Major Taylor to MLK: Footsteps in Black history at landmarks, sites across Worcester

WORCESTER — The heart of the commonwealth has been a home and a stop for many visionaries and has been an integral part of Black history.

That historical significance is celebrated in Worcester — in the names of its streets, through museums and dedications and a continued search for honoring those that make the city great.

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Major Taylor statue at the Worcester Public Library

A statue portraying Marshall W. "Major" Taylor stands tall at the Worcester Public Library.

Taylor is widely credited as being the first recognized Black sportsman and is remembered well in his adopted hometown of Worcester.

Born in 1878 in Indianapolis and moving to Worcester in 1895, Taylor was a professional bicyclist who set world records in competitive cycling, winning the 1899 ICA Track Cycling World Championship, a one-mile sprint race, in Montreal. A year later, he also won the American sprint championship.

The statue is the work of Maryland sculptor Antonio Tobias Mendez and was unveiled in 2008.

George Street

It's believed that Taylor acquired the moniker "Major" because he used to wear a soldier's jacket while performing tricks on his bicycle in front of a bicycle shop in Indianapolis. There he met a former bicycle racer, Louis "Birdie" Munger, who hired him to work for the promotion of the racing bicycles he manufactured.

Munger moved to Worcester to establish the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Co., and Taylor came along. The narrow, steep George Street was one of his training grounds, inspiring the annual George Street Bike Challenge in the city. It will be held next on July 24, helmed by the Major Taylor Association.

Major Taylor Museum

A museum showcasing the life of the "Worcester Whirlwind" and his achievements opened at the Courthouse Lofts on Main Street in October 2021.

Taylor went on to compete in races across the Northeast. When he turned 18, he started competing as a professional, heading to New York and Philadelphia, then on to Montreal, Copenhagen, Paris and Australia.

In his autobiography, Taylor talks of the discrimination, racial segregation and ill-treatment in his career as a Black sportsperson in an atmosphere dominated by white cyclists.

He retired from professional bicycling in 1910 and returned to Worcester, living with his wife and daughter for many years at his home, still standing at 4 Hobson Ave. near Columbus Park, until their estrangement due to financial troubles brought on by the Depression. He died in 1932 in Chicago.

Major Taylor Boulevard

Worcester Center Boulevard in Downtown Worcester was renamed Major Taylor Boulevard in 2006 to honor the cyclist.

"The World's Fastest Man," a biography of Taylor by Michael Kranish, was published in 2019. The Major Taylor Cycling Club of Central Indiana is holding the first ""Major Taylor National Invitational Ride" in Indianapolis this June.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at May Street building

Two years before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would make his most famous speech in Washington, he visited Worcester to speak about civil rights, racial discrimination, segregation and the ways in which race affected American society.

"The basic thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamental, not the texture of his hair or the color of skin but his eternal significance and worth," King said on March 13, 1961. "Skin may differ but affection dwells in Black and white the same. And were I so tall as to reach the pole or to grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man."

The event was held at the old Temple Emanuel building at 280 May St. The building is now the Worcester State May Building.

The crowd that gathered to hear King speak was the largest-ever gathering of people at the venue, pointed out Rabbi Joseph Klein before King's speech.

The audio recording of his speech and conversation with the audience were recovered in 2018, after Klein's granddaughter uploaded them to SoundCloud.

In his speech, King said his time at Boston University and Harvard University made him feel at home in the region.

He spoke about how men deliberately mislead themselves to provide fallacious reasoning for every action.

"Human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization which seeks to clothe an obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness," said King.

The civil rights leader addressed the question people across the nation pondered at the time, one that is being asked once more in present day: Have we made real progress in the area of race relations?

There are three possible answers to this, he said — an extreme optimist would say there had been much progress, and therefore the problem was almost solved. The extreme pessimist would look at the state of affairs, at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and unrest in the South and feel that the situation had regressed, concluding that there could be no progress at all.

Both the optimist and the pessimist would agree on one thing: There's no cause to do anything. But King was on the side of realism.

The cause had come a long, long way. Yet, there was a long, long way to go.

Liberty Farm

Liberty Farm on Mower Street, home of the suffragist and abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster, was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses and secret routes used to aid and ferry enslaved people who had escaped.

Letter documentation preserved by Worcester Historical Museum and the American Antiquarian Society confirms the usage of Liberty Farm to hide and shelter enslaved people.

Foster, born in Pelham, was raised in Worcester in the 1800s. Over her lifetime, she worked as a teacher, lecturer, recruiter and organizer all over the state. In 1850, she helped plan the National Women’s Rights Convention in Massachusetts.

Foster also founded the Millbury Anti-Slavery Society and was chief fundraiser for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Her residence was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974 but has been closed to the public since it was sold off to a Worcester family in 2018.

Abby Kelley Foster Charter school and Abby’s House, a women’s shelter in the city, are both named after the radical activist.

Citizens of Color WWII Honor Roll

A memorial at Lincoln Square honors 144 Black soldiers from Worcester who served their country during World War II.

Erected in 2017, the Citizens of Color World War II Honor Roll was the result of a decades-long effort led by William S. Coleman III, local activist.

It was meant to replace a 1943 memorial put up by Worcester locals, that was once located at 62 Belmont St. The original 11-foot-by-5 foot monument was removed during the construction of Interstate 290 in 1959.

After the memorial drew some criticism for excluding about 100 veterans and misspelling some names, the city started the process of updating the memorial to include all black and mixed-race Worcester soldiers who served in the war.

Frederick Douglass at Mechanics Hall

Frederick Douglass, the iconic Black abolitionist leader and social reformer, spoke at Worcester's Mechanics Hall at least once, according to Kathleen M. Gagne, the venue's executive director.

A proposal to hang a portrait of Douglass, along with that of abolitionist Sojourner Truth and local abolitionists William and Martha Brown, is in motion. When completed, they will hang in the Great Hall of Mechanics Hall, which includes portraits of many 19th-century notable people.

Black History Trail

The Black History Trail project highlights the city's historically Black neighborhoods and forgotten landmarks. These include the former location and history of the A.M.E. Zion Church, North Ashland, Bowdoin, Liberty and Palmer streets, Hemenway Homestead on the corner of May and Westfield streets and the farm of Rejoice Newton, who employed Isaac Mason, a former slave who escaped.

Informational panels elaborating on their significance are at display in City Hall during February and are expected to be installed at their corresponding locations in the city by summer.

The project is a collaboration between the Worcester NAACP branch, city of Worcester, College of the Holy Cross and the Laurel Clayton Project, with support from Dr. Thomas L. Doughton.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Landmarks, sites across Worcester chronicle role in Black history