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Black Girls Do Bike Hits the Road in Rhode Island
The state s first chapter promotes biking by women and girls of color.
April 26, 2021
Allyson McCalla inspires others to follow a passion for bicycling. Courtesy of Bike Newport.
While bicycling around her native Newport, Allyson McCalla noticed something: She rarely saw anyone who looked like her on a bike. So she’s set out to change that.
Attending a national bike summit in her role as director of community relations and administration at Bike Newport, a bicycle advocacy organization that promotes bike safety and accessibility, McCalla saw a presentation by Monica Garrison, the founder of Black Girls Do Bike (BGDB), and knew immediately Rhode Island deserved a chapter.
Julie Zack
Newport Life magazine
Being a kid during a Newport summer can be an idyllic experience, riding bikes through narrow streets or heading downtown to jump off a pier. That’s how Allyson McCalla remembers spending her afternoons growing up in Newport.
“My brother, my sisters, and my friends and I would ride all throughout the Newport streets. We knew Newport like the back of our hands,” McCalla recalls. Riding a bike opened up the city to her, especially as summer crowds made other modes of transportation less efficient.
While biking was a crucial method of exploration in her adolescence, McCalla didn’t continue biking into adulthood. “I was not an adult bicycler at all,” she says. It wasn’t until she became involved with the nonprofit bicycle advocacy organization Bike Newport, where she currently serves as Director of Community Relations and Administration, that she started cycling again.