Often when we think of bicycle racing we think of the Tour de France, the multiple stage race held each year with teams of elite riders from around the world making their way on a grueling course through France and surrounding countries, ending with the winner crossing the finish line on the Champs Elysee in Paris. But years before the first ever Tour de France was held in 1903, bicycle racing gripped the American sports fan with a fervor that rivaled the one they held for another favorite sport, baseball.

In the 1880s cycling as recreation had come into its own. Bicycle prices had dropped enough so that the average person could afford one, and more importantly, innovations made the vehicle safer and more comfortable to ride. Social clubs for enthusiasts, including black clubs, could be found across the United States. Pedaling through a park or down a shady tree-lined street on a summer afternoon was one thing, but racing in the last decades of the nineteenth century was something entirely different, a sport fraught with danger. Past the high speeds and crippling crashes, was a test of endurance and skill, both physical and mental.

Into this world came Marshall Taylor, who would not only dominate bicycle racing, but become one of the first African Americans, if not the first, to win a world championship in a major sport. By 1900 tens of thousands of avid fans would fill stadiums in the United States and Europe to watch “The Black Cyclone” streak past his competitors.

Born in 1879, Marshall Taylor was the son of a coachman who worked for a rich white Indianapolis family, the Southards. As luck would have it, young Marshall was invited to live with the Southards in their mansion when he became friends with their son Daniel. When the family moved, they gave Marshall a bicycle as a parting gift. The youth got a job in a bicycle shop and was soon employed outside the store, showing off tricks that he had taught himself. The 0wner had Marshall dress in a military uniform for added effect.

Marshall became “Major” Taylor and won his first race at age 13 in Indianapolis when his employer entered him into a Memorial Day 10-mile handicap race. But it was former racer and bicycle manufacturer Louis “Birdie” Munger who got Taylor into the sport in earnest. Munger hired Taylor to work in his factory as an assistant and gave time to train. He also coached him. “I’m going to make him the fastest bicycle rider in the world,” was the manufacturer’s claim and Taylor, did win against other black riders in the Midwest, but was banned from the tracks in Indiana, even as an amateur.

Munger opened a factory in Worcester, Massachusetts, and took his protégé with him. “I was [there] only a very short time before I realized that there was no such race prejudice existing among the bicycle riders there as I had experienced in Indianapolis,” Taylor wrote in his 1929 autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World.

By winter of 1896 the 18-year-old Taylor was racing in Madison Square Garden, wowing the crowd in a half-mile handicap race. They were certainly astonished to see a black man on the short, sharply banked track called a velodrome—no African American had every competed in a race professionally. But what surprised the fans even more was that Taylor beat the top American sprint champion, Eddie “Cannon” Bald, in the opening “warm up” sprints, winning $200. With hundreds of velodromes nationwide and more than six hundred racers in the professional circuit, Taylor had scores of chances to compete, and did, winning one competition after another.Often he was looked upon as a novelty, until spectators and fellow cyclists got a taste of Taylor’s incredible speed—a year before he appeared at Madison Square Garden—then located on 26th Street and Madison Avenue—he had shaved two-fifths of a second off the world record.

His training regimen was a rigorous, year-round thing that gave him the speed and reflexes that even his greatest rivals had to respect, however grudgingly. But competing against white cyclists still often came at a price: more than a few loathed the idea of someone they considered inferior winning accolades and award money. Taylor was targeted with taunts, and worse, at times boxed in by other riders or crowded off the track‑extremely dangerous maneuvers at high speeds. At one point he had to fight off more than 20 other riders with a two-by-four. But racism came in the less violent but equally damaging form of Southern promoters, who blocked his entry into key races in the South, denying him the chance to become a national champion.

Taylor did not lose his nerve, or his popularity. In 1898 he held several world records. The next year he traveled to Montreal to win the world championship, the first ever by a black American in any sport. He was just 20 years old. That year he would win 22 out of 29 races and knock the record for the mile down to 1:19‑a speed of 45 miles per hour. When French promoters came calling—French cycling fans were eager to see this sensation from America—Taylor first balked, refusing to sign any contract—even one that he was offered for $15,000‑that would require him to race on Sunday. He was a steadfast member of the John Street Baptist Church in Worcester, had kept strong ties to church, and family—sending money from his winnings home to his parents, and taking care of a sister who had tuberculosis. And his community loved him, bicycle clubs and civic societies hosting him at every turn.

Taylor finally signed a European contract in 1901, after French promoters agreed to his No-Sundays clause, and was hailed in France, as le negre volant, the Flying Negro, and went on to beat every European competitor, including reigning champion French Edmond Jacquelin. In 1902, he made $35,000, an enormous sum for any athlete.

Major Taylor’s story faded with the waning interest in bicycling racing, eclipsed by sports such as baseball and boxing. The bicycle was forced to share the road during the new era of the automobile. But Taylor is remembered by enthusiasts across the country who have named their clubs after the early cycling champion, and by the town of Worcester in the form of a sculpture of Taylor at the city’s public library, dedicated in 2008 and an annual event called the George Street Bike Challenge‑participants enter to see how fast they can pedal up a short, steep hill on which Taylor trained.

For more information about Major Taylor we recommend these sources. Taylor’s autobiography has been long out-of-print and used copies are expensive, so first check your nearest research library.

Andrew Richie, Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Marshall W. Taylor, Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World: The Story of a Colored Boy’s Indomitable Courage and Success Against Great Odds, Ayer Co. Pub, 1928.