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The photograph had a haunting
quality, and the fact that it was published in
black and white only emphasized the night and day
difference between Wendell Scott and the rest of
the NASCAR racers who were competing that summer
weekend at Michigan International Speedway.
At the time, probably in the early 1970s, I was
a sportswriter for The Grand Rapids (Michigan) Press
and photographer Jim Starkey and I had traveled to
Michigan International Speedway to cover NASCAR qualifying.
As it turned out, there was one more car than there
were available garage stalls, so one team had to
work on its car out of doors. That team was driver
Wendell Scott, the circuit's only African-American
racer, and Jim Starkey's photograph of Scott leaning
against his car, parked outdoors at the end of the
huge garage building, provided visual evidence that
all were not equal beneath the NASCAR umbrella; in
fact, it underscored the fact that perhaps not all
racers were even allowed under that umbrella.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Brian Donovan's
book details Wendell Scott's struggle to become the
Jackie Robinson of major league automobile racing.
But while Robinson was hand-picked by his team and
supported by the league, Scott often was turned away
from racetracks and roughed up by fellow competitors
when he finally did get to race.
Yes, times were different in the 1960s when Scott
was at his prime. Racial tensions marked the decade.
NASCAR's roots remained anchored in the South even
as the racing circuit was growing a national audience.
It had been decades since other national sports
had become integrated, but stock car racing officials
still worried about the reaction should Scott actually
win a race and get to kiss the white-skinned trophy
girl.
Actually, Scott did win a race, though NASCAR didn't
recognize that fact until much later. Indeed, when
Scott took the lead late in that race at Jacksonville,
Florida, the scoreboard suddenly went blank and the
checkered flag flew not over Scott's car but that
of another racer. Officials eventually admitted that
Scott had, indeed, won the race.
At least the Jacksonville track had let Scott race.
For years, even after he had become a NASCAR regular--four
times finishing among the top 10 in the season point
standings--he was not allowed to compete at Darlington.
Like all heroes, Scott had his flaws, and Donovan
doesn't hide them. Like so many stock car racing
pioneers, Scott honed his driving skills running
moonshine. He gambled. His children included one
born to a woman other than his wife. Scott was a
gifted mechanic and might have had a comfortable
life had he simply worked on other people's cars
at his repair shop in Danville, Virginia. But like
so many others, he was driven to race, even if it
meant physical and financial strain.
Ironically, Donovan writes that Scott became not
only the best-known person in town, but the most
admired and "perhaps the city's most famous
resident since Robert E. Lee."
Donovan notes that unlike the Hollywood version
of Scott's life, the 1977 movie Greased Lightning,
there was no happy ending to Scott's career or his
life. But, he writes, "the first black person
that many white southerners came to admire was the
driver who'd integrated their beloved sport of stock
car racing."
[For more on African-American racers, only
this time pioneering in Indy cars, see our review
of For
Gold & Glory: Charlie Wiggins and the African-American
Racing Car Circuit.]
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