The July 3 event, the promoters said, will especially highlight drivers, mechanics and pit crews “from black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian minorities.”
Along with the 76-lap race — which will pay the winner $5,000 — the all-day affair will include a motorcycle and car show, multicultural music concerts and a 10-lap Last Chance dash to fill out the field of 35 compact cars that will start the feature.
By next year the group hopes to have developed a traveling series that will take the minority racers to other tracks, possibly in the identically prepared car format of the old IROC series.
“We’re not really inventing anything, we’re just bringing back the old Gold and Glory Series,” said Steve Ross, the former Dayton football standout, prep coach, autistic teacher, and one-time stock car driver who is the front half of Ross Edmonds’ promotional team.
Jim Price, a Trotwood-Madison school teacher and another of the Freedom 76 partners, explained the link to the past at a press conference Friday at the Marriott:
“During the 1920s, before Olympic champ Jesse Owens, heavyweight champ Joe Louis and Hall of Fame slugger Jackie Robinson all began making sports inroads in a fight for equality, there was a now-forgotten group of African-American sportsmen who risked reputation, livelihood and their lives on a barn-storming motor sports series that was run in an era of intense racial discrimination.”
Because the American Automobile Association, the sanctioning body of racing back then, kept blacks out of events like the Indy 500 and Jim Crow laws limited participation at so many race tracks, a group of blacks in Indianapolis formed the Colored Speedway Association in 1924 and ran the first Gold and Glory Sweepstakes in front of 12,000 fans at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds.
Over the next dozen years the event morphed into a series across the country and included races in Dayton. One local black driver on that circuit was Sumner Oliver.
That series ended in 1936 and since NASCAR’s rise in the late 1940s, there have been almost no black drivers of note at the top level of stock car racing,.
“It’s been almost 50 years since Wendell Scott (who was black) won a race (in what’s now the Sprint Cup series),” said Ross. “Although NASCAR started its Drive for Diversity program several years ago, it’s taking too long and not much is happening.
“You can look at every other sport in America, even ice hockey, and there are more people of color competing. Maybe it’s not on purpose — some of it certainly is economic — but rather than sit around and complain or beg, you can try to do something about it. “Sometimes in life you’ve got to take a chance. That’s what makes America America. Anybody with with a dream, fortitude and stick-to-it-ness can go out and make changes.”
Ross for years has toyed with the idea of putting on a race and he found a like mind in Fred Edmonds, a local businessman who raced sports cars for years.
With Price, Charlie White and Brian Lawrence joining the group, they approached Kil-Kare president Roy Baker.
“It turned out fantastic,” said Ross. “They saw our vision, bought into it and they are helping make this happen.”
Tickets for the all-day event will be $20 in advance for ages 16 and up, $10 for kids 8 to 16 and children under 8 get in free. The group has a website: www.reimotorsportpromotions.com or the organizers can be reached by phone at (937)-829-4794.
While the event will attract national drivers of color — ARCA driver and Fast Lane racing school instructor James Stevenson from North Carolina was at the Marriott on Friday — young local drivers like Aaron Oatts, a Northmont High grad and go-kart racer, will try to make the field, as well.
“With the race, the car and motorcycle shows, the concerts and the food, at the end of it we want you to be able to say, ‘Wow, I just had a heck of a day and witnessed a whole lot,’ ” Ross said.
“I think it will be a memory etched in your mind . One that you can tell your grandkids about one day and say, ‘I saw history being made.’ ”
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