Indy exhibit celebrates Black bike-racing champ 'Major' Taylor, breaking barriers

The extraordinary life of one cyclist who broke world records and race barriers, Marshall “Major” Taylor, marks a bit of his hometown’s landscape in Indianapolis, from a mural to a velodrome named after him. Born in 1878, tales of his wheelman trickery as a bike shop worker and later as a racer also fill several books on his life.

And now an exhibit at the Indiana State Museum delves to a more intimate level, according to an IndyStar story, with letters he scribed to his daughter, his "dear little Sydney 'Bear,'" where he wrote of his own “dauntless courage”: “In most of my races I not only struggled for victory, but also for my very life and limb.”

The exhibit shows how he overcame racism and disparaging media accounts and cartoons, even while he set records in quarter-mile and two-mile races and won a world championship. It takes us back to the 1890s, the IndyStar reported, when the city saw several group and solo rides in the streets, though only for Whites. Black riders started their own See-Saw Cycling Club.

The exhibit also speeds us up to the present day with videos of Black athletes reflecting on Taylor's legacy. There are interactive exhibits, too: You can use tools to build bikes and scooters. Pedal a trainer and race Taylor on a video screen.

"Major Taylor: Fastest Cyclist in the World" opened in March and is on display through Oct. 23 at Indiana State Museum, 650 W. Washington St., Indianapolis (317-232-1637). Museum admission is $16 for adults, $15 for seniors and $11 for kids if purchased in advance online; add $1 for purchasing at the door. Free for ages 2 and younger.

The museum itself will host a free Major Taylor Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 18 where you can learn about bikes and bike skills, try a portable mountain bike track, enjoy food trucks and more.

Major Taylor Cycling Clubs can be found around the country with regular rides, open to all cyclists regardless of skin color. That includes Chicago (Taylor is buried at Mount Glenwood Memorial Gardens in Cook County, Ill.).

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In fact, the central Indiana chapter of the Major Taylor Cycling Club will host three days of mostly urban biking June 17-19 that will all start from Monument Circle at the center of downtown Indianapolis. It includes that Friday evening’s 20-mile ride (with a stop at the Major Taylor Velodrome), that Saturday’s rides of 31, 50 and 62 miles and a private evening reception at the Major Taylor exhibit, and a ride on that Sunday. Cost is $100. Register and find details on the Major Taylor National Invitational Ride in a link in this column online.

Record catfish

Using cut-up fish for bait, Lloyd Tanner of Hobart, Ind., reeled in a Michigan state-record flathead catfish from his boat May 29 on a Berrien County portion of the St. Joseph River. Then he released it back into the water.

The hulk was 53.35 pounds and 48 inches long, caught between St. Joseph and the Jasper Dairy Road launch, which is north of Berrien Springs, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Tanner told the DNR that he typically comes into Michigan each weekend with friends from an amateur fishing group, Michigan Catfish Anglers Trail. Its Facebook group states that “we promote catch and release programs to ensure that catfish populations are not depleted by overfishing.”

"We have several fun tournaments that anyone who enjoys fishing for catfish can come out and fish," Tanner told the DNR.

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This beat the prior state-record flathead catfish (52 pounds, 46.02 inches long) that was caught out of Barron Lake, east of Niles, in 2014 by Dale Blakley of Niles. Find all state record fish at Michigan.gov/StateRecordFish.

A record-sized flathead catfish is caught once every five or so years, estimates Jay Wesley, Lake Michigan Basin coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

“It tells me there’s a growing interest in the species and people are learning to catch the bigger ones,” Wesley says.

5K at Cook plant

The public is normally forbidden from entering the sprawling, 650-acre grounds of the Cook Nuclear Power Plant in Bridgman.

But the Uranium-235k on the morning of June 25, which could become an annual event, will put runners and walkers on a 5K course that will take in views of Cook’s two containment domes — an iconic sight, with their four-foot concrete walls, inside of which the reactor cores are at work. Participants also will pass along a security barrier with a view of where the used fuel is stored, along with a training center and other key sites.

All of that will be with plenty of buffer space and no risk of radiation or contamination, race director and chemical engineer Chelsea Moser says. There’s less exposure here than at a coal plant, which has very low exposure, she says.

The route is flat, except for a hill up to the visitor center, and goes along plant roads, including a long one through a woods where you might spy deer or a turkey. It comes to the dunes along Lake Michigan but, alas, not close enough to see the water.

Cook’s employee wellness committee had planned to do it two years ago but got derailed by the pandemic, Moser says, as an outreach for the public to “see our property as well as learn a bit about the benefits of nuclear power.”

The $30 entrance fee includes a medal, swag bag and a chance at winning door prizes, from a Yeti cooler to gift cards to Bose headphones. At least 135 participants are signed up so far. About the name, Uranium-235 is the isotope for uranium. Register and find details in a link in this column online.

Also in this column: These experts will guide you in nature, on bike, on trail or in the dunes

Follow Outdoor Adventures columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures. Contact him at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Black bike racer Major Taylor broke barriers in Indianapolis museum