Scott fought discrimination as NASCAR’s black pioneer
DANVILLE, Va. – From this small town on the extreme south central edge of the commonwealth, Wendell Scott launched a remarkable journey.
From 1962 to 1971, he raced virtually full time in NASCAR’s top series, then called Grand National. One thing about Scott’s long run was extraordinary, even freakish — he won a race.
Scott, a Virginia native, was black. The fact that he raced on the starkly white NASCAR circuit through the turbulent Sixties is a story in itself. That he was able to score a victory against much more monied teams — and against blatant discrimination in the Jim Crow South — borders on incredible. In Danville, they still remember. “He has gotten a lot of recognition since he passed, and it’s a shame it took so long,” said Danville resident David Oakes, a white man, owner of an auto parts shop and a longtime friend of Scott’s. “He didn’t live to see it. He kept at it all the time. He was determined. Racing was his passion, what he wanted to do in life.”
Scott scored the only Cup win by an African-American driver on Dec. 1, 1963, at Speedway Park, a small track near Jacksonville. Officials flagged Buck Baker as the winner and gave him the trophy in victory lane. Later, a check of scorecards revealed that Scott actually won the race, but he missed the victory lane ceremony, a move critics say was designed to avoid a black driver receiving congratulations from a white race queen.
Over NASCAR’s 70 years, that day marks the only one in which a black racer has driven within reach of a Cup win. In fact, it took 50 years for another black driver — Darrell Wallace Jr. — to win in any of NASCAR’s top three series, and that victory came in the third-level Camping World Truck Series.
This season, Wallace is scheduled to become the first full-time black driver in Cup racing since 1971, reviving memories of the highs and lows of the Wendell Scott story. Wallace became friends with members of the Scott family during the 24-year-old driver’s rise through the NASCAR ranks. He heard all the stories of the Scott struggle, from running pieced-together race cars to driving from one small town in the South to another, uncertain of what was waiting around the next corner.
It was a long, tough, sometimes dangerous road, but Scott persevered, racing against the Richard Pettys and Bobby Allisons of the motor sports world. He and his family were turned away from some speedways simply because he was black. They often ate sandwiches prepared by Scott’s wife, Mary, in impromptu picnics because many restaurants in the Deep South barred them.
Danville, once one of the South’s leading textile manufacturing towns, lists Scott among its honored native sons. A historical marker near his for- mer shop lists his accomplishments, and the street where his house and shop are located was renamed Wendell Scott Drive in 1997, seven years after his death.
In 2015, Scott was named to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Some members of the voting panel argued against Scott’s election, saying Hall membership should be based on significant statistical accomplishments and that Scott’s career had not been at that level. Others said the unusual nature of his racing journey was accomplishment enough.
There is not much middle ground in the Scott story. Before his racing career effectively ended because of injuries suffered in a 24-car crash at Talladega Superspeedway in 1973, he met both acceptance and rejection in NASCAR garages, the tenor of that relationship generally improving with the years.
In Scott’s early years, some drivers made no secret of the fact that they targeted him during races. At some tracks, officials barred him from competing, a stance that drew no negative reaction from NASCAR officials.
Yet Scott flipped his car in practice for a race in Spartanburg, S.C., in the
mid-’60s, and officials there remember drivers walking into the grandstand and collecting more than $3,000 in donations for him. Members of the sport’s leading teams often gave Scott equipment.
Although Scott often heard racial taunts from spectators, particularly during the beginnings of the civil rights movement, he picked up support over the years from fans who came to respect his dogged determination to do the thing he loved most.
“He had a following among rural people that the average person probably never knew,” said George Henderson, a white former Danville city policeman who worked on Scott’s pit crew from
1970 to 1973. “A lot of people loved him. I saw him sign a lot of autographs. He didn’t dwell on the negativity. He was always upbeat, always working on what he needed to do to get to the racetrack.”
In 1972, Scott, then 50, was facing the end of his racing days. He was running out of money. Richard Howard, then the president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, offered Scott what seemed to be a major opportunity, arranging to put Scott in a car prepared by the top-level Junior Johnson team for the World 600 at Charlotte.
In theory, the race would provide Scott with something he had rarely enjoyed — a car that could challenge for a win. And promotion of Scott’s big opportunity would sell tickets to the race.
But Henderson remembers arriving at the track with Scott and others for a test of the car, and things didn’t go well. Scott took the car for a spin, and his speed was in the 149-mph range, about
9 mph slower than typical fast-car speeds at the track that season.
Henderson said he overheard a prominent driver who was attending the test say, “That n----- can’t drive that car.” Scott asked a top driver to run the car after his relatively slow run, and the driver couldn’t push it past the 149 mark, either, Henderson said.
In short, the car wasn’t top-gun material, and Scott finished 22nd in the race after its engine blew.
He raced on.
In 1973, Scott borrowed money to buy a virtually new Mercury Cyclone, looking for one last shot at a big race day. Instead, the car was demolished in the huge crash at Talladega on the ninth lap of its first (and only) race, and Scott suffered a long list of injuries, including a broken leg and a mangled arm.
Scott needed nine years of payments to settle the debt on a race car he ran only nine laps. Although he raced in a few more events, his driving career essentially ended that day in Alabama.
Mojo Nixon, a radio show host and a former musician, grew up in Danville in the 1960s. A racing fan, he remembers riding his bicycle from the “white” side of Danville to the black neighborhood along Keens Mill Road (now Wendell Scott Drive) to visit Scott’s shop.
“It was three neighborhoods away, a long bike ride,” Nixon said. “But we’d ride over there and watch him in the shop. If he had just wrecked a car over the weekend, we wanted to see it.”
Nixon’s father, Neill, was the manager of WILA, the “soul” radio station in Danville. The station sometimes sponsored Scott.
“Danville was super-segregated,” Nixon said. “I think Wendell transcended that. Everybody in Danville was proud of him, regardless of race relations. He wasn’t a black guy racing. He was a racer. The fact that he was there and kept showing up speaks volumes.”
Scott died of spinal cancer Dec. 23,
1990. Several NASCAR stars attended his hours-long funeral the day after Christmas at North New Hope Baptist Church, and Scott was buried in Crooktown Cemetery, now an unkempt graveyard along a busy four-lane highway.
David Oakes was one of the pallbearers.
“Wendell loved a challenge,” Oakes said. “If we couldn’t fix a car here, we’d call him. He loved to fix something that somebody else had given up on.”