 — Taylor is hired to perform cycling stunts outside an Indianapolis bike shop. His costume is a soldier’s uniform, which earns him the nickname “Major.” He wins his first bike race that year.
Fall 1895 — Taylor moves to Worcester, Mass., with his employer and racing manager Louis “Birdie” Munger, who plans to open a bike factory there.
August 1896 — Taylor unofficially breaks two world track records, for paced and unpaced 1-mile rides, in Indianapolis. But his feat offends white sensibilities and he is banned from Indy’s Capital City track.
December 1896 — Taylor finishes eighth in his first professional race, a six-day endurance event at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1898 — Taylor holds seven world records, including the 1-mile paced standing start (1:41.4).
Aug. 10, 1899 — Taylor wins the world 1-mile championship in Montreal, defeating Boston rival Tom Butler. Taylor is the second black world champion athlete, after bantamweight boxer George Dixon’s title fights in 1890-91.
Nov. 15, 1899 — Taylor knocks the 1-mile record down to 1:19.
September 1900 — Thwarted in previous seasons by racism, Taylor finally gets to complete the national championship series and becomes American sprint champion.
October 1900-January 1901 — Taylor performs in a vaudeville act with Charles “Mile-a-Minute” Murphy, racing on rollers on theater stages across Massachusetts.
March -June 1901 — Taylor competes in Europe, which he had long resisted because his Baptist beliefs precluded racing on Sundays. He beats every European champion.
March 21, 1902 — Taylor marries Daisy V. Morris in Ansonia, Conn.
1902-1904 — Taylor races all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, with brief rests in Worcester.
1907 — Taylor makes a brief comeback after a two-year hiatus.
1910 — Taylor retires from racing at age 32. Over the next two decades, unsuccessful business ventures and illness sap his fortune.
1930 — Impoverished and estranged from his wife, Taylor drives to Chicago, stays at the YMCA and tries to sell copies of his self-published 1928 autobiography, “The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World.”
June 21, 1932 — Taylor dies at age 53 in the charity ward of Cook County Hospital, Chicago, and is buried in an unmarked grave.
May 23, 1948 — A group of former pro bike racers, with money donated by Schwinn Bicycle Co. owner Frank Schwinn, has Taylor’s remains exhumed and reburied in a more prominent part of Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Illinois.
WNBC-TV (Channel 4) New York featured 1899 world cycling champion Major Taylor in a segment broadcast on Nov. 24, 2007.