Grease Monkey: Races, Racers, and Racism, Collide Head-On

Grease Monkey

Races, Racers, and Racism, collide head-on

A historical novel based on

the true life of Herschel B. Gulley

Steven G. Percifield and Herschel W. Gulley

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Grease Monkey

Races, Racers, and Racism, collide head-on

Copyright © 2010 by Steven G. Percifield and Herschel W. Gulley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-8064-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8065-5 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8066-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010919508

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 01/04/2011

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I

Chapter 1 (Mid-September 1909)

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part II

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 19

Chapter 21

Part III

Chapter 22

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26 (spring 1922)

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Part IV

Chapter 30—Spring 1925

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

About the authors

Gallery

Acknowledgements

The authors express their heartfelt appreciation to the following for their contributions of facts, review and encouragement:

To Sue and Sue (our respective wives) who encouraged us and permitted the time necessary to develop this book,

to Norbert Mindel, Pat Taylor, Michael Roberts, Fred McClintock and Don Wagner for their reviews, rough edits, and technical expertise,

to Charlie White (a riding mechanic at the 500) and Pop Dreyer (from whom Steve bought his first motorcycle in 1964 and who had a chrome plated midget Offy engine sitting in the front window of his motorcycle shop) for taking their time to fill his head with tales of the old days of auto racing,

to the friends and relatives who read the rough drafts and provided invaluable views of the trees from beyond the forest,

to the entire Gulley and Hill families for their remembrances of Herschel B., his relationships and his life,

but most of all, to Dad or Uncle Herschel as he was known to us respectively, for being the man he was, in a time and place where being so required the steel cajones that he possessed.

Introduction

The term

Muddy rivulets of sweat, dirt and grease flowing down their otherwise cherubic faces, grease monkeys were child laborers at the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Scampering around on beams and catwalks, they lubricated the bearings of overhead power transmission pulleys, falling to their deaths only occasionally. The term grease monkey eventually became synonymous with anyone doing any type of menial, dirty work.

Over time, the term fell into disuse. Until the advent of the automobile age, roughly coinciding with World War I, it had largely faded from the American lexicon.

WW I changed all of that: American doughboys—a name popularly applied to American infantry—didn’t simply go marching off to the trenches of World War I; in many cases they drove or were driven. Automobiles, trucks, tanks and motorcycles changed the ways in which wars would be fought forever after. Strategy and tactics were transformed almost overnight. Suddenly newfound speed and mobility, provided by things automotive, became inseparable from firepower.

But speed and mobility were only as good as the dependability of the machines that provided them—and in the second decade of the 20th century, that dependability wasn’t good.

Typically, military motor pools were managed under the command of a junior officer. Their day-to-day operations, though, were generally under the directions of a non-commissioned officer. The non-com, typically a master sergeant, was also (usually) a master mechanic. With an intuitive feel for things mechanical, bolstered by the best technical training the military could provide at the time, the sergeant in charge of motor pools could rebuild anything with anything, could troubleshoot with the best of them and was an expert in preventive maintenance.

But things automotive at the time were far different animals than today. Tune-ups were mechanically complex. Typically, tune-ups involved spark plug removal, disassembly of the plugs, cleaning, reassembly and gapping, or replacement; mechanical ignition components required cleaning, rebuilding or replacement; engine timing needed to be re-set; replacement of magnetos were likely necessary; carburetor cleaning, rebuilding and re-tuning was a given; filters and ignition wires were replaced; replacement of V belts or checking and adjusting of gear lashes was necessary; and checking and re-tightening of myriad nuts, bolts and fasteners which shook loose or broke, were a given. And this was just the engine; the rest of the drive train, steering, suspension and chassis required comparable diligence when due. And due occurred a lot more often—just a few hundred miles or less between tune-ups was necessary.

The segregated racial climate of the time affected the ways in which tasks were divided in the military as in civilian life. For white enlistees, being in the military could mean that almost any path was open, depending on one’s aptitudes.

For Negroes as African-Americans were politely referred to at the time, serving in the military was likely to mean just that: as a waiter in an officers club or as a cook in a mess hall, behind closed doors, or in some menial labor capacity.

It was extremely rare for a black man to see combat duty beside his white counterparts and black officers were virtually unknown. The four segregated units in the Army at that time—the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Calvary—never went to Europe but patrolled the US-Mexican border instead. Germany had made the courtship of Mexico a diplomatic priority by offering the return of the Southwestern United States as a future dowry, presupposing Germany’s ultimate victory. The border patrols spent agonizingly long, boring hours in the southwestern desert sun guarding against the extremely unlikely event of an invasion by Mexico. Their only glory was to be found in the shooting of an occasional rattlesnake just to break the boredom.

Of the 200,000 blacks who were deployed to Europe, it is estimated that as few as 40,000 were in combat roles, and those were in exclusively black units—the Ninety-second and Ninety-third Divisions. Although blacks made up around 13 percent of WW I Army manpower, they comprised less than ¾ of 1% of the officer corps.

Military garages were, however, one of the places that blacks’ behind the scenes presences were deemed acceptable. Here too, though, a racial pecking order was enforced. Diagnostic, tune-up and top-end work typically fell into the hands of white soldiers. Dirty, bottom work (oil changes, bearing replacement, transmission and rear-end work, chassis lubrication) was in many cases passed down to black underlings. This dirty work was often performed while laying on their backs, in the dirt, beneath a vehicle, while oil and grease ran down their arms or dripped onto their faces and bodies.

Grease monkey became a racial slur, derogatorily applied to Negro mechanics in the military garages of WW I, before being popularly applied as a slang reference to any automotive mechanic.

Post War

Following the Armistice, the black mechanics who had kept the wheels of the armed forces rolling through Europe returned with their war-honed skills to a homeland in which motor vehicles were rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception.

The great black migration from the rural South to the industrial North was just in its infancy. Accordingly, the homes to which most of the grease monkeys returned were in the South’s hinterlands. Roadside garages, owned and operated by African-American mechanics, became relatively common there. As is the case with gear-heads to this day, speed competitions between them became a natural outgrowth of their mechanical aptitudes and interests.

As the great black migration from the South grew from trickle to torrent, it swept many of these mechanics—with their mechanical skills and love for racing—along with it.

Segregation at that time, however, was a fact of life and—in many places—a fact of law. In virtually all areas of the South and in many parts of the North, blacks were kept separated from white society or banned entirely. The American Automobile Association—the premier auto race governing body in the United States at the time—refused to sanction black drivers. In many cases, tracks even barred black spectators or confined them to separate negro seating areas.

Unable to participate in major racing, African-Americans with a passion for speed started their own sanctioning body. Similar to Negro League baseball (and equally under-publicized at the time, except within the Colored communities) an African-American automobile racing sanctioning body—the Colored Speedway Association—was formed in Indianapolis but rapidly gained national stature. Its premier event—the Gold & Glory Sweepstakes—attracted the best black car drivers, owners and builders in the nation.

But not all whites at that time were indifferent to the situation of blacks in general, or to their situation regarding automobile racing.

Ford had a better idea

Henry Ford, credited with putting America on wheels, did so by incorporating two basic manufacturing tenants; standardization of parts and assembly-line production.

With standardized parts strategically placed along a production line, a car could literally take shape, as it was moved from one parts station to the next, emerging at the end of the line as a completed vehicle ready for delivery to a dealer. All that was required for manpower in the assembly process was an employee capable and trained to perform a limited number of tasks; attach a steering wheel to the end of the steering shaft, for instance or mount wheels in place.

The costs of constructing automobiles in this manner declined as the production efficiencies of assembly lines increased. This allowed Ford to increase his employees’ wages and his own profits, even as he reduced the prices he charged for his cars.

When first announced, Ford’s $5 per day wage was earth-shattering—typical factory work at that time paid only a fraction of this amount. But the escalation of wages paled in comparison to the de-escalation of Ford’s Model T prices. Introduced in 1908 with a price of $950, the efficiencies yielded by Ford production eventually dropped new Model T prices to as low as $260. This lowering of prices further expanded Ford’s potential market and sales. Automobiles, rather than being the exclusive province of the wealthy, were rapidly replacing horses and horse-drawn wagons for all Americans.

A free-thinker in many areas, Ford claimed that his goal was to pay his employees enough that they, too, could afford to purchase an automobile. Whether this was altruism on Ford’s part or simply a winning public relations position, is debatable. What is not debatable is that between 1909 and 1927, the years before, during and after WW I, Ford produced around 15 million Model T’s in various configurations—a large share of which were purchased by the expanding middle class his own commerce helped to produce.

The manpower required to produce this huge volume of automobiles promptly exceeded the available manpower in Southeast Michigan. Ford’s needs could only be met by attracting workers from other parts of the country and the world. The gears of industry, in this case, meshed nicely with the major black migration to the industrial North, already underway. The opportunity to work for Ford for high wages, at a time when many industries refused to even hire Negroes, became a veritable Siren song, calling them to Detroit. At a time when African-Americans were virtually invisible to other American employers and even more-so to American marketers, Ford recognized them as both an important manpower source and—possibly even more important to him—as an expanding and important potential market.

Detroit, however, was not the only Northern industrial center beckoning to migrating blacks. At that time, the city was years away from becoming the auto manufacturing Mecca it would become. There was another city, farther south in the Midwest that was—before the Model T hit its zenith—the car manufacturing center of the country…and, likely, that of the entire world.

Over 250 makes and models of automobiles came from the factories and shops in and near this one city. That city was so enamored of its auto industry that the owner of its leading newspaper and two other prominent businessmen, partnered to build the worlds’ largest speedway there in 1906 to provide a test track for local auto manufacturers.

That city was Indianapolis. The state was Indiana.

The Ku Klux Klan was literally running the state by 1929 when a photograph was taken there. It was an old, panoramic photo; black and white, perhaps 6" tall and two feet wide. Its glossy surface was marred by cracks, attesting to its age and one corner was dog-eared from the ravages of packing years before. Its white reverse side was yellowed from years of contact with air and humidity, and was stained by water spots from some long-past carelessness. Herschel W. Gulley first showed it to me in 1983; my wife’s cousin, he was visiting us during a business trip to the Chicago area.

The photo

The subject matter of the obviously-professional shot was incongruous with the time and place in which it was taken: 60 men, 38 African-American and 22 of apparent European ancestry, some standing some kneeling, in front of a large grandstand. Of those in the front row kneeling, 20 were men of color, all with leather headgear looking like vintage football helmets. But they weren’t football helmets; these men were auto racers.

Typical of the segregation of the time, most of the white men in the photo stood in one large group together. Others were in another small group. The remaining two, stood apart, separately among African-Americans.

The script at the bottom of the photo identified the surroundings and authenticated the age of the photo; the script was in the reversed-out white letters that occurred when a black fountain pen was used to identify a photographic negative—when the picture was printed, the black ink reversed out as white letters. The script read: Drivers, Owners & Mechanics 100 Mile Race Fair Grounds Indianapolis Ind. July, 4 1929, phto Harris Bros Studio (sic).

To anyone familiar with the Indiana State Fairgrounds on the Northeast side of Indianapolis, the grandstands—from trackside—would be recognizable even today. To fans of vintage motor racing several persons were identifiable.

In the front row kneeling, Charlie Wiggins, the Negro Speed King, was easily recognized among the drivers. Johnny Gleason, a skilled though (at that time) inexperienced black racer was there too. Also kneeling, at one side of the front row, was a white man—Charlie White, in fact—one of the Indy 500’s last riding mechanics. Until his death he ran a one-bay garage on Roosevelt Avenue in the Brightwood section of Indianapolis.

And off to the right, in the back row, away from the other white men, stood a slender young man—Herschel B. Gulley— who had made such a name for himself as an owner-driver on the Midwest dirt track racing circuit, that he had been considered a shoo-in to race in the 500 at the Speedway earlier that year. His car, prepared by him and his partner-mechanic Johnny Gleason (one of the African-Americans in the front row of the picture) was to be driven by Johnny that day at the fairgrounds.

Herschel’s son, Herschel William as he was known to the family, was visiting us that day in 1983 and showed me the photograph which he carried in the trunk of his car.

How Herschel Gulley, Johnny Gleason and this disparate group of men came to be in this picture together, at that time when segregation and the Klan ruled in Indiana, is a story unto itself.

Part I

From farm wagon to Motor Speedway

Chapter 1 (Mid-September 1909)

It was the twelfth time in Herschel’s life that the trees had started changing colors. The days were still warm but nights were becoming so cool that he slept behind closed windows under a pile of blankets.

He’d watched in wonder, each time the fall came to Central Indiana, trying to understand the mechanics of it all. The way the trees grew and flourished, then shed their leaves and seemingly died, only to be re-born again the following spring fascinated him. What was the process, he wondered, that made it all happen?

Herschel ran to the barn to help his dad hitch Jenny to the wagon. His dad, he knew, was not well. He’d been sick for what seemed