Long Island Writer Chronicles NASCAR’s First Black Driver, Wendell Scott

There’s quite the contrast in Brian Donovan’s Huntington home: A family history of naming pets after philosophers screams highbrow, but auto racing stickers covering the water heater hint at roughneck.

“I’ve always wanted to be mistaken for the bull rider in the rodeo,” laughs Donovan. “So far, it’s never happened.”

Bespectacled and sporting a professor’s beard, the former Newsday reporter and Pulitzer Prize recipient does outwardly look the part of a serious journalist. But a fire suit also hangs in the garage, worn during his ongoing pastime as a champion amateur racer.

“I fell in love with cars when I was about 11 years old,” he remembers. “I found a copy of Hot Rod magazine in somebody’s trash, and opened it up, and it opened up a world to me.”

So while his first book—the recently released Hard Driving—paints a pretty incriminating portrait of how NASCAR treated black racing pioneer Wendell Scott, Donovan makes it clear that he isn’t just some New York liberal taking potshots at Southern culture. His writing confirms his love for the spectacle that is racing. Wanting some justice done for Scott’s legacy expresses not damnation of NASCAR, but hope for its future.

“You know, sometimes you have to make amends for what you did wrong in the past before you can move forward,” he explains. “And that’s why I raised the idea of NASCAR apologizing for the way its first black driver was treated. Maybe that would help the credibility of what [NASCAR is] trying to do with diversity today.”

Ironically, while Donovan’s book was two decades in the making, the issues brought up are quite timely. On Oct. 25, 18-year-old Marc Davis made his debut for Joe Gibbs Racing on NASCAR’s No. 2 circuit, the Nationwide Series. Davis is the latest in a line of black drivers trying to succeed in a sport still dominated by white males.

But that came on the heels of a $225 million discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit against NASCAR filed earlier this year by former official Mauricia Grant, a black female. Two NASCAR officials named in the suit have already been dismissed by the sanctioning body.

“Any author will tell you they’re happy about anything that brings interest to their book,” Donovan says of the coincidence. “I don’t know the merits of Mauricia Grant’s case. Sounds like some of the particulars are pretty, uh, damaging. I don’t think there’s anything in her experience that would’ve surprised Wendell Scott a bit.”

To Donovan’s credit, he presents Scott honestly, even though that’s not always in a favorable light. His history has already been muddled enough, largely thanks to 1977’s Greased Lightning, a very loosely based biographical flick starring Richard Pryor as Scott.

In truth Scott was a man who abstained from the bottle, but gambled excessively and fathered a child via an extramarital affair. His friendliness helped win over white drivers, but that gentle nature often didn’t exist in a prickly relationship with his sons-turned-crewmen. He generally avoided conflict, but also pointed a pistol at a racist opponent—during a race.

In the book, though, Scott’s contradictions are mild compared to those who could’ve allowed Scott a level playing field when he debuted at NASCAR’s top division (then known as the Grand National series) in 1961. The indicted run the gamut:

* NASCAR patriarch Bill France Sr. promised Scott equality, but was often too busy schmoozing segregationist politicians like George Wallace for business favors. That left little time or inclination to deal with issues like Scott being banned from Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

* Ford Motor Co.’s tepid assistance helped Scott race with equipment just good enough to compete and attract black customers. But he never received top-flight funding, seemingly for the fear of offending Ford’s white clientele.

* Race officials finally recognized Scott’s lone Grand National win in Jacksonville in 1963—hours after a suspicious scoring error was discovered, allowing NASCAR to award the victory with as little fanfare as possible.

But Scott didn’t face resistance at every turn. While some drivers like Jack Smith—who saw the other side of Scott’s pistol—used racial epithets and dirty driving tactics, others were much more progressive. NASCAR legend Ned Jarrett repeatedly pushed for Scott to receive full-fledged factory backing, noting his record of competitiveness despite driving also-ran cars. Richard Petty also supported Scott, going as far as to raise hell when NASCAR officials said Scott’s sons would have to shave their beards in order for their father to compete in a race—although no such rule existed.

“I think one of the reasons he was accepted pretty readily in local stockcar racing was that the other guys saw that this is not a civil rights activist who’s here to make a political point,” Donovan opines. “‘He’s like us. He’s got a passion to race. He knows cars. He’s a good mechanic. He’s a guy very much like us who happens to be black.’”

That apolitical style was a double-edged sword, as Scott wondered in his later years if complaining more about his plight would have been more productive. It’s true that his career didn’t open the floodgates for other blacks, the way Jackie Robinson’s Major League Baseball stint did.

But during his heyday Scott’s persistence led to him receiving some of the biggest applause at tracks—even in the Deep South. Donovan surmises that Scott’s impact—though not always properly acknowledged—reverberated way past the sports world.

“What I was struck by, I think Scott played a more important role in the civil rights era than history has recognized by the way he changed the way thousands of people felt about black people,” the author says of Scott, who died in 1990 at the age of 69. “His example undermined the stereotypes that they’d grown up with.”