Thank you very much its great to be here. Thank you for having me at the coop and thanks to the viewers booktv and cspan and all of you for coming out. I want to tell you the story yourself in 1896, a very different world than we know today the world in which there is millions of bicycles, 300 automobilesui, the subways were not in new york city, this is the world where it raised the first personal race. The new york city of the 1890s and the population of the city doubled there were horses and horse and buggies and there were streetcars, railroads that the bicycle came along for many years it wascl just something tt specialized writers had used but the safety bicycles were two equal size wheels came along in the masses started to ride. They became the most popular form of conveyance. People just relied on the horse and buggy got a way to get around cleanly, fast and efficient and for a lot of people this was their own form of independent. Around this time a woman who is writing about suffrage and how i learned to ride the bicycle. It gives you a sense of the new world of the bicycle and the most prevalent sport was bicycle. If you want to see fast moving sports went to the velodrome around the country and draw 10000, 20000 people for the cycling races. There were white races, black races but the races that provided the winnings were dominated by white raters. Major taylor was bought in indianapolis, indiana, he left the because of the reasons that he faced and move to massachusetts. This was him 815 usual and youht can see he is a slight man, his height was 5foot seven he was in the 140s when he was a racer so he was not built for racing. Initially a lot of the racers were 6 feet tall, much larger bodies and support. There was a man who ran a bicycling manufacturing and took him under his wing. He saw him something of himself. Yes a a black man and this was a white man, hed been the champion of the high wills bicycle era. He was worldns festive man in te early 1890s and then he saw major taylor and all the research he thought he had the makings of a great cyclist. He had a friend in indianapolis and that family tookad him in ad that friend was from a wealthy white family so growing up he called himself like a millionaire son. He was from a very poor family behind and upbringing as well with this other family that provided him with a bicycle and they undertook him to massachusetts, one of the people in his life was a man named arthur zimmerman, he was also a World Champion and he taught him a lot about how to build your body in nutrition to become a strong man in a 1985 he wrote a book called points on training and major taylor devoured the book. He learned good tips on how to use the food, gymnasium so tried to go there at the whimsy in indiana but the ymca said you are not welcome here because of the color of your skin and he later said this was the first time he learned about the monster prejudice. Soso bernie monger i so much he decided to leave indiana and leave his a Company Behind and move the new company to massachusetts and there he was brought along and went to the ymca there and was welcome. There he felt comfortable and decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life there except later on which ill tell you about. He believes so strongly in major taylor that by 1896 after he had one amateur reeses he took him to new york city and wanted to enter him in the greatest race of the time heard in a credible testament of how strongly he believed in him. This is a picture of Madison Square garden, you can see the tower and its a palatial type of building. They held a 60 race. You race around an oval for six days straight in our rest here there but it was inhumane type of race. If he could survive that yet survived one of the most brutal sporting contest ever by man. It took years off your life if you participated in the 60 race. It was not difficult. At the time the greatest printer was any bal eddie cannonball end himself as the star of the day before the word superstar was used he was it. His greatest in the world and pat enter paid to advertise products he is making more than 10000 a year in theom 1880s. He took the beat around to the neighborhood and it was great training to be a sprinter. He can fly like a cannonball. He was a great sprinter of the day and he had not done anything about major taylor but he decided this was a man in the race that he should enter. A preliminary contest a half mile for the 60 race would begin. The halfga mile race reached fie laps around the oval. If you can imagine atn the time there are 10,015,00 10000 15. As a race major taylor later said there was so much smoke that one of the writers look like he couldve been his h brother. They were that covered from growing from the arena. You can imagine trying to race but choking on smoke trying to get through allll the grant so e first match was a half mile sprint, 5 miles around the oval. Against eddie and he took his place and they walked him up to the starting line and 10000 or 15000 people watching as the occurrence was happening of ani black man against white research. To put this in perspective this is december of 1896, six month earlier was a decision of the Supreme Court, and that case, the Supreme Court decided by 721 ruling the separate but equal was for accommodation. That was not fair to blacks but at the time a white dominated ruling class wanted to come up with a system that would institute segregation and that ruling basically with all the jim crow regulations that continued on. Six month. After that heres major taylor, he is 18 years old into his mindd his first race al the pressure in the world is on his shoulders, not just for his personal glory but to hold up the standard for his race. He felt if he could succeed he would disproves the series of the time. Thats what he wants to do in the race. They released and they went racing around one, two and so on anin incredibly the crowded shouting and he thought he won the race and victory in the South Brooklyn club which trained him said theres onere more lap to go. Eddie cannonball ceases opening starts ahead and major taylor hears his teammates and realizes theres one more lap to go so he shoots out himself like a cannibal and incredibly wins the sprint in the first professional race for the incredible crowd he becomes a champion sprinter. That is an extraordinary accompaniment and thats just the preliminary, next is a 60 race. Suddenly before the pattern in your city, major taylor is a talk of the city. Who is this young man, how did he beat the best white sprinters in the world in the 60 race that everyone came to see. There are newspaper writers from around the world this is the day before radio and television they got the word within the newspapers and there was a newspaper war going on and they were covering the race in their writing about major taylor, partial washer reader taylor who is a young man r and how was he able to do what hes doing in the 60 race is about to start. As major taylor get selfdestructive race he looks up and sees a man eddie, he is not going to participate because hes at the center and he was not going to risk his health and the six day race but major taylor had no choice. To get in the race he had to promise he would race all 60s initially promoters that ran baseball teams that were not nearly operable as bicycle racing they thought they would not allow him because of his skin color. F eventually he was able to say i race and a lot of people want to see me in the promoter said shining the shoes of a white dgentleman on fifth avenue and e said basically no, i should be on the race track competing against best white racers in the world. Promoters realized this was a way to track people, black first white and thats how this race was promoted. The best racers in the world had come in major taylor started to go around the lap and they would have bands and anthems of various countries. For major taylor they did not have the National Anthem of the united states. Instead they had the unofficial of the confederacy. He paid no mind, the National Anthem of the other was played and they all lined up and for 60s incredibly they went around and around. You take a break here, break there in his manager would say you have one hour rest but it was only 15 minutes. They were pushing them so hard they wanted him to do well and at one point he became height of hallucinations and he said theres a man running after me with a knife in his hand. It was inhumane externally difficult, incredibly after six days many writers dropped out and major taylor survived the race all 60s about 1700 miles and became anyplace. No one expected him to come anywhere near much is given to well as a place. The combination of winning and surviving made major taylor an international figure. He was the talk of the city and cycling was the most popular sport in the country at the time. You look its pages from the time you see story after story after cycling in many of the stories. As he started racing more a lot of the white racers did not want to face him. They knew how good he can be in becoming better and better as he raced against best competition. He would start to be Crooked Church by others. This is a team that immigrated busting cycling team. Some people believe this is the first integrated teams in the country on a professional basis. This is one year after the race and you could see he is still a small man bubble coming the other guys are on thiss team. He was not initially expected to do so well. He had an extraordinaryry capability with an incredibly smart writer and they thought he was good enough to come join. Two of the people, the butler brothers which will come up later and brace major taylor and three of the four were immigrants and it was very Interesting Team in 1897 they come in years that was before in major league baseball. He was the First American in the subtitle of this book because he broke the barriers well before jack johnson was a heavyweight boxing tribune and 1908. Long before Jackie Robinson of the major league in 1947. I feel confident if they were here they with a major taylor paved the way. Jack johnson who won it in 19 await in many think of the earliest black sport heroes he initially was a c cyclist. He did participate in cycling contest and he was in a match and injured and taken toip the hospital andli he said i would participate in a less dangerous sport so he became a boxer. It shows you how dangerous cycling was. 11 other competitors were killed on the racetrack in oxbow ny as we go along. It wasac dangerous work the sped could be 40 miles an hour or more. This is a picture of him as a white racers tried to get him to not participate in they would say youre not allowed for jim crow all b reasons. There were countless Death Threats against major taylor and they realized he was their main competition. He adopted scientific methods as to how to use body to degree he would be great athlete. He later said if im ounce over my weight, i give up edge. He adopted science of the day, science of the da today at the time the theory is that they were inferior in body and mind and so forth. All of its own troops tha it one theory of the day that they had to disprove. There was Scientific Study that was done and the gentle man that did that study that i write about in the book included basically that has nothing to do with the persons makeup. What you eat, that determines who you are. There is no inherent deficiency. Its what you make of what you have. He made more than most of what he had said as he developed his body this is what he looked like an extraordinary confirmation from the 5foot seven scrawny boto seven scrawnyboy that he hs through incredibly disciplined training and in his autobiography this is the picture he put to show perfect form on a bike and perfect condition. There was nobody else in all of cycling is as dedicated to the training. He advised that sin against alcohol and tobacco. He was into protein and consumed vast quantities of eggs and was disciplined in what he ate and as i mentioned it was promoted and they would take advantage of this black versus white major taylor versus mcduffie in the race in cambridge massachusetts and you can see 1,500 at the maximum amount of david hughes pacers so a bicyclist would get ahead and go behind that group and youre getting the racing group and can go faster. They would have two or three seats on a bicycle loaded up with engines, incredibly noisy and then you ride behind act to go fasterch and faster and in tt case you could reach speeds of 40 Miles Per Hour which was according to the newspapers at the time when the story said was the fastest in such a contraption so this is what people came out to see. They would see these machines and again in the days before auto racingbi this was the biggt attraction, hundreds of thousands of people. Mcduffie was a pioneer and set a world record of speed going behind a motorized pacing machine so major taylor and his sponsors knew to get the world record he had to go faster and that relied o rely on the best f machine. Give me just one second. So, to do that, they came here to chicago. There were several in chicago. There was the track, the garfield track which you could compete. The manager helped engineer a fast pacing machine and decided he would write it himself and some air in chicago they made six of them and one to try to beat the world record and they were not successful. They went to another here in chicago he tried again on the concrete track into the major taylor set the speed in 1899 after the race occurred so at that point once again he could be declared the title of the worlds fastest man right here in m chicago. That was in about july 1899 and here is the story from that time. Co. If you can read it. This is a story here in chicago. Breaking the record in chicago to participate in the World Championships which as they would have it is just north of the border in canada held at montreal. He was hailed as a hero and most people knew he broke the record so there were many stories about him as thehe largest crowd gathered in montreal in 1899 to see the cycling match featured either expected to be one of the star attractions from around the world. So as it got under way the first he thought he won and he was the World Championship. There were people saying that isnt true. Everyone stood up in th and thed nonetheless major taylor came in second. There was another yet to come and he faced his old teammate and others in the neck brace he was victorious and dependable champion in 1899 and i refer to him in the subtitle americas first black sports hero. It shows how he felt about being an american and great pride in his country heis knew there wera lot of people there who wanted to deny him the proper place and there were friends who helped tm get there in the first place, so he put good people and andthe people, bad people, but the reality was what the platthat played for hit was an emotional moment. There were hundreds because International Press gathered in montreal so major taylor at that point was quoted by a love of promoters to send her cycling of the world and he said i dont know if i dont have to race on sundays for the religious reasons. So, for two years a lot of back and forth and voters couldnt get up to break that someday then. Finally they gave in and said nkay theres no one else we want more to race venue. We will give you the ban on sundays, just come and race so he got a 10,000dollar contrast to theo co. Contract to if you got married to a woman named daisy on the left with major taylor was in the middle and that is their daughter who was later born when they went to australia and had a Great Fortune to meet sidney taber 96yearsold. She had seen her father raised in paris and thought that was an extraordinary moment so all those years ago to talk to send the pooc which i use in the boo. On the cover stories around the world he was one of the most chronicled africanamerican men or individuals at this time. He was widely talked about a. Given his great skills he raced against the best racer in france in 1901 and this is major Taylor Racing against and this was the new era of sports photojournalism when it regarded most there was a new area in photography and he became widely photographed by some of the best photographers in all of france in 1901 and here he drew one of the biggest crowds and a matching Service History in the first race with major taylor was defeated. This was the largest such race that had been held. He beat him to declare the worlds fastest man quite extraordinary. He gave races over europe and it was quite extraordinary. I want to leave time dont haver questions and jump ahead about two thirds or more. He goes to australia twice but he was welcomed their and did extraordinarily well. He raced his last professional race in 1910 and returned to. They were taking over. He had a young child so he decided he wanted to retire and go to massachusetts where he had a home and become a tight and basically invested thousands of dollars in the company to the tire business and unfortunately, it didnt go so well for a lot of reasons that he might have been cheated out of his investment in the company. And major taylor tried other ventures. The era began to pass. But he didnt think that his story should be forgotten. He actually won the World Championship in world war i that took place and there was a great coming together from world war i in the country. It wouldve served in world war i though a lot of them were not allowedn to go into combat. In 1915, the movie birth of a nation was released which then led to the pacific plucks clan so he had done so much in his life to try to show that the times should be disproven, and yet there is a revival around the worst criticism tha racism s experienced when he was younger. In the 1920s he decides he wants to write his story because the nation needed to be reminded especially young people too younger to remember, this coulde done if you apply yourself. It isnt just for his own personal glory. He wanted to be known. So he sat down in his house and started writing his autobiography the fastest bicycle or in the world. As he wrote this in 1920s, it was again on the rise. Sadly, in 1923, the leader of the new england kkk had a huge speech at the apollo as it was called the great venue in massachusetts, and this drew 1900 people in that auditorium and another 500 in the overflow. So you can only imagine him sitting there writing his aut