Wendell Scott: Black NASCAR Driver in the Jim Crow Era, Pt. 2

Scott eventually managed to break into NASCAR racing, becoming the first black driver to do so. His career was a constant struggle, as he paid his own way and often had to be his own pit crew while competing against sponsored drivers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Before we get started today, we just wanted
to let folks know that Universal Fan con where we
were planning to be from April and to do a
live show there, has been postponed until further notice. Although
we don't have any other information right now about when
the convention might be rescheduled, we do want to apologize
to anybody who purchased a ticket or who plans to

(00:22):
come out and see us. Will post an update with
any official information that we receive on our website at
miss in history dot com at the link that says
live shows. Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to

(00:45):
the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm a Holly Frying.
Today we are picking up where we left off in
the story of Wendell Scott, who was the first black
driver to drive in NASCAR sponsored races. Last time, we
talked about his early life and time as a bootlegger
and his first races that were part of the Dixie
Circuit and then other non NASCAR races in Virginia. Today,

(01:08):
we will talk about how he finally got into his
first NASCAR sanctioned race. And what happened in his racing
career from there. This will probably make sense if you
haven't heard our previous episode, but we will be referring
back to some things from that episode, so it would
be easier if you haven't heard that one to listen
to it first. As we talked about last time, Wendell

(01:29):
Scott had been turned away from NASCAR sanctioned races in
Winston Salem and high Point, North Carolina in nineteen fifty two.
Sometime in nineteen fifty three, the exact date is not documented,
Wendell Scott made another attempt to enter a NASCAR sanctioned race,
and this time it was in Richmond. Scott went to
Maurice Boston, who was the chief steward for the track,

(01:51):
and told him that he wanted to enter. Poston advised
him that as the first black driver the organization had
ever had, quote, you're going to be knocked around, and
Scott assured him that he could take it. This was
the first time in history that a black driver participated
in a race that was sanctioned by NASCAR, and occasionally
you'll see it incorrectly cited that that designation really belongs

(02:14):
to somebody else. And there was a black race car
driver named Joey Ray who started racing in nine seven,
but he didn't race in NASCAR, A completely different Joey Ray,
which is I mean a little weird of a coincidence
to me, well, especially considering the spelling is the same,

(02:36):
is the same and not what we would know as
the standard using the air quotes spelling of Joey as
j O E y but j O I E yeah,
completely different. Joey Ray, who was white, did race at
Daytona once in ninetift two. That's the source of the confusion.
But that was a completely different person who was not black.

(02:57):
I mean, I could see how that's a pretty easy
mistake to make because you're looking your records. That's an
odd spelling, an unusual spelling, and it's the same in
both cases. I mean, if his name was was Bob Jones,
that was right. But going back to Wendell Scott, his
entry into NASCAR progressed far differently than many other firsts
by black athletes in previously segregated sports. These often followed

(03:21):
a pattern of an organized effort to integrate the sport,
involving everything from legal pressures to methodical selection of which
black athlete would be allowed to participate, But there was
no organized effort to integrate NASCAR, and Wendell Scott had
no backing at all in his attempts to cross the
color line. He just kept showing up until someone let

(03:41):
him race. Because that is not to belittle that achievement.
It was a brave thing to continue showing up. But
I really don't think it had crossed the minds or
even entered the minds in the vaguest way of anybody
in the NASCAR organization of like, you know, what we
should do is integrate in three like that, I don't

(04:03):
think that was a conversation that would have even been
a spark of thinking about happening. So once they had
heard about what happened in Richmond with Wendell Scott being
allowed to drive in the race, NASCAR officials at the
organization's headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida were not all that
pleased about it. So while a lot of other firsts
by black athletes tended to become major news events, they

(04:27):
really tried to keep Scott's entry into the world of
NASCAR racing quiet. NASCAR wasn't getting that much coverage in
the mainstream media at this point in its history, but
when Scott's name was mentioned in the press, it was
sometimes listed US something like W. D. Scott to keep
anybody from putting together that he was the black driver
who had made a name for himself in the Dixie circuit.

(04:49):
Scott's first recorded NASCAR race is from the following season,
when he raced it Daytona on February ninety four. On
April sevente that year, Scott had his first encounter with
William France, Sr. Known as Big Bill, the founder of NASCAR.
Scott had gone to Raleigh to race the night before,
but the race had been rained out, and it was

(05:10):
pretty common for NASCAR to compensate drivers for the cost
of getting to the race when it was rained out,
and this was particularly important to Wendell Scott. He had
no kind of financial backing or sponsorship, and he didn't
really have much money on his own. All the other
drivers who had showed up in Raleigh that night were
given fifteen dollars to cover the cost of their gas,

(05:32):
but Enix Staley, who was the promoter, refused to compensate Scott,
So when Scott met France in Lynchburg on the seventeenth,
he told him about what had happened. France assured him
that from now on he was part of NASCAR and
he was going to be treated just like any other driver,
and then France gave Scott thirty dollars from his pocket.

(05:54):
Later on in the nineteen fifty four season, Scott finished
a race ahead of another driver named Ward mc donald.
McDonald intentionally rear ended Scott's car repeatedly afterward, and the
only thing that kept him from physically attacking Scott after
the race was over was that Scott's friend, fellow driver
Earl Brooks, physically intervened. The day after this incident, France

(06:17):
sent a letter to every NASCAR driver saying that anyone
who intentionally wrecked Scott's car would be suspended, but unfortunately
it didn't last long. Scott had ongoing problems with other
drivers intentionally wrecking him during races or forcing him into
a wall. This included an incident with driver Shorty York,

(06:37):
who rear ended Scott two different times at Bowman Gray
Stadium in Winston Salem, causing him to roll over both times.
Neither build France nor NASCAR as an organization did anything
to address it. Apart from being a racist show of
potentially life threatening poor sportsmanship, this kind of treatment had

(06:57):
a direct if effect on Scott's finance is and his
ability to keep entering races. If somebody intentionally hit him
or caused him to spin out, he'd lose several places
in the pack as he got back on track, and
a lot of times there was just no way to
make up the lost time, which meant that his prize
money at the end of the race was smaller. That
meant he had less money to pay for his gas,

(07:18):
to repair and maintain the car, and to pay his
bills back home. Scott was also an owner driver, which,
as the term suggests, means that he owned the cars
he was driving and racing in. In the world of NASCAR,
these are almost two different jobs, and it's very rare
for a person to simultaneously own the car and drive
it today. This was a lot more common in the

(07:40):
nineteen fifties, but now that he was in NASCAR sanctioned races,
Scott was also increasingly up against drivers who were essentially
sponsored by auto manufacturers. Sponsorship within NASCAR has its own history,
and this wasn't always official but factory sponsored teams were
basically getting their cars from automakers for free or for

(08:00):
a reduced price, while Scott was having to buy all
of his cars himself. Also, as an owner driver, he
was responsible for literally everything. He had no mechanic other
than himself. He had no pit crew other than his
sons who crewed for him when their school schedule allowed,
or sometimes his friends. A lot of times he couldn't

(08:22):
afford to pay the entry fee for them, so he
would smuggle them into the track in the trunk of
his race car. The trunks of the tow cars were
usually searched on the way in, but a lot of
times the race cars trunk wasn't, and so he'd have
his helpers back there hiding out under tires. Sometimes nobody
was available to help him out, so he would be

(08:43):
his own pit crew, falling behind in the standings as
he did his own repairs and changed his own tires.
He just had no staff at all of any kind
other than friends and family who helped him out. That's
one of those things that is such a startling image
if you watch any racing too, when people just pull
into the pit and they get swarmed by their staff,

(09:04):
And like the idea that you would pull in, get
out of your car, check it up, do all the
work yourself, and then get back in is astonishing well.
And it's like it it doesn't sound like that too
big of a job to say that you both own
the car and drive it, But like driving in the
race is a physically grueling experience, and that a lot

(09:24):
of times you're going hundreds of miles in a night,
you're also driving to the track, which a lot of
times was hours away from where he lived, where he
had been the night before, and then where an owner
of the car would usually be the person who was
responsible for arranging the maintenance and for doing the publicity
and for basically managing the whole enterprise. Like he was
doing that also, and it was a ton of work.

(09:44):
It was exhausting. It sounds exhausting, and I'm exhausted just
thinking about it. And on top of all of that,
Scott was at a perpetual disadvantage because of the cars
he was driving. The cars that the factory sponsored teams
were driving kept getting better and better, and even the
drivers who weren't sponsored by an automaker often had some
kind of sponsorship or financial backing or just money of

(10:07):
their own. They were still driving relatively new vehicles that
were well equipped to perform in whichever class of race
they were made for. But Scott had none of this.
Most of his cars were once he bought from other
drivers and teams after the end of the season when
they were being replaced with newer models. Regardless, though, Wendell
Scott actually did really well in his first NASCAR season.

(10:29):
He wound up in nineteenth place in his class nationally
among almost two thousand drivers. And we're going to talk
about Scott's rookie season in racing in NASCAR's top tier
after a sponsor break. So in his first few years
of NASCAR races, Wendell Scott was driving unmodified cars, generally

(10:52):
building up his record and getting more and more coverage
in the media as the media started to pay more
attention to NASCAR. He was driving in the lower class
of races that was not quite as prestigious and didn't
have quite as much competition. In nineteen fifty nine, he
won twenty two races in his class, including the Virginia
State Championship, and this when gave him a guaranteed spot

(11:15):
plus paid expenses at the newly opened Daytona International Speedway.
He built a nineteen fifty three Ford to take to
this two fifty mile race, which took place on February
nineteen sixty. At that race, he wound up in a
huge pile up. He dodged several wrecked cars before swerving

(11:35):
so hard that he rolled over several times. The race
was stopped, but at that point thirty six of the
seventy three competing cars had been wrecked. While officials cleared
the track of wreckage, Scott and his sons repaired his
car so that he could keep going once the race
started again. This included popping out the rear window of
the car to replace the shattered front windshield. Scott's engine

(11:59):
blew before this race was over, but the fact that
he had gotten his car going again and had tried
to finish the race after the red flag was lifted
without a pit crew to help him other than his kids,
really started to earn the respect of some of the
other drivers. This is where in the movie about his life,
I start crying because I'm like, go, man, go. At

(12:21):
this point, he thought he was ready to start trying
for the Grand Nationals. The Grand Nationals have had several
different names over the years, and today they're known as
the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, and for many years
they were the Winston Cup. Of all the various series
in NASCAR, this is the top tier, Scott got a
new car to try to improve his chances in this

(12:43):
more elite field of competition. The car was a Chevrolet
that he bought from Buck Baker, who had previously won
two Grand National championships. Scott paid for this car with
Moonshine money, and he drove it in his first race
on March fourth, nineteen sixty one. This was another big
milestone for NASCAR. For the first time, a black man

(13:04):
was driving in the organization's top tier of races, but
the organization, the announcers, and the promoters said nothing about it.
In several interviews given before this March fourth race, the
racist promoter didn't even mention Scott by name. On Race Today,
the announcer introduced him as W. D. Scott. Apart from

(13:25):
this lack of recognition, Scott faced increasing harassment when he
moved into the Grand the Grand National Series. Some of
it was from spectators and fans, everything from racist slurs
to actual death threats, but some of it was from
the racing officials and other drivers. There were still drivers
who intentionally ran into him or caused him to wreck

(13:46):
on the track. NASCAR inspectors would fail his car for
mechanical reasons that didn't exist, or for reasons that had
nothing to do with the car's safety or ability to
ability to drive, like having chips in the paint in April.
The car that Scott had bought from Buck Baker in
March literally tore itself in half during a race. It

(14:06):
turned out that cracks in the frame had been repaired
with body filler, something that Baker had claimed someone on
his team did without his knowledge. Scott responded to this
the way he responded to a lot of harassment and
other suspicious behavior that he encountered in the world of racing.
He said nothing about it. He kept his head down,
and he just didn't make it an issue. His place

(14:28):
in the world of NASCAR seemed so precurious that he
was wary of making waves or possibly provoking a racist backlash.
He missed his next two races while repairing the car.
One nineteen sixty one, Scott was turned away when he
tried to enter a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, he
was once again given no reason why he couldn't race.

(14:49):
This continued to happen at other tracks as well. Sometimes,
after Scott had spent a lot of time and money
getting there, he started trying to stick to races that
were closer to home or in were northern areas, with
the hope of not wasting his money traveling to an
event that he wouldn't be allowed to participate in, which
would then give him no way to recoup what he
has met getting there. Being turned away from races for

(15:12):
no valid reason happened over and over during Scott's career.
His application to drive in the Darlington Southern five hundred
that year was denied as well. There was language on
the entry form that said participants could be turned away
for any reason, but it was clear to everyone what
that reason was. Darlington was in an area that was
home to substantial Ku Klux Klan activity. Racial resentment was

(15:36):
flourishing in the face of the ongoing civil rights movement,
and strom Thurmond, the man who said, quote all the
laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army
cannot force the Negro into our homes into our schools,
our churches, and our places of recreation and amusement was
an honorary judge at that race. For years, Scott would

(15:56):
continue to be turned away every time he tried to
earn his Darlington stripes. In spite of being turned away
so many times, Scott was able to drive in twenty
three races and his rookie season at this level of
NASCAR five of those times, and it in top ten finishes.
If he'd had that record today, he might have been

(16:17):
named Rickie of the Year, which is an honor that's
now awarded based on which rookie has earned the most
points in NASCAR's top class. But at the time, officials
had to say and who was named as Rickie of
the Year, And even though the standings and the points
were a factor, it was ultimately really up to Bill
France Sr. And Scott's rookie season in the Grand National Series.

(16:39):
That honor went to Woodrow Wilson of Alabama, who had
driven in only five races and had one top ten finish.
Over the course of that season, Scott started to face
a little less hostility from the other drivers as they
saw how good he was both behind the wheel and
under the hood. They also realized that he was doing

(16:59):
all of this with his own money and no resources
and no financial backing. Apart from his winnings at the races.
They saw him get up and race well after sleeping
on the ground and eating a bag lunch, because there
were no hotels in the area that would let him
rent a room and no restaurants that would serve him.
In nineteen sixty three, Scott bought another new car, this

(17:20):
time one of Ned Jarrett's from the season before. This
was a much better car than what he had been driving,
but he was still at a huge disadvantage when compared
to the cars that the top racers had. Nineteen sixty
three was also a tumultuous year in the United States.
That's the year George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama
and held his infamous stand at the schoolhouse door. It's

(17:42):
when police used attack dogs and fire hoses on civil
rights marchers, some of whom were students. The Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church bombing took place in nineteen sixty three as well,
and Scott was driving in races and many of these
same places where these events happened or were happening he
made it a practice to always travel with someone since

(18:03):
it wasn't safe for a black man to travel through
a lot of this territory alone. On June, Scott's application
to race in Birmingham was denied because promoters quote didn't
want to cause trouble. This rejection led to one of
the more terrifying events in Scott's career. He raced even
though his entry had been denied, starting fifteen and finishing seventh,

(18:26):
and after the race was over, officials immediately ran to
his car, telling him to leave immediately. He later learned
that a group of spectators were allegedly on their way
to set his car on fire. Say allegedly because there's
just a lot of unanswered questions about this, like nobody
really knows how officials heard this, whether they contacted the police,

(18:47):
like who the people were that were supposedly planning this.
But regardless, he would leave immediately, but he did not
stop racing. And in nineteen sixty three he also earned
his only win at the Grand National level, and we
talk about that. After another sponsor break on December first,

(19:10):
nineteen sixty three, Wendell Scott earned his only Grand National
win of his career, This race was at Speedway Park
near Jacksonville, Florida, and he was hopeful that he would
do well on this track because the track itself seemed
like one that might give him an advantage over the
other drivers and their newer, faster cars. The track in
Jacksonville was dirt, which was a lot more common in

(19:32):
the sixties than it is now, and on top of that,
it wasn't particularly well maintained dirt. It tended to start
out full of potholes and gullies and only get worse
as the race went on. So Scott thought that all
those earlier years hauling moonshine on country roads and racing
on less than stellar dirt tracks at fairgrounds and stuff
like that might give him an edge. And he hoped

(19:55):
that if he placed well, he might get a sponsorship
from Ford Motor Company, which would finally give him access
to the same caliber of cars that his competition had.
His qualifying round and Jacksonville didn't go very well, even
though he was really used to driving fast on rough terrain.
The car was just too tightly sprung. It would hit

(20:15):
the ruts and potholes, and then corenem kind of uncontrollably
was just way too bouncy to handle at high speeds.
He finished fifteen out of twenty two, which meant his
starting position would be almost at the back of the pack.
There was no way he could rebuild his car before
the race itself, but nevertheless, he got under it and
he started looking around to see if he could think

(20:37):
of a solution that would make it handle better. And
what he finally decided to do was to take one
of the two shock absorbers off of each wheel, so
that he'd still have some cushioning, but not be so
tightly sprung that he just ricocheted off of every obstacle.
This worked incredibly well. When the race started, his car
was handling better than anyone else on the field, and

(20:58):
then on top of that, the other cars were bouncing
around so much, so much that a lot of the
drivers dropped out of the race because of damage in
their wheels, axles, and suspension. With more than twenty laps
to go, Scott was in second place behind Richard Petty,
and he was reluctant to try to pass him, although
he and Petty became friends. Petty had put him into

(21:19):
the wall at a race earlier in the same year,
but Petty's car was damaged by the road condition. Like
so many other drivers, he slowed down due to a
broken steering arm, and Scott easily got past him. But
the next time that Scott could see the scoreboard, which
had been showing him in second place, his name wasn't
on it anymore. The scoreboard was blank. Scott knew how

(21:43):
many laps there were to go, he knew he was
ahead of everyone else, and when he got to what
should have been the finish, the checkered flag did not drop.
He kept driving confused for two more laps, but when
the checkered flag did drop, it wasn't for him, it
was for Buck Baker. Scott was marked as coming in third.

(22:03):
There continues to be disagreement about exactly what happened. Scott
was completely confident that he had won the race, as
were some of the scorekeepers. Scorekeeping having a kind of
a weird way where somebody manually counted all of your laps,
and a lot of times a person manually counting all
of your laps was like a friend or family member,
like Buck Baker's wife was keeping score for him, and

(22:23):
a lot of times Wendell Scott's wife would keep score
for him, so there's this whole manual process. A lot
of the scorekeepers were like, no, um, Wendell Scott definitely
won this. A lot of the drivers who had started
the race but then had to drop out because of
mechanical problems were watching the race and also all knew
that Wendell Scott had won. The theories about why his

(22:46):
name had disappeared from the scoreboard and why he wasn't
recognized as the winner included that officials didn't want a
black man to win the race, or that officials didn't
want a black man to kiss the white beauty queen
who was always there and was traditionally kissed by the
winner when the trophy was presented. Meanwhile, NASCAR's position has

(23:09):
been that it was just an honest mistake, although that
doesn't really explain how the scoreboard that had showed him
in second place for so long suddenly displayed nothing. Eventually,
the mistake was corrected and Scott was given the one
thousand dollars prize money he was owed for the win,
but by that point the race was long over, the
media and the spectators were all gone. The real trophy

(23:33):
was gone too, and it has never been clear what
exactly happened to it. At the next official race in Savannah,
Scott was presented with the trophy of a sort that
you might give to a youth sports team for participating.
It wasn't personalized, and it said nothing about his win.
It was presented at a small ceremony at which the
focus was on how so many other drivers had dropped

(23:55):
out of the race, making it seem like that was
the only reason that Scott won. That same day in Savannah,
somebody cut one of Wendell Scott's tires in a way
that was almost certain to cause a wreck, but he
spotted the damage totally by coincidence while doing some breakwork
before the race started. In spite of this massive disappointment,

(24:17):
Scott kept racing in Charlotte. In nineteen sixty four, he
started in the fortieth position at the World six hundred
and ended in ninth, which was a record breaking finish
for someone so far back in the pack. That same year,
the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four made it
illegal for race officials in Darlington to keep denying him
entry because of his race. NASCAR officials have maintained that

(24:41):
Scott was always treated fairly and that they had no
knowledge of his being barred from Darlington. Also in nineteen
sixty four, Ned Jarrett suggested to Lei A. Coca, who
was then vice president of Ford Motor Company, that Ford
give Wendell Scott a car, and they did kind of.
It was older model that had been sitting out in

(25:01):
a field and had parts stolen off of it, which
Scott bought for a dollar and then put a lot
of work into fixing up himself. This, as was so
often the case, was a faster car than he had
been driving, but this mostly seemed like a way for
Ford to give him a car without angering racist fans
or seeming to sit to take a side in the

(25:23):
civil rights issue at Darlington. By nineteen sixty five, Scott
was ranked eleventh in the nation, and that year he
won twenty thousand dollars in prize money and was getting
almost as much applause as the top drivers when he
was introduced. But the late nineteen sixties were otherwise extremely
difficult for him. Technology had progressed to the point that

(25:44):
it was almost impossible for an owner driver to take
on a factory sponsored team, and Scott's own cars were
plagued with serious mechanical problems. He also had multiple other
incidents where like by his count and his scorekeepers count,
he should have been in the top three, but instead
he was recorded as being farther down, skipping ahead just

(26:08):
a bit. In nineteen seventy two, at the age of fifty,
he was supposed to be part of a big publicity
stunt where he would be given a high performance car
to race, one that was actually on par with what
the factory sponsored drivers had. This car was to be
provided by Junior Johnson, and there was a history of
other drivers having their first really big break in a

(26:28):
Junior Johnson car. But for some reason, he didn't get
a Junior Johnson car. He got a car that had
been rented from another team with a lower budget, and
it broke down before the end of the highly hyped race.
Junior Johnson has said that it was just a matter
of not being able to get Scott the kind of
car they wanted in time, that it was just a

(26:48):
regrettable lack of resources. But at the same time there
had been a lot of talk about whether he could
really handle a high performance car, and the person who
was responsible for actually sourcing the vehicle was someone who
had intentionally wrecked him repeatedly and had used racist language
around him during their time racing on the same tracks.

(27:09):
On May sixty three, Scott started in the Winston five
hundred at Talladega Superspeedway. He was trying to take his
one last big shot to try to get a big win.
He had sunk all of his money into a race
car that he thought could perform on par with the
other drivers, including mortgaging his house and borrowing money from

(27:30):
everyone he knew. This was a new Mercury built by
Home and Moody, which was a shop that had a
stellar reputation, which he had found for sale without an engine.
George Wallace was the races Grand Marshal, and several of
Scott's family were there at the race, including his sons
who were working in the pit crew, and a daughter

(27:50):
who had skipped her college graduation to come. The three
race saw one of the most famous accidents at Talladega Superspeedway.
Head of the race, at least one NASCAR executive cautioned
that they were fielding way too many cars and he
foresaw a massive pile up in the making. On the
ninth lap, one of the drivers blew an engine, which

(28:12):
spread oil along the track and sparked a pile up
that wrecked twenty one cars, putting nineteen of them out
of the race. Scott was caught up in all this,
but at first he thought he was okay. Another car
hit him and pushed him into the enfield, where it
seemed like he was out of the way of the
ongoing crash without all that much damage to his car.

(28:33):
But then another driver crashed into him hard. It damaged
the car beyond repair, and it injured him very badly.
He broke multiple ribs, his pelvis, both knees, and a leg.
He also got a gash in his arm that required
sixty stitches. His sons, who were in the pit, did
not see what had happened. When another driver drove in,

(28:53):
they asked where their father was, and that driver told
them that he was dead. Scott was immediately taken to
the hospital and he was hospitalized for more than a month,
and although he did drive in a few more races
after he was off of crutches, this effectively ended his
racing career. He had had a hundred and forty seven
top ten finishes out of his four hundred nine starts

(29:15):
in the Grand National Series. He went back to try
to earn a living as a mechanic, and he started
spending more time working with New Hope Baptist Church. Although
fans raised money to help him cover his hospital bills,
it took him nine years to pay off the car bill.
France Senior had retired from NASCAR at this point and
had served with George Wallace's presidential campaign in Florida. He

(29:39):
offered compensation to all the wreck drivers at Talladega that day,
trying to offset the cost of their damaged or destroyed cars.
When he came around to talk to the drivers, Scott
was already at the hospital. He never had that conversation.
The France family did contribute fifteen hundred dollars to his
medical bills, according to family records, and Richard Petty, who
they had actually become quite clo as friends, contributed five

(30:01):
hundred dollars that fifteen hundred dollars would not have really
even made a dent, and how much the car cost,
like he had gone at least twenty two dollars in
debt paying for it. In nine seventy seven, Wendell Scott
was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame. In
that same year, he consulted on the movie Greased Lightning,
which started Richard Pryor and Pam Greer. It was a
fictionalized biography drama based on Scott's racing career. This is

(30:26):
another moment whereas I was doing this and I said
at the top of part one that when I was
watching Timeless, I had a stop right there, stop the presses,
we have to do a podcast episode. Um, all the
various articles that I was reading all just sort of
said blah blah blah during Richard Pryor seven, and then
I got to the one that said Richard Pryor and
Pam green Er, and I was like, stop, stop right there.

(30:48):
I need to go find this movie. And to be candid,
I have not watched the movie because I needed to
finish writing this podcast. Uh. But as soon as I
heard that it was that it was both Richard Pryor
and Pam Greer, I was like, I gotta check this
thing out. Wendell Scott died of spinal cancer on December
twenty three. Other drivers and racing personalities auctioned off memorabilia

(31:13):
to help pay for his treatment and care. He was
inducted into a number of other halls of fame after
his death, including the National Sports Hall of Fame, the
International Motor Sports Hall of Fame, and the National Motor
Sports Press Association Hall of Fame. In ten he became
the first black man to be inducted into the NASCAR
Hall of Fame. Although NASCAR has launched diversity initiatives in

(31:37):
more recent years, it would be decades before the organization
had another full time black driver. In January of Darryl
Wallace Jr. Known as Bubba, became NASCAR's first full time
black driver in its top series since Wendell Scott. If
you want to learn more about Wendell Scott, I highly
recommend the book Hard Driving The Wendell Scott Story by

(31:59):
Bryan and Donovan. It is extremely good. Just a heads
up there is a lot of racist language in it
because of what it's talking about and when uh, it
is pretty widely available. I was able to find it
in the public Library network here in Massachusetts. Um Also,
one of the points that Brian Donovan makes is that

(32:21):
for so much of Wendell Scott's racing career, it was
happening during the Civil rights movement. In places that the
Civil Rights movement was really active, and there was a
lot of white backlash against the Civil rights movement. Like
people today lionized Martin Luther King Jr. But in a
lot of places that the Civil Rights movement was was

(32:43):
demonstrating and protesting, like people hated him, and they hated
the Civil Rights movement. They hated everything that it stood for.
And the fact that Wendell Scott was a black man
that the white audience of NASCAR started rooting for was
a really big deal. Uh. And his his contention is
that Wendell Scott did more to help race race relations

(33:07):
in these like very conservative parts of the South then
like the more active work that was about trying to
change the system. It was like for a lot of people,
this was the first time they saw a black man
who they respected and who they wanted to do well,
and who in a lot of cases they would literally
cheer cheer for when he bested white drivers. UM. So

(33:31):
it is an amazing story, and I'm really glad he
was on an episode of Timeless, Otherwise I don't think
I would have known. I don't think this is somebody
that um that listeners have have written to us to
ask for I'm going to be honest that I did
not search the whole list to see but like the
first time I ever remember seeing his name was on Timeless,
and everybody that I've talked to about this episode while

(33:51):
working on it has been like, I'm sorry, what there
was a black NASCAR driver during the Jim Crow era? How?
How was this possible? I all to have some listener mail.
This is from Robin uh. It is about our Ignat
simil Vice episode, and it's one of a couple of
letters that we got about the thing that we said
at the end um about hospital acquired infections still being

(34:14):
a major problem and still being connected to handwashing. We
know there are a lot of other reasons for hospital
acquired infections, and Robin's letter says, I've been listening to
your podcast for about four years and I'm always recommending
it to my colleagues. I am a visiting hospice nurse,
so I have lots of time to listen to your
podcast while driving to patients houses or to visit them

(34:35):
in the hospital. I loved the episode about Ignace simil Vice,
and it resonated with me when you mentioned that it
drove him crazy that people wouldn't wash their hands because
it was literally killing women when they didn't. Hospital workers
are struggling with a similar issue now that makes us
all pull our hair out because our patients are literally dying.
To stop the spread of hospital acquired infections, we sometimes

(34:58):
place patients with known infect sens on contact precautions, as
these type of infections will spread like wildfire among our
immuno compromised patients, those on chemotherapy, the very old, and
the very young. There is a sign outside their room
and instructions on what to wear when you go. In
Most of the times this includes a big yellow apron
called a gown, gloves, and sometimes a mask. All of

(35:21):
these items should be taken off and disposed of as
soon as you leave the room, and there's a garbage
can at the door. Nothing should be taken out of
the room until the patient is discharged, as this is
considered contaminated. This is not to protect that specific patient
as they already have the infection, and many times it
is not to protect the healthcare workers because their immune
systems would fight off the infection. This is to prevent

(35:43):
the spread of infection to other patients. Many times well
meeting family members will not understand the precautions and enter
the room without a gown because they don't feel like
wearing one. Other times we see family members going in
and out of the rooms wearing the gown and and
inadvertently touching things in the hallway. One time on our floor,
a family member was consistently bringing a water picture out

(36:04):
of the patient's contact precautions room to refill it at
the common water dispenser and repeatedly dismissed to the healthcare
team's instructions not to do that. She sated she was
just helping the nurses out the infection. This patient had
a type of severe diarrhea spread throughout the unit, and
the water dispenser was cultured and found to be contaminated.
While I know this seems like such a hassle to

(36:25):
wear a gown in gloves, if there is a sign
on the patient's door that says to do this, we
implore everyone to do it. People are literally dying because
well meeting visitors don't follow the rules. I just wanted
to say that out there as a big thing everyone
can do in hospitals to prevent infection. Again, thank you
for four years of edutainment, serving as the gateway podcast
too many other fantastic shows. Robin, thank you so much,

(36:47):
Robin number one for doing work that I know. I
know people who work in hospice care and how that
can be a challenging and simultaneously rewarding role, and it's
such important work for people who really need that kind
help and support. And also for providing us with this
little p s A about how listeners can help prevent
the spread of infection if they go to visit loved

(37:08):
ones in the hospital. If you would like to write
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(37:28):
have recently announced some live shows and there is a
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You will also find a list of all the episodes
We've ever done, which is also a searchable archive, and
um show notes for all the episodes of Holley and
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at miss in history dot com, and you can find

(37:49):
and subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, google Play,
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and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
M hm, m hm,