Welcome to Brainstuff, the production of iHeartRadio. Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in the United States today, only about twenty percent of motorcycle owners are women, and even that's a dramatic rise in ownership over the past decade or so. But nearly a century ago, a black woman was paving
the way. If you'll forgive the pun for other women riders, Bessie Stringfield in the nineteen thirties, a time when women hadn't even had the right to vote for very long, Stringfield toured the country riding solo and supported herself performing stunts along the way. Not much as known about her early childhood, as she was born in nineteen eleven in
the American southeast, perhaps North Carolina. She received her first motorcycle from her mother at age sixteen, a nineteen twenty eight Indian scout, though she didn't yet know how to ride before the article. This episode is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Anne Farrar, a journalist and the author of springfields biography titled African American Queen of the Road. Farar said quote, God taught her how to ride in a dream. However, she learned it wouldn't have been easy.
A nineteen twenty eight scout probably weighed over seven hundred pounds or three hundred kilos, and Stringfield was only about five to five that's around one point six meters tall. You have to be pretty fit to handle a bike that big, especially when you don't have the leverage that a little bit more height gives you. But in nineteen thirty, at the age of nineteen, Stringfield took off on that scout on her first solo tour, a ride without any route or destination plan. She tossed a coin over a
map and rode to the location where it landed. And she did this without the benefit of today's interstate highway systems of neatly paved roads, and nor did she have roadside service. If something broke down. She had to be both rider and mechanic and contend with that heavy scout on gravel and sand. At the time, it was very rare for women to ride, and she was a black woman transversing the Jim Crow South pre civil rights era.
Ferrar said that Stringfield faced discrimination along the way and was turned away from motels and forced to sleep on her bike instead. Neither easy nor comfortable She was threatened on occasion, and one time was intentionally run off the road by a white man in a pickup truck. Ferar said the Bessie's superpower was her ability to not focus on struggle, but rather in how she reacted to each situation and each individual. Bessie was too modest to see
herself as particularly special. That first ride at age nineteen was only the beginning of her two wheeled independence. Between the nineteen thirties and her death in nineteen ninety three, a Stringfield wound up riding solo across the United States in eight separate trips, the first woman to ever do so.
She supported herself by performing motorcycle stunts at fairs, including the Wall of Death, in which a large wooden cylinder is constructed and while viewers watch from the top, motor cyclists ride so fast that they climbed the vertical walls. Stringfield also competed in flat track races, riding over oval dirt tracks. One story recounts how she was denied prize money after removing her helmet and revealing that she was
a woman. She even used her riding talents and service to her country, a country that was still segregated as a civilian courier in the early nineteen forties. During World War Two, she carried mail and documents between bases for the US Army. She was the only woman in an all black unit. By the nineteen fifties, Stringfield settled in Miami, where she became a licensed practical nurse and founded the
Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. She was known around town for riding her bike to work in church, though, according to a feature in the June nineteen ninety six issue of American Motorcyclist magazine, she was initially given a hard time by local police. She went to see the Captain, who challenged her to a series of tricks and figure eights, which she performed with ease. Stringfield got her license and the her rassment stopped. She eventually became known as the
motorcycle Queen of Miami. During her six decades of riding, Stringfield owned twenty seven Harley Davidson motorcycles and rode more than a million miles, hitting all forty eight of the continental United States, a plus one on motorcycle trips in Brazil, Europe, and Haiti. While Stringfield may not appear to have had a direct influence on the civil rights movement, she perhaps
unknowingly empowered those around her. Ferrar said Bessie made an impression on people in her community, who were proud of her and always pleased to see this independent black woman on a Harley riding around town. A. Ferrara met Stringfield in nineteen ninety at the American Motorcycle Association's Motorcycle Heritage Museum. Stringfield was seventy nine years old and part of the inaugural exhibit Women in Motorcycling, and Farrar was then a
newly minted biker. The two women became friends, and Stringfield asked Ferrar to write her biography. Ferrar recorded numerous conversations with Stringfield during her final three years so she could help others recognize her achievements. In the year two thousand, the American Motorcycle Association began giving the Bessie Stringfield Award to women leaders in motorcycling, and in two thousand and two, Bessie was inducted posthumously into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
The writer of the article that this episode is based on, Sherise Cunningham, is a woman motorcyclist herself I don't ride. The things in this episode about the physical difficulty of writing are from her. I wanted to end this one. Quoting Scherise on why she wrote this piece, she said Stringfield was a rule breaker, an icon, an adventurer, a free spirit who managed to live her life on her
own terms. I never gave much consideration to the fact that had it not been for the bravery and boldness of someone like Stringfield, I might not be able to zip around relatively unscathed on America's highways as a woman. Learning her story has made an indelible impression on me, and I don't think I'll ever be able to sit astride my Harley again without thinking of all she gave me. Countless other women of any race who enjoy riding with
knees in the wind. Today's episode is based on the article Hidden History on two Wheels, The Story of Bessie Springfield on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Shrees Cunningham. Brainstuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from Myheartradio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows