|
Reading and reviewing Hard
Driving, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter
Brian Donovan's biography of Wendell Scott, the first
African-American -- and to this day the only African-American
to compete full-time in NASCAR Grand National/Winston/Nextel/Sprint
Cup competition -- inspired me to take another book
off my "to review" shelf. This one also
is about an African-American racer, Charlie Wiggins,
the star of the Gold & Glory Sweepstakes and
the Indy-type racing series that grew out of that
event, a race and a series for those who were not
allowed to compete in events sanctioned by the American
Automobile Association, events that included the
Indianapolis 500.
Like Hard Driving, For Gold & Glory focuses
on one person, his family and his friends in racing,
but at the same time Gould, like Donovan, provides
context by detailing the social realities of an era.
While it may be no surprise that Wendell Scott faced
discrimination in the South, the degree of outright
hostility to Wiggins and other African-Americans
in Indiana in the 1920s and 1930s is shocking. Consider,
for example, that in the mid-1920s, more than one-third
of white Protestant males in Indiana claimed membership
in the Ku Klux Klan.
"The AAA steadfastly refused to allow an African
American to compete for racing's top prizes,"
Gould writes. "…the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway, like many social, business, and civic organizations
in Indianapolis at the time, was segregated."
"The best thing that a colored man could expect
to do at the Speedway at that time would be to work
as a janitor or to work as the man who sold the soft
drinks and hot dogs," Gould quotes historian
Boniface Hardin.
In addition to being a brilliant driver, Charlie
Wiggins was a gifted mechanic who eventually would
work for Indy 500 teams, though not as an official
mechanic and team member but by being hired as a
janitor, cleaning the team's garage by day and then
staying after AAA officials left to work on the cars
in secret behind closed doors.
"These men had a dream that someday there would
be an opportunity for black folks to drive in the
Indy 500," Hardin says. Someday, they hoped,
"there would be an opportunity to show that
they belonged. Someday there would be a change."
Gould, an Emmy-winning writer and television producer
who wrote For Gold & Glory as a result of his
research for special for the Public Broadcasting
System, notes that it was not until 1973 that one
of Wiggins' racing protégés, Sumner
"Red" Oliver, finally broke Indy's color
barrier when he was hired as an official mechanic
by crew chief George Bignotti and the Patrick Racing
Team.
Even without racing, Wiggins' life is an amazing
story. His parents died when he was young, so he
raised his younger brothers, then at age 17 married
a 22-year-old model and together they left the deplorable
conditions of harsh discrimination in Evansville
to seek a better life in Indianapolis. Life was better,
Wiggins became a successful mechanic and then a garage
owner with a following of aspiring youngsters, among
them a white teenager Wiggins knew only as Johnny
-- but whom everyone eventually know by his full
name, John Dillinger.
Wiggins became the nucleus of Indianapolis budding
African-American racing community. The Gold &
Glory Sweepstakes was run for 12 years; Wiggins won
four times and was among the top-10 finishers for
10 years in a row.
But there also was tragedy in the Wiggins' life,
including the death in infancy of several sons. Then,
after years of overcoming adversity, of hoping to
prove he was qualified to race against people of
all races, much like Wendell Scott, Wiggins' racing
career ended with a crash that took nearly took his
life, and did take a leg and one eye.
"My grandfather had always dreamed of creating
a league that would eventually allow African Americans
to compete at the Indianapolis 500," said Paul
Bateman, whose grandfather was the founder of the
Gold & Glory circuit.
But like so many enterprises, the circuit didn't
survive the economic turmoil of the 1930s, and then
Wiggins and another of its stars were hurt.
"Who knows…," Bateman continued.
"We might have had a situation like baseball's
Negro Leagues. Black athletes might have been able
to enter the sport en mass and had a tremendous impact
on auto racing. They were close. They were just ten
years too early. They just missed their time."
Thanks to Todd Gould, we haven't missed Charlie
Wiggins' story. Decades later, his time has come
again.
|