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Gen. Dallas C. Brown Jr. didn’t realize how much this city cared for
his grandfather until he tried to book a hotel room here recently.
Surprised that the hotel had no vacancies, Brown searched the internet
to see where exactly it was located.
“It brought tears to my eyes,” Brown said.
The Hilton Garden Inn is located at 35 Major Taylor Boulevard.
“I felt guilty because I’d done nothing to enhance his legacy,” Brown said. “But this city has done do much.”
Worcester
and the world turned out by the hundreds this afternoon at the Public
Library for the unveiling of a granite and bronze monument honoring
Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor, a black man of faith and conviction who
overcame racism and prejudice to become a world champion cyclist in
1899.
The large monument at 3 Salem Square includes a bronze
likeness of Taylor standing in front of his single-speed bicycle at an
Australian velodrome on the front, and the cyclist in competition with
two other riders on the back.
“He’s standing in front of his
bike because I wanted to honor Major Taylor the man, not just the
cyclist,” said sculptor Antonio Tobias Mendez, whose statue is the
first to honor a cyclist in the United States and the first in the city
dedicated to a minority.
“He walked a tightrope as a black man
in a white man’s world,” said Lynne Tolman, a founding member of the
Major Taylor Association and the person most responsible for the
decade-long effort to honor the athlete known as the “Worcester
Whilwind.”
When the ropes were untied and the white and blue
parachute was pulled off the monument, an overflow crowd that stretched
into the library’s parking lot applauded loudly. Invited guests
included three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and three-time
Olympic medalist Edwin Moses, as well as city and state officials and
members of the cycling community from as far away as Oregon, Minnesota,
Tennessee and Washington.
Moses, the honorary national chairman
of the Major Taylor Association, said Taylor’s name deserves to be
mentioned in the same breath as others who have broken racial barriers,
such as Arthur Ashe, Tommy Smith, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron, Jack
Johnson, Jessie Owens and Jackie Robinson.
“Today, Marshall
‘Major’ Taylor takes his place at the top of that list,” said Moses,
who quoted Edmund Burke, who said “All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Taylor found few
good men in his native Indianapolis when he moved to Worcester in 1895
at the age of 17. Four years later, he won the mile championship in
Montreal to become the second black world champion, following boxer
George Dixon.
“Major Taylor was a man of all-time in the world of sports,” Moses said.
LeMond reminded those in attendance that cycling was the biggest sport in the world at the turn of the century.
“And
it was a sport dominated by white men,” he said. “I know what it’s like
to be a target in a race, but Major Taylor was a target of
discrimination. … But he had courage and was able to endure in a sport
that was very competitive.”
Others in attendance included Nelson
“the Cheetah” Vails, a former New York City bike messenger who became
an Olympic silver medalist, and John Howard, an Olympic cyclist and
past winner of the Ironman Triathlon. They were joined by Bill
Humphreys, a member of the famous cycling “Raleigh Boys,” who toured
Europe in the 1970s, and Terry Longsjo, the wife of late Fitchburg
cyclist and figure skater Arthur Longsjo, who competed in both the
Winter and Summer Olympics in 1956.
Tolman said the “finish line
looked so distant” when the Major Taylor Association first came up with
the idea to honor Taylor with a statue 10 years ago. The group received
a big boost courtesy of $205,000 in state funds, which supplemented
hundreds of private donations.
Robert Nasdor, president of the
Major Taylor Association, said he often had doubts yesterday’s
unveiling would ever happen, but credited Tolman for never giving up.
“There
were some very difficult times when I just thought we should put a
plaque on George Street (one of the city’s steepest hills where Taylor
used to train) and call it day,” Nasdor said. “But Lynne wouldn’t hear
of it.”
“It’s been a long road — more of a test of endurance than speed,” Tolman said.