Off to the Races

BRIAN: We have a friend in the history department here at UVA by the name of John Mason. Now, John usually writes about Africa. But it was the history of a place much closer to home that I was curious to learn about. So John took me there a few Sundays back.

[CAR ENGINES REVVING]

JOHN MASON: We are at Eastside Speedway, which is just north of Waynesboro, Virginia. We’re on a property that was developed in the mid-1960s by a guy called Al Gore.

BRIAN: No, not that Al Gore. This Gore was a Navy construction worker in World War II. And his claim to fame? In 1954, he built what’s believed to be the first drag racing track east of the Mississippi. He apparently had the backing of local sheriffs. Why? They wanted to get hot rodders off the streets.

JOHN MASON: After World War II, there was a lot of concern about hot rodders and juvenile delinquents. Drag racers wanted to be hot rodders, but they wanted to be respectable hot rodders. And the way that you became a respectable hot rodder was to not race on the streets and distinguish yourself from people were doing that by racing on the track.

BRIAN: The “respectable” hot rodders at Eastside Speedway come from all kinds of backgrounds. They’re business owners, lawyers, mechanics, even cab drivers. And, in many cases, they’re racing in the same cars they drive to work.

Because in drag racing, it’s not simply about which car crosses the finish line first. It’s also about how well racers do relative to their own predictions of how fast they will cover the eighth of a mile course. This handicapping system keeps the race exciting, ensuring that the cars with the most money poured into them don’t always win.

[CAR ENGINES REVVING]

MALE SPEAKER: Here’s a Dodge. What is this? Definitely a Dodge.

JOHN MASON: That’s a Dodge Neon.

MALE SPEAKER: Dodge Neon.

JOHN MASON: No, we’re literally looking at cars that you might see on the street. Some of them are really souped up. Some of them are not.

KELLY JONES: Can we enter Brian’s car as a last minute–

[LAUGHTER]

JOHN MASON: You absolutely could.

KELLY JONES: Really? Brian, will you do it?

JOHN MASON: There’s one sticking point. He would need a helmet.

KELLY JONES: Oh, I’m sure someone will lend you one.

[CAR ENGINES REVVING]

BRIAN: That was our producer, Kelly Jones, nominating me and my Toyota Rav4 for a race. But after watching some of these cars at the starting line– sometimes they actually pop wheelies as they take off– I decided I was going to stick to the stands.

JOHN MASON: The fastest of them will be accelerating in under five seconds, in an eighth of a mile, to 140 miles an hour.

BRIAN: That’s incredible.

JOHN MASON: It almost defies the laws of physics, right?

BRIAN: John told me that when he first went to Eastside, he was kind of racing snob. He was a Formula One racing fan. And he had something of a prejudice about the kind of people and the lack of diversity he’d find at a drag race.

JOHN MASON: I came over here expecting to find nothing but a bunch of dumb rednecks. Pardon my language, but that was the prejudice that I came with. And I was flabbergasted by what I saw, because what I saw were about a quarter of the racers were African-Americans.

And maybe 10% of the racers or so were women. The women were racing head to head against the men, and they were often winning. And the African-Americans and the whites were getting along fine. In fact, it was clear to me, just sort of looking around, that there were genuine friendships between the people at the track.

BRIAN: Had you not seen that in your previous experience with Formula One?

JOHN MASON: Motorsports in general tends to lack diversity. There are very few African-Americans involved in other motorsports outside of drag racing.

BRIAN: Why?

JOHN MASON: In some forms of racing, there have been conscious entry barriers to African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. Stock car racing, for instance, got its start in the Jim Crow South. It got its start on segregated tracks, where very consciously, African-Americans were not prohibited, but were discouraged from attending.

BRIAN: And everything else was segregated.

JOHN MASON: Right. And if we’re talking about the ’50s and the ’60s, there was a single African-American who participated in NASCAR at the highest level. His name was Wendell Scott. He did win a race, but he faced enormous prejudice. And the kind of prejudice that Wendell Scott faced discouraged other African-Americans from following in his footsteps.

Drag racing was different. Drag racing grew up in Los Angeles. Organized drag racing grew up in Los Angeles, in the suburbs of Los Angeles right after World War II, in a very different racial environment. I’m not saying that it was a racial paradise, but it was much more open to participation by blacks, Asians, Latinos.

And from the very beginning of the sport, blacks, Asians, and Latinos in Southern California were participating in drag racing. Drag racing also had an ethos that was articulated by the National Hot Rod Association. And in their bylaws, it said, we will not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity or religion–

BRIAN: What year is this, roughly?

JOHN MASON: Mid-1950s. So if you wanted to be part of the NHRA, you had to subscribe to its principles. So those principles come across the country to the Midwest, to the east, and even to the south. The other thing about drag racing is that it’s the form of motor sport where cars are least likely to bang into each other.

In stock car racing, where they’re going around in circles on a track, cars will often hit each other– not enough to cause a wreck, but there’s bumping and banging in stock car racing. But in drag racing, the lanes are separate and equal.

[LAUGHTER]

So the bumping and banging in other forms of automobile racing means that tempers flare a lot. And often enough, they do get into fights. The fact that the cars don’t stray out of their lanes unless something goes horribly wrong in drag racing means that you don’t have those heated, angry confrontations between people. But I think that eased the participation of African-Americans and other ethnic minorities.

BRIAN: John in your day job, you’re a scholar of South Africa. Is there something American about this need for speed?

JOHN MASON: I would love to be able to say yes. But no, they have drag racing in South Africa. I have been to drag racing in South Africa.

BRIAN: And was it more mixed, as far as you know?

JOHN MASON: The drag races that I went to in South Africa were certainly mixed. And South Africa has more races than we do. It has Indians and colored people and Africans– and whites as well. And they were all at the racetracks, where I was. And as far as I could tell, that at least on the track, everybody was getting along just fine.

BRIAN: John, thanks for slowing down to spend some time with us on BackStory today.

JOHN MASON: It was my pleasure, Brian. This has been a lot of fun.

[CAR ENGINES REVVING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRIAN: That was John Mason. When he’s not out at the track, he’s an historian at the University of Virginia.

ED: It’s time for a short break, but stay with us. When we get back, the novel Around the World in 80 Days leaves some with a hankering to beat that record.