Marshall W. 'Major' Taylor

In 1896, Marshall “Major” Taylor finished the Six Day Bicycle Race in Madison Square Garden, having completed a record 1,732 miles on the 0.1-mile track. Survival was no small feat. Half the field dropped out because of crashes, exhaustion, or “queer in the head” hallucinations. The New York Times correspondent described Taylor as the “wonder” of the event, in part because of his age and inexperience. He was only 18, and it was his first professional race. He was also the lone African American in the otherwise all-white field.

Taylor’s Garden debut launched an unrivaled career. He became sprint world champion in 1899 and a true international superstar when he traveled to European capitals and later to Australia, winning everything and everywhere. He won in front of tens of thousands at the Parc des Princes in Paris and the Sydney Cricket Ground, two of the world’s most iconic sporting venues. Taylor did it all in the face of bigotry and hostility in a then big-time sport where he feared for his life. His attempt to train and race in the American South drew death threats and a rider boycott. Promoters in Louisville, Kentucky, scrambling for a substitute to satisfy the paid gate, had him race a horse.

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 a world track record 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."

In March 1932, Taylor suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized in the Cook County Hospital's charity ward, where he died on June 21, 1932, at age 53.

His estranged wife Daisy and daughter Sydney, did not immediately learn of his death and no one claimed his remains. He was initially buried at Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Thornton Township, Cook County, Illinois in an unmarked pauper's grave.

In 1948, a group of former professional bicycle racers used funds donated by Frank W. Schwinn, owner of the Schwinn Bicycle Company at that time, to organize the exhumation and reburial of Taylor's remains in a more prominent location at the cemetery.

The plaque at the grave reads: "Dedicated to the memory of Marshall W. 'Major' Taylor, 1878–1932. World's champion bicycle racer who came up the hard way without hatred in his heart, an honest, courageous and god-fearing, clean-living, gentlemanly athlete. A credit to the race who always gave out his best. Gone but not forgotten."

In 1989, Taylor was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame. In 1996, he received a USA Cycling lifetime achievement award.

outsideonline (article by Todd Balf); majortaylorassociation.org; Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Massachusetts)