Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880-1900: A Story of Race, Sport, and Society

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Description

From 1877 to 1896, the popularity of bicycles increased exponentially, and Boston was once in on it from the start. The Boston Bicycle Club was once the first within the nation, and the city’s cyclists formed the nucleus of a new national organization, the League of American Wheelmen. The sport was once becoming a craze, and Massachusetts had the largest per capita membership within the league within the 1890s and the largest percentage of women members. Several prominent cycling magazines were published in Boston, making cycling an issue of press coverage and a growing cultural influence in addition to a type of recreation.

Lorenz J. Finison explores the remarkable rise of Boston cycling throughout the lives of several participants, including Kittie Knox, a biracial twenty-year-old seamstress who challenged the color line; Mary Sargent Hopkins, a self-proclaimed expert on women’s cycling and publisher of The Wheelwoman; and Abbot Bassett, a longtime secretary of the League of American Wheelman and a vocal cycling advocate for forty years. Finison shows how these riders and others interacted at the road and of their cycling clubhouses, ceaselessly constrained by issues of race, class, religion, and gender. He reveals the challenges facing these riders, whether cycling for recreation or racing, in a time of segregation, increased immigration, and debates in regards to the rights of women.

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