This is not the first Black History Month tribute paid to Marshall W. “Major” Taylor, the Black champion bicycle racer who had heads spinning at the turn of the 20th century, nor will it be the last. His record-breaking performances, accomplished in the face of extreme intimidation and aggressive racing from his competition fueled by the pervasive racism during that era, are an inspiration to athletes in general and people of color in particular. Ever since the late 1890’s when his career began, the story of how he became a world champion while maintaining an attitude of fairness and clean living has been timeless.
For a long time, the most obvious (but difficult-to-find) source for details of his life and career was his autobiography, “The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World,” published in 1929 and dedicated to his lifelong friend and mentor, Louis de Franklin "Birdie" Munger. It was not until almost 60 years later, in 1988, that cycling historian Andrew Ritchie wrote a new biography, "Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer." Ritchie’s book drew on Taylor’s autobiography and was filled out with interviews with Major Taylor’s daughter, Sydney Taylor Brown, and newspaper clippings that Taylor had kept in scrapbooks during his career. Ritchie was also able to access some of the original newspapers and cycling periodicals of Taylor’s day, although in the 1980s that was a difficult search. Since then, numerous other authors have begun to peel back more layers, still using Taylor’s autobiography as the central core of the story. With the advent of digital data searches, old periodicals have become more accessible. Although new information can be turned up, it is still tedious to sift through the available material. But the reward for tedious research is the ability to tie together these pieces of information to form a refined picture of Taylor’s early life.
One of the first roadblocks I encountered in trying to find information about Major Taylor's youth was that news of the Black community was scant. Racism was a common attitude with most white people throughout the United States, not just in the South. Most newspapers were owned and controlled by whites and their news was geared to white readers, as that was who was buying their papers. Occasionally there were positive stories concerning Black people, but for the most part what little coverage there was focused on their shortcomings. The societal position of blacks in all of America was that of a less privileged class, a further reason for the lack of news stories concerning them. There were, of course, a few Black-owned newspapers in the United States, and a few in Indianapolis, including The Freeman, that did justice to the accomplishments of Blacks. The Freeman is the only one from Indy that is easily accessible today. It was published from 1884 until 1927 and was devoted to Black culture and the news of the town. The Taylor family usually rated an incidental mention when something transpired in their life, including Major’s first bike race win when he was a child.
In the big world of national journalism, stories of exceptional accomplishments, regardless of race or ethnicity, were always good news. Over the period of his cycle racing career, as he became more and more visible to the public eye, Major Taylor was generally covered with much factual and complimentary reporting. His racing domination and record-breaking accomplishments, against totally white competition, drew headlines in the U.S. as well as France, Germany, and Australia. He was a genuine hero in the press. He acknowledged this in the foreword to his autobiography: “With the aid of the press, however, the strict application to the rules of training, and the help of God, I was able to overcome that bitter intensity of feeling to some extent, or sufficiently at least to accomplish my life’s greatest objective, namely ‘The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World.’”
Major Taylor’s Youth
The post-Civil War times were especially hard for Blacks, but in the midst of a world where racist opinions and attitudes were commonplace, there existed people who, in the words of Martin Luther King, judged people by the content of their character. There were two such people in particular who influenced Major’s life at a very young age. These people were the family of Albert Southard, and his cycling mentor, Birdie Munger.
In 1998 I wrote an article for The Wheelmen magazine about Stillman Whittaker, a prominent, record-breaking high-wheel bicycle racer in the late 1880s. Most of the information I used came from his grandson, Dana Whittaker Sr., who was in possession of a wonderful archive of periodicals, letters, news clippings, photographs, and other ephemera from Stillman’s racing career. The photos were wonderful glimpses into the life of a high-wheel bicycle racer. One in particular stood out. Dana had several cabinet card copies of this picture, along with two other views of slightly different poses of the same scene in a tintype format.
The photo was taken on April 24 or 25, 1886, in Clarksville, Mo., before a significant 50-mile high-wheel bicycle race. The four adults in the picture were identified on the back as R.T. Van Horne, Percy Stone, Stillman Whittaker and L.D. (Birdie) Munger. Also in the picture is an unidentified Black child in a wagon. At that time, Van Horne was the champion of Colorado. Percy Stone was the younger brother of the tragically fated Cola Stone, both among the best riders in St. Louis at the time. Whittaker was born and raised in New Bedford, Mass., and had won many road races in the Boston area before moving to St. Louis. Munger held the U.S. 24-hour record for miles ridden on a road course, 259 miles. These four young men were among the best bicycle racers in the entire U.S. at that time. They were all widely known and respected. Munger, besides his physical prowess on the bicycle, was well known as an eccentric character. He approached the sport with an attitude of fun and energy matched by few others. He was quite a character, to say the least. He had a very large personality.
When I first saw the photo, I was already aware, from Major’s autobiography, of the relationship between him and Birdie Munger. My immediate reaction was that the child in the wagon might very well be a young Major Taylor. It was really just a gut feeling. But I had reasons for this early opinion:
1) Munger was a continuing presence and profound influence all through Major Taylor’s career, influential to the extent that Taylor dedicated his autobiography to him. Seeing Major Taylor and Birdie Munger in the same picture is no surprise.
2) Major Taylor was born Nov. 26, 1878, and would have been about 7½ years old at the time of the photo. The child in the wagon looks to be about that age.
3) I see an undeniable facial resemblance between the child in the wagon and photos of the adult Major Taylor.
It was this photo that led me to a quest to learn more about Major Taylor’s childhood. As I have stated, this was a complicated task.
Major Taylor and the Southards
Until Taylor wrote his autobiography in 1928, there was nothing in the myriads of newspaper articles and cycling periodicals during his lifetime that mentioned his childhood association with the Southards, a wealthy white family who resided in Indianapolis, near his boyhood home. But since Taylor wrote about it in his autobiography, it has become a linchpin in the telling of his early development. Albert, the Southard father, was a prominent railroad executive in a city that was a major Midwestern railroad hub. Taylor wrote that his father, Gilbert, worked as a coachman for the Southard family. He recounted that the relationship brought him into a close friendship with the Southard’s young son Dan, leading to a time when he lived in the Southard household and was treated as one of the family. He wrote that he was provided with the same advantages of a white upper-class upbringing as was Dan. In his Major Taylor biography, Andrew Ritchie quoted Major’s daughter Sydney Taylor Brown as saying that he and Dan received home-schooling from a private tutor. Major wrote of this adventure with the Southards as a time of a cultural and educational advantage that would not have been accessible to him in his family's Black community.
Although there is no reason to doubt any of the basic features of the Taylor-Southard relationship, there is good reason to doubt exactly when this relationship took place. Taylor wrote that he encountered the Southards when he was about 8 years old. He turned 8 on Nov. 26, 1886. Biographers in the modern era have estimated that the friendship lasted about four or five years, which would have been until about 1891. Age 8 and up is an important, formative time in a child's education. That is when children begin to learn the "three R’s” and develop the ability to grasp abstract concepts. Research shows, however, that the Taylor-Southard relationship was a bit earlier.
In 1883 Albert had left his job of several years as General Freight Agent with the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago RR to take a similar position with the Indianapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis & Chicago RR. Along with the change in jobs, in early April of that year the Southard family moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Indianapolis, Indiana purchasing a new home at 827 North Meridian St. Given the time it would have taken for them to move in, get their affairs and house in order, hire a coachman, and later to accept the coachman's son into their life, it could have been mid-year before Marshall Taylor’s association with the Southards began. The whereabouts of Albert himself were actually a little unclear at that time. In May it was reported that his office had been removed from Jackson to East Saginaw, Michigan.
The Southards had taken a two-week pleasure trip at the end of June. Later that year, on September 24, the Indianapolis Journal reported that “A.B. Southard, who looks after the lumber traffic of the C., I., St. L., & C. in Michigan, and is doing good work for the road, spent the Sabbath in the city with his family.” So, it appears that for a pretty good while after the house on Meridian was purchased, the family was there, but Albert was absent, working in East Saginaw, Michigan. And importantly, contrary to the supposition that Major’s relationship with the Southards began when he was 8 years old, he was actually about 4½, going on 5.
Then, as time passed for Albert, although he had been very successful in the railroad business when the family first moved to Indianapolis, that position was destined to change. The railroads were going through major restructuring: new lines, buyouts by Eastern industrialists, mergers, consolidations, and attempted monopolies. Albert spent quite a bit of time traveling for his work and dealing with more job changes. Early in 1884, he changed jobs again to go back to his previous employer, the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago RR. This brought on a year of constant travel, with little time at his home in Indianapolis. After a bout with some health issues, the stress eventually got to him, culminating in his resignation in July, followed by a two-month vacation. As 1884 came to a close, he was yet on a quest for another job. Three more different positions, and by the end of 1885, he was once again out of work, fed up with the changes, and trying to decide on a new career path. A report in the March 21, 1886, Indianapolis Journal stated that “A. B. Southard, late traffic manager of the L., N.A., & C, RR, is arranging to engage in commercial pursuits. Railroad positions are becoming entirely too uncertain for men of ordinary abilities, if once out of the service, to re-engage in it.” He finally decided to go into real estate in Chicago, which prompted the family to leave Indianapolis on May 11, 1886. Much as when they had moved in, preparations would have taken time, putting Taylor’s separation from the Southard family around March or April 1886, four or five months after his 7th birthday.
To sum up Taylor’s relationship with the Southard family, instead of being between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, from 1886 to 1890, it was in fact from the ages of 4½ to 7½, mid-1883 to mid-1886.
The Bicycle
One extremely significant aspect of the Southard relationship concerns Taylor’s introduction to the bicycle. Per his autobiography, Dan Southard “saw to it” that Marshall had a bicycle to ride just like the ones that Dan and his white friends had. This was the age of High-wheel bicycles. A child-sized high-wheel bike cost around $42 in 1884, or about $1,400 in 2025 dollars. The Southards were wealthy, but that would have been an expensive and generous gift for the son of their coachman. Shortly after the Southards settled in Indianapolis, a want ad for "A good rubber-tired bicycle. 36 or 42 inches. Must be cheap." ran in the Indianapolis News for three days only, May 15, 16 and 17. Perhaps that was a search for a bicycle for Dan….or for Major. Whatever the case, Taylor learned to ride, and became pretty skillful at performing tricks on it as well. After the Southards moved to Chicago, he wrote that he had the bike “all to myself.” In 1890, after his first race (which he won!), it was reported that he was riding a 42-inch wheel. That is a child-size high-wheel.
Major makes it obvious in his autobiography that he felt that this time with the Southards was a determining factor in his development. The bicycle was definitely pivotal. However, the new understanding of his young age and the relatively brief interaction leads to a reassessment of the impact on Major’s education. What could he have absorbed from the Southards and Dan’s tutor in the way of academics during those early childhood years? An observant child undoubtedly could pick up the household’s culture easily; how these white people spoke, dressed, and interacted with others, knowledge that would later benefit him in social encounters with whites. But reading, writing and arithmetic would have been a challenge at ages 5 to 7. Major may have gotten an introduction to the basics, but anything more would be a reach for such a young child.
Some writers have suggested that Major Taylor had little formal education. His parents, having been enslaved before the Civil War, were illiterate. In the July 30, 1904, issue of the Black-owned Indianapolis newspaper The Freeman, Milton Lewis wrote that he had taught one of Taylor’s brothers and two of his sisters, but that “the Major had very little education.” Yet, it’s apparent that he was educated somewhere. He wrote a fairly detailed and articulate autobiography, as well as grammatically constructed letters to various publications, as early as age 15. When he was competing in France, he wrote numerous letters back home to his wife in very neat penmanship. In 2020, a handful of very articulate letters that Taylor wrote to a friend in Worcester, Massachusetts were discovered. He seemed to have a bit of a grasp of the French, Spanish and German languages. It’s simple, but I believe the reason Mr. Lewis thought that Major was uneducated was that he received his education in a different schoolroom.
I don't think there is any dispute by anyone who has delved into research about Major Taylor that besides being an exceptional athlete, he was also a very bright and intelligent man. The level of education displayed in his autobiography far exceeds anything he could have received at the feet of the Southard’s tutor.
Fellow racer Floyd McFarland, who was one of Taylor’s arch-rivals, and knew him well, commented in a complimentary article in the May 12, 1910, Salt Lake Telegram that “Taylor’s cycling career goes back to the good old days of the game, and his first wheel was secured for him by Birdie Munger, for whom Taylor worked as valet when a youngster. Taylor's parents, it seems, were very poor people, and Munger took the little colored boy to raise and gave him an education.”
After Major became internationally known and respected, there were newspaper reports that Major had been a mascot to Birdie as early as 1887. The term “mascot” at that time referred to a companion who allegedly brought good luck. It was a new concept and very popular. I found a few situations with Birdie and Major both at the same cycling event as early as 1890, if not actually in a mentoring relationship, then at least as meeting in passing. Although there is no firm evidence that a meeting took place before that, that 1887 date seems plausible, with the Clarksville cabinet card being a strong hint.
With the Southard relationship ending by early 1886, a few circumstances are impacted. First of all, it really adds weight to the supposition that the child in the Clarksville cabinet card is Major Taylor. As he stated in his autobiography, he would have been back on the streets, “as a common errand boy”. That is a good descriptor for the child in the picture. And it opens up a four-year undocumented gap for Major Taylor from 1886 until 1890, a period which fits well with a mascot /mentor relationship. Following McFarland’s claim that Birdie gave him an education, that could well have begun at that time. When Birdie later settled in Indianapolis in 1893, the bicycle factory where he worked was across the street from Indianapolis High School No. 2 and four blocks from his residence. The next year he founded his own Munger Cycle Manufacturing Company. That factory was also his residence. It was about five blocks from Indianapolis High School No. 1. Major lived at both residences, fondly referred to as Munger’s “famous bachelor quarters”.
While working for Birdie, Major was asked to assist high school students with their bike racing skills. Major was high school age in 1893-1894. And Indianapolis high schools were integrated at that time.
For some unknown reason Major decided not to mention the mascot years in his autobiography. He states that his initial encounter with Birdie was by working in his bicycle factory and helping out at his bachelor quarters in Indianapolis. Over the years Birdie Munger was central to Major’s progress in his racing career. He recognized the potential greatness in Major, and supported him by participating in his growth, his education, and sending him out into the world of professional bicycle racing with his backing. He was crucial in helping Major weave his way through difficult and prejudicial all-white competition. Birdie had faith in Major and Major had faith in Birdie. One quote in Major’s autobiography sums it up: “Meanwhile Mr. Munger became closer and closer attached to me as time went on. Had I been his own son he could not have acted more kindly to me.”
Major Taylor displayed exemplary character throughout his entire life. He closed his biography with a chapter titled “The value of Good Habits and Clean Living”, with a final paragraph of “A Dozen Don’ts
Don’t try to gyp.
Don’t be a pie biter.
Don’t keep late hours.
Don’t use intoxicants.
Don’t be a bluffer.
Don’t eat cheap candies.
Don’t get a swelled head.
Don’t use tobacco in any form.
Don’t fail to keep a clean life.
Don’t forget to play the game fair.
Don’t take an unfair advantage of an opponent.
Don’t forget the practice of good sportsmanship.
All told, Major Taylor was a unique and rare individual. When given the opportunity to pursue his dream, he did just that, and the results were remarkable.
I have written two other comprehensive research profiles on young Major Taylor in The Wheelman magazines No. 103 and 105. A third and final article will be in issue No. 107, November 2025 For more information, contact the author at oldbike@mindspring.com
Buck Peacock
Buck is an avid cyclist, bicycle scholar and a collector of cycling ephemera and memorabilia, most of it pre-1900.
1 Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 25, 1883
2 Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, August 6, 1883
3 Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, March 26, 1884
4 Indianapolis Journal. July 18, 1884
5 Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 11, 1886
6 The Indianapolis News, Indianapolis, Indiana, August 11, 1890
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