Stock car racing has “quite a mountain to climb” if it is to become a diverse sport in which more minorities compete – and watch - at the top level, according to the family of the first African American driver to make it into the Nascar Hall of Fame.  Wendell Scott stands out in history, not just as the first black driver to win a premier series race – but the only one.  His sole victory, in 1963, was the peak of a career pursued in the face of death threats from the public, sabotage from other drivers and cheating officials who initially awarded his win to a white driver two laps behind him.  Scott was posthumously elevated into the Nascar Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina, in an induction ceremony on Friday evening.  “My father won, but they wouldn’t drop the checkered flag until two other drivers had finished,” said Frank Scott, 67, one of Wendell Scott’s surviving sons, who worked on his father’s pit crew as a child.  “My father protested the result and many hours later, when the crowds were gone, the other cars were gone, the reporters were gone – even the trophy was gone – they had checked the scorecards and they came over and said, ‘Guess what, you won the race’, and gave him his cheque. But he never got the trophy.”  Wendell Scott was forced to end his racing career not long after that victory in Jacksonville, Florida, thanks to a combination of injury and lack of funds. He died of cancer in 1990.  Frank Scott said stock car racing was becoming more multi-racial among drivers and fans, but agreed that it is still a “very, very white” sport in need of more diversity.  “It’s pretty far behind right now. I don’t know how long they [the sport] will need to catch up, I’m hoping it will not be as long as it’s been but it’s still a ways before someone reaches the stature of a Hall of Famer. It’s quite a mountain to climb,” he said.  Scott is encouraged by the progress of youngsters such as Darren Wallace Jr, who has yet to reach the elite level but is regarded, at 21, as a star on the rise.  “I’m not denigrating Nascar,” he said, referring to the sport’s governing body, the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. He pointed more at lack of vital sponsorship that enables drivers to compete in such an expensive sport.  “I’m hoping that, moving forward, there will be an appreciation for more inclusion and diversity in the sport and equal opportunity in the sponsorship of cars,” he said.  Only around 40 drivers compete at the elite level, the Sprint Cup Series. None of them are African American. Scott thinks that would be different if his father had had a longer career and had been around and involved in the sport until more recently.  His sister Sybil, now 60, was also very involved as part of the family team. She is now a consultant to Nascar’s Drive for Diversity programme, which aims to attract more women and minorities into the sport both in the crowd and behind the wheel.  When Wendell Scott was roaring around the speedway in the 1950s, there were more women competing than black men, Sybil Scott recalled.  “I’m feeling positive about progress. I used to have the urge to race myself, but I never did,” she said.  She recalls growing up more scared that her father would be lynched by racists off the track – in a time of segregation and fierce civil unrest – than that he would die in a race. Frank Scott said his father would turn up at races and hear death threats had been made against him, usually by fans.  “He would race anyway. He would get threats, he would have the tyres of his car slashed or other damage, probably by other drivers. He would race anyway. Daddy would say if I leave in a pine box, that’s what I gotta do.”  Wendell Scott bought his own second-hand cars and made use of spares from other drivers. It was not a time of glittering sponsorship or prize money. But he struggled more than most drivers and put his winnings right back into his cars.  Frank Scott recalls another sister, Deborah, learning mechanics alongside him as they worked on their father’s car. To this day she works on a Ford assembly line.  Wendell Scott’s wife, Mary, drove the truck that carried his car and the couple and their seven children would go to races. Sybil said that sadly, Mary, now 91, was too ill to attend the Hall of Fame event.  The Scott children grew up in Danville, Virginia, and some still live there. But none of the children went into stock car racing.  Frank Scott recalled that his father later explained to his family why he had been deprived of his win in Jacksonville.  A local beauty queen would traditionally kiss the winner. She was white. For her to kiss a black driver would have provoked a scandal – or something more serious.  “It would have been life-threatening for my father to have been saluted as the winner in that way. And I guess she would probably have been stigmatised, too” he said.  By the time his father was awarded the victory he had plainly won, the beauty queen had gone home as well as the fans and almost everyone else.  Wendell Scott finished his career 37th in the all-time series standings. He made 495 starts in elite races and had 147 top-10 finishes. He achieved these figures despite having been barred from competing on some tracks.  In 2013, his home town erected a historical marker which reads: “Persevering over prejudice and discrimination, Scott broke racial barriers in Nascar.”  On the occasion of his induction into the sport’s Hall of Fame, a Nascar statement paid warm tribute to Scott’s “singular purpose” in racing, and winning, against the odds.
The only black driver to win a premier race wasn’t allowed a trophy or a kiss from a beauty queen. His children are working with Nascar to diversify the sport