friendship, brotherhood and good times.
Posted by Neven.
I was browsing through our blog and I realized that a lot of my streetwear related posts are about Rebel 8. Which is funny, I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like Rebel 8, but it’s far from my favorite streetwear brand. Matter of fact I don’t own one single Rebel 8 garment. Either way, one half of the Rebel 8 empire, Mike Giant, got a new tattoo. The tattoo and the story behind is earth shattering, so here goes:
The tattoo was done by Juan Puente from Blackheart Tattoo:
And here is the story behind it:
Marshall “Major” Taylor was born in 1878 to parents from Louisville, Kentucky. He grew up in Indianapolis where his father worked as a coachman for a wealthy family. At a young age, his father’s employer gave him a bicycle. By age 13, Marshall was attracting crowds outside a local bike shop that hired him to perform tricks on his fixed gear bicycle while wearing a soldier’s uniform, thus earning him the nickname “Major” Taylor.
He began racing on tracks in Indiana at 18 years old. But as soon as he started winning and gained a reputation as “The Black Cyclone”, he was banned by the cycling organization that controlled the events. At that time, Indiana was still segregated, so they just pushed him out.
So to pursue racing he moved north, to Middletown, Connecticut. At that time, Middleton was a renowned bicycle town with half a dozen factories and thirty bike shops. Taylor took a job as a bicycle mechanic with the Worchester Cycle Manufacturing Company, owned by “Birdie” Munger who became a lifelong friend and mentor.
In 1896, Taylor won his first east coast race riding for Munger’s team, starting in last place. Then he lapped the entire field in his first professional half-mile race at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which was originally a 10,000-seat velodrome.
Before the invention of the motorcycle in 1905, track racers like Major Taylor were the fastest men on the planet. At the time, the only sporting event more popular than track cycling was baseball. It was known as the “Jazz Age Sport”. It was common for larger velodromes to attract 17,000 spectators in a single night, and the most popular “6-Day” races could attract up to 70,000 spectators.
“Movie stars, politicians, and gangsters mixed with everyday sports fans to create an atmosphere not found in any other sport. Comics, jugglers, singers and dancers would entertain late night spectators as the riders continued their racing. After midnight, bands from nearby nightclubs would perform at trackside. ”
As well, top professional cyclists earned 2-3 times as much as other sports. And for much of his racing career, Major Taylor was the highest paid athlete of ANY sport. He was also the second African-American athlete to achieve the level of world champion, after boxer George Dixon.
And although he was highly revered in Europe, particularly France, in southern America he was despised and not allowed to compete. For much of his career, the League of American Wheelmen, the main governing body over the sport of cycling, would not allow blacks to join. On many occasions while racing here in America, he would be “boxed-in” by his white opponents, thus preventing him from sprinting past them at the finish. Any good sprinter will tell you that you want to draft off your opponent until just the right moment, then sprint past him to win. Because Taylor would get boxed-in, his simple solution was to get in front as soon as possible and stay there, making his victories all the more demoralizing to his opponents. In one particular case, Taylor was tackled on the track by another rider who then choked him unconscious. Understandably, by 1910, at age 32, he had retired from professional cycling, citing that he was tired of the racism.
By 1932, he had lost all his money to bad investments, persistent illness, and the stock market crash of 1929. He died that year at age 53, broke and alone, buried in an unmarked grave.
In 1948, a group of former professional cyclists got together with the Schwinn Bicycle Company to have Taylor’s remains moved to its present location at the Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Glenwood, Illinois.
Marshall Taylor was a great athlete, no question, but I believe his greatest trait was his humble, non-violent demeanor. He was the consummate sportsman, never fighting back when an opponent attacked him. I think it fitting that this quote is most associated with the name Major Taylor – “Life is too short for any man to hold bitterness in his heart.”
To learn more about this great American, read his autobiography entitled “The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World”.
NP x From Monument To Masses - On Little Known Frequencies
