Post by Srrh on May 22, 2003 8:20:10 GMT -5
It doesn't take much of a memory to name every black race car driver to ever turn a lap in the Indianapolis 500.
Willy T. Ribbs and George Mack.
That's it.
But there were 12 years, ending in 1936, when daring black drivers led by a first-class racer named Charlie Wiggins, "The Negro Speed King," forged their own legends in a sport as dangerous as it was exciting.
"He was kind of like the Michael Jordan of that circuit," said Todd Gould, a 10-time Emmy Award-winning producer from Washington, Ind. "He was such a major draw."
Wiggins and the African-American Racing Car Circuit are the subjects of Gould's latest project, For Gold and Glory, which is both a book and PBS documentary airing May 19 at 9 p.m. on WFYI and at 10 p.m. on May 22 on WIPB-TV. Acclaimed actor Ossie Davis narrates the documentary, said Lloyd Wright, president of PBS station WFYI in Indianapolis.
Gould, a 1988 Indiana University graduate, was a senior producer for WFYI's show Around Indiana when a phone call from a man whose grandfather had been a pit crew member put him on this story.
"It started out as a 6- to 7-minute feature piece," Gould said. "Then I began to discover that this was clearly much, much more."
He eventually spent 8 sometimes frustrating years on the project.
A previous work, Pioneers of the Hardwood: Indiana and the Birth of Professional Basketball, illustrates why.
"You've got 800 million sources, right?" he said of doing the basketball book. "When you come to this, there's virtually nothing there. You're not going to find this at the museums. You're not going to find this at the libraries."
What Gould did find were a few of Wiggins's relatives - among them his feisty wife, Roberta - a few eyewitnesses to the races and even three surviving drivers. He also found clippings from the morgues of black newspapers.
While virtually ignored by the white press, the circuit generated a wealth of stories about the drivers and the circuit's premier event, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, in newspapers like The Indianapolis Recorder.
With the Indianapolis 500 closed to black drivers by its sanctioning body, the AAA, black fans turned the annual 100-mile Gold and Glory fairgrounds race into a colossal party attracting 12,000 spectators.
"It was a big, big deal," Gould said. "They'd have an air show, a ball. Huge names from the jazz world. It was a true day of celebration for African-Americans. For the first time, this was claiming an identity."
Gould said the cars on the circuit included junk heaps and top-of-the-line roadsters that would have been a threat to win the Indy 500. Racer Bobby Wallace, for example, was a good friend of the Chevrolet brothers, who used the light-skinned racer as a test driver.
"As a result, Bobby got a good ride out of it," said Gould, whose book proves he is as skilled with a word-processor as he is with a camera.
There were other flamboyant and popular drivers on the circuit, like William (Wild Bill) Jeffries, a cigar-chomping Chicago racketeer and Malcom Hannon, an Indianapolis chauffeur who must have given his passengers an occasional thrill.
Still, Wiggins - born in Evansville - was the undisputed star. While he handled himself with grace and dignity, he wasn't afraid to speak his mind and became a target of racists at a time when the KKK was embedded in Indiana's power structure.
Wiggins was also an outspoken critic of the AAA, the sanctioning body keeping black drivers out of the Indy 500.
"We have the desire and skill to compete with the nation's best," Wiggins told a reporter for the Chicago Whip. "The AAA folks just don't want to see that."
But above all, Wiggins was a fearless racer, one whom many white drivers - including Speedway legends Bill Cummings, Howdy Wilcox, Wilbur Shaw and eventual chief steward Harry MacQuinn - liked and admired.
"All of these guys were big, big fans of Charlie Wiggins," Gould said.
The circuit's strength is evidenced by the fact it survived the KKK and the worst years of the Great Depression, a time when many other racing circuits were folding.
What the African-American Racing Car Circuit couldn't survive was the loss of its top star, Gould said. Caught up in a 13-car crash in 1936's Gold and Glory race, Wiggins lost a leg and an eye. Already teetering, the circuit collapsed when the aforementioned Wallace was seriously injured in a crash just two weeks later.
Today, the circuit has been mostly lost to history, but Gould hopes For Gold and Glory - the book and the documentary - will change that.
This is not a tale of failure, he emphasized.
"The important thing to see in this is ... through all of this time of segregation and great racial separation, there was a group of guys, white and black, who came together to make something special," Gould said.
I'v seen the documentary. It's amazing.
I have a new hero !!!!
Willy T. Ribbs and George Mack.
That's it.
But there were 12 years, ending in 1936, when daring black drivers led by a first-class racer named Charlie Wiggins, "The Negro Speed King," forged their own legends in a sport as dangerous as it was exciting.
"He was kind of like the Michael Jordan of that circuit," said Todd Gould, a 10-time Emmy Award-winning producer from Washington, Ind. "He was such a major draw."
Wiggins and the African-American Racing Car Circuit are the subjects of Gould's latest project, For Gold and Glory, which is both a book and PBS documentary airing May 19 at 9 p.m. on WFYI and at 10 p.m. on May 22 on WIPB-TV. Acclaimed actor Ossie Davis narrates the documentary, said Lloyd Wright, president of PBS station WFYI in Indianapolis.
Gould, a 1988 Indiana University graduate, was a senior producer for WFYI's show Around Indiana when a phone call from a man whose grandfather had been a pit crew member put him on this story.
"It started out as a 6- to 7-minute feature piece," Gould said. "Then I began to discover that this was clearly much, much more."
He eventually spent 8 sometimes frustrating years on the project.
A previous work, Pioneers of the Hardwood: Indiana and the Birth of Professional Basketball, illustrates why.
"You've got 800 million sources, right?" he said of doing the basketball book. "When you come to this, there's virtually nothing there. You're not going to find this at the museums. You're not going to find this at the libraries."
What Gould did find were a few of Wiggins's relatives - among them his feisty wife, Roberta - a few eyewitnesses to the races and even three surviving drivers. He also found clippings from the morgues of black newspapers.
While virtually ignored by the white press, the circuit generated a wealth of stories about the drivers and the circuit's premier event, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, in newspapers like The Indianapolis Recorder.
With the Indianapolis 500 closed to black drivers by its sanctioning body, the AAA, black fans turned the annual 100-mile Gold and Glory fairgrounds race into a colossal party attracting 12,000 spectators.
"It was a big, big deal," Gould said. "They'd have an air show, a ball. Huge names from the jazz world. It was a true day of celebration for African-Americans. For the first time, this was claiming an identity."
Gould said the cars on the circuit included junk heaps and top-of-the-line roadsters that would have been a threat to win the Indy 500. Racer Bobby Wallace, for example, was a good friend of the Chevrolet brothers, who used the light-skinned racer as a test driver.
"As a result, Bobby got a good ride out of it," said Gould, whose book proves he is as skilled with a word-processor as he is with a camera.
There were other flamboyant and popular drivers on the circuit, like William (Wild Bill) Jeffries, a cigar-chomping Chicago racketeer and Malcom Hannon, an Indianapolis chauffeur who must have given his passengers an occasional thrill.
Still, Wiggins - born in Evansville - was the undisputed star. While he handled himself with grace and dignity, he wasn't afraid to speak his mind and became a target of racists at a time when the KKK was embedded in Indiana's power structure.
Wiggins was also an outspoken critic of the AAA, the sanctioning body keeping black drivers out of the Indy 500.
"We have the desire and skill to compete with the nation's best," Wiggins told a reporter for the Chicago Whip. "The AAA folks just don't want to see that."
But above all, Wiggins was a fearless racer, one whom many white drivers - including Speedway legends Bill Cummings, Howdy Wilcox, Wilbur Shaw and eventual chief steward Harry MacQuinn - liked and admired.
"All of these guys were big, big fans of Charlie Wiggins," Gould said.
The circuit's strength is evidenced by the fact it survived the KKK and the worst years of the Great Depression, a time when many other racing circuits were folding.
What the African-American Racing Car Circuit couldn't survive was the loss of its top star, Gould said. Caught up in a 13-car crash in 1936's Gold and Glory race, Wiggins lost a leg and an eye. Already teetering, the circuit collapsed when the aforementioned Wallace was seriously injured in a crash just two weeks later.
Today, the circuit has been mostly lost to history, but Gould hopes For Gold and Glory - the book and the documentary - will change that.
This is not a tale of failure, he emphasized.
"The important thing to see in this is ... through all of this time of segregation and great racial separation, there was a group of guys, white and black, who came together to make something special," Gould said.
I'v seen the documentary. It's amazing.
I have a new hero !!!!
Don't Die Before You Live...
