well as a white man, why should he be denied the privilege of demonstrating his ability!
“The public sentiment is with Taylor, but its sympathy is not pronounced enough to have much weight with a body of riders who are jealous of Major Taylor's successes, and are determined to keep him out at all costs. Track owners would unquestionably like to see Major Taylor riding again, and in every cycle racing center of the country there are many who go to the races simply to see Major.”
The Cycling Gazette had this to say:
"Boycotting against Major Taylor too long delayed. The white bicycle racers have drawn the color line. They assert they will no longer compete against Major Taylor, the black whirlwind of the cycle tracks. It is all very well for these speedy white gentlemen to insist upon the proper respect for their color, and the Morning Telegraph is pleased to see this much delayed but emphatic assertion of the superiority of the Caucasian over the Ethiopian. Still, in the interests of the L. A. W. and to the end that there might be no invidious criticism on the action of the white riders, we could have wished that they had boycotted Major Taylor before he had defeated them all. It looks now as if the ease with which this ebony wonder cut down records and carried away first money in all the big contests in which he entered had as much to do with the action of the white flyers as their active self-love.
“It is, of course, a degradation for a white man to contest any point with a Negro. It is even worse than that, and becomes an absolute grief and social disaster when the Negro persistently wins out in the competitions.”
I cannot begin to quote the newspaper opinions on both sides, but at last the matter came to an issue, when the Executive Committee of the American Racing Cyclists' Union met, the organization being affiliated with the N. C. A., at Newark, New Jersey. These officials took notice of this sweep of sentiment in my favor and instead of life sentence, which was sought by several of my fellow riders and a number of officials of the parent organization, I was ordered to pay a fine of $500. Since I felt this was a very unjust verdict, I made up my mind that rather than pay the fine I would hang up my racing togs forever. It was the principle of the thing that I was fighting, and it would have made no difference to me whether the fine was $5 or $5,000, I would refuse to pay it. To me the payment of any fine under the circumstances would be an admission of guilt on my part for doing something which I felt in my heart I had never done.
About this time Mr. Fred Johnson of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, President of the Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Company, made me an
