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Major

A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being
Chapter 1

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July 1865

CITY OF LONDON

Atlantic Ocean

It glides along as though it were alive, and with

a smooth grace . . . everlasting and beautiful to behold.

--Scientific American

Magazine on the early pedal-powered bicycle

The South was still burning. Thousands of Confederate POWs remained in Union custody, having refused allegiance to their Yankee victors, and only a partial accounting of the 623,000 war dead had been made. It was a mere eight weeks after Appomattox and the end of the Civil War, but people were already on the move. The promise of America's large northern industrial cities, where work could be had and lives remade, triggered a massive response home and abroad.

The swell of humanity included a twenty-two-year-old French mechanic whose July transatlantic passage was notable because of what he steadfastly towed in a large clanging steamer trunk. Within were the unassembled parts of the first modern-era bicycle to land upon U.S. shores. Pierre Lallement, a baby-faced man with short legs and a pe ... read full excerpt from Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being ebook