An excerpt from The Brown Bullet 

Today, we are proud to share an excerpt from the forthcoming book written by Bill Poehler which is due out on May 5 entitled The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack's Drive to Integrate Auto Racing, that explores the life and career of  the African-American auto racing pioneer.

This excerpt from The Brown Bullet shares a story from 1937. 

"The rained‑out three‑hundred‑lap stock car race for the mile oval at Oakland Speedway was rescheduled for May 30, and Rajo had a better idea than putting his wife in his race car this time. Originally entered in a Dodge passenger car, Rajo managed to procure a Ford sedan delivery truck. The truck’s engine didn’t have the horsepower of the passenger cars entered, but it had another advantage.

Where most passenger cars of the day had a hard time surviving rutted and difficult dirt tracks like Oakland, a truck was one of the few vehicles capable of withstanding the pounding. Rajo removed the fenders and windshield of the truck—modifications allowed in the rules and common for the stock car class. 

The truck was nearly unrecognizable by the time he was done stripping it of its extraneous parts. And he painted the number 33 on the side. It was the first time in his career he used the number—the traditional number of starters in the Indianapolis 500—and it would become his trademark.

Oakland Speedway had a set of bathrooms for men and women in the infield. Though there were no signs the bathrooms were specifically for white people, it was assumed. But there were also no specific bath‑ rooms for black people. 

If Rajo or Herman Giles—who frequently traveled as Rajo’s mechanic—wanted to use the bathroom, they had to wait until the race was underway so it would be empty, and no one would see them use it. If there was a line for the bathroom, they would have to wait.

The Oakland race was minor in the racing world, but it was being billed as a national championship as Curryer was apt to do, and ten thousand fans arrived to bear witness. Joe Wilber led the other twenty‑ six drivers briefly from the pole position, but Duane Carter quickly passed him. 

On the fiftieth lap, a horse in the infield threw his rider and wandered onto the track through a gate mistakenly left open on the backstretch. The horse galloped along with cars down the backstretch for two hundred yards before being corralled and exiting uninjured.

On the fifty‑second lap, Ernie Criss—driving a Ford truck like Rajo’s—took over the lead, but Rajo passed him on the ninety‑third lap. Criss went back into the lead laps later and stayed there, though Rajo was never far behind. Criss pitted for fuel on lap 246, surrendering the lead to Rajo. 

Criss caught up to Rajo’s truck but blew a tire with twelve laps left, and Rajo’s lead extended to two laps in front of Les Dreisbach. Rajo slowed his pace greatly in the final laps and won after four hours and sixteen minutes.

“It should be called the Altamont Pass Sweepstakes. The trucks wouldn’t let the autos by,” purported IRS examiner John V. Lewis said.

The win was popular with Rajo’s fellow competitors, especially after his previous hard‑luck results at the track. And he took over the ARA lead with 730 points, ten more than Bay Area upstart Duane Carter.

Rajo’s win made headlines across the nation again, spreading throughout California and into places like Oregon, Montana, Nebraska, Hawaii, and Washington. Some in the press proclaimed it to be a victory for the working man over the idle rich. All Rajo cared about was that it put him closer to winning the ARA championship." 

Buy your copy of the The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack's Drive to Integrate Auto Racing  at your favorite bookseller. 

Indoor hardtop racing
in San Francisco

Part one

 

The Cow Palace shown during the nineteen fifties 

on a postcard from the author's collection

 

 

In early January 1955, multiple newspapers in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area began to publish articles about an upcoming series of indoor full-size stock automobile races to be held in the Cow Palace in San Francisco.  

The Cow Palace (known officially as the California State Livestock Pavilion), located seven miles south of downtown San Francisco in the Bayshore District, was first proposed based on success of the livestock pavilion at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition (World’s Fair).




After many years of planning, the final site near the San Francisco and San Mateo county boundary was selected and purchased in 1935. Construction began in the summer 1936 with funding from San Francisco and San Mateo counties supplemented with federal Public Works Administration (New Deal) funding.   

 

Photo of the interior of the Cow Palace shortly after completion from the book Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration by C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown. Photo appears courtesy of the Living New Deal program in the Department of Geography at the University of California.

 

The main structure, the Livestock Exhibition Building, was a reinforced concrete arena with a 6-acre steel arched truss roof designed by San Francisco architect Wilbur Peugh. With permanent seating for 12,000 visitors, construction of the arena was completed in February 1938 at a cost of $700,000. However, the complex, with a final project cost to $2.5 million, was not completed for several years and the first event in the Cow Palace, the Western Classic Holstein Show was held in the new arena on April 20th and 21st 1941.  

The Cow Palace complex was formally dedicated by Governor Culbert Olson during the opening ceremonies for the first Grand National Livestock Exposition on November 15 1941. The initial Grand National exposition was a huge success, with over 142,000 attendees, but three weeks later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States government requisitioned the Cow Palace.

Beginning in January 1942, for a rental cost of $1.00 a year, the Army used the Cow Palace as a processing center for troops prior to their deployment to the Pacific Theatre. Later in the war the Ordnance Corps used the facility as a vehicle repair center through 1946, with the second Grand National Livestock Exposition held in November 1946.

 

The Cow Palace arena shortly after completion in 1938 from the book Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies Between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration by C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown.

 

Photo appears courtesy of the Living New Deal  Program in the Department of Geography at the University of California.

 

The Cow Palace, owned and managed by the 1-A District Agricultural Association, a California State agency regularly held rodeos, horse and livestock shows, concerts, consumer shows and sporting events such as roller derbies, basketball games and boxing and wrestling matches.


The idea of indoor hardtop, or stock car, races was novel, and public interest was piqued on January 13 1955 when several Bay Area newspapers carried the announcement of the North California Indoor Hardtop Championships.

The races were scheduled be held every Saturday night for two months beginning February 12 1955 -  each night would feature qualifying and the 11-race program, scheduled for 50 cars each night, was sponsored by the Crown American Racing Club of San Francisco.


On February 2 1955 an article in the Oakland Tribune newspaper reported that an all-steel guardrail was being erected inside the Cow Palace “to afford greater safety for spectators” during the upcoming races, and noted that “more than 200 drivers have applied for entry for the national debut of indoor stock car racing.”

As the college basketball regular season wound down (the University of San Francisco used the Cow Palace as a home court for its biggest opponents), on Sunday February 6, the Oakland Tribune published an interview with Jack Smith managing director of the Oakland Racing Association (ORA), the group that would sanction the races. ORA appeared to have started during the 1954 season to sanction "stock hard top" racing. 

Smith revealed the roster of officials for the Cow Palace races, which was headed by Hillary Govia of Hayward as the referee, with Frank Vogel as the starter and the legendary BCRA Jack Carmedy the public address announcer while Mack (Mac) McGrete of Concord worked the timing clocks.


In the pit area, George Sweeney was the technical inspector with Bob Moss the pit marshal assisted by Steward Manuel Picanco and course clerks Harry Schilling, Tim Ahern and Bill Evans.  McGrete and Schilling had served of co-promoters of Oakland Speedway located near San Leandro during the 1954 season.

The article in the February 6th edition of the Oakland Tribune claimed that the 1/5-mile Cow Palace oval would be “the world’s fastest indoor paved speedway” and that “tests are being run to ascertain the best type of asphalt that will be applied in special areas on the paved speedway.”  The field of over 200 entries received would be winnowed “down to the fastest 50 cars" after a rigid screening and qualifying process by the Oakland Racing Association (ORA) board.”
 

During the week before the February 12 1955 inaugural race, the ORA released a partial list of entrants for the first night of the Cow Palace hardtop races. The list was topped by Ben Gregory of Crockett California whose given name was Gordon Campbell, raced under a nom de guerre to hide his racing activities from his employer, the California Highway Patrol.

 

In 1952, Gregory won $2,500 (equivalent to $23,000 today) for his victory in the 250-mile stock car race held on the Bay Meadows one-mile thoroughbred race track.  Gregory the day’s fastest qualifier took the lead with three laps to go in his 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 coupe.

Other entries for the first Cow Palace race included noted sports car racer Jack Flaherty of San Francisco, Joe Roletto, the 1954 American Racing Association (ARA) ‘big car’ champion, veteran San Jose Speedway hardtop racer Carmel Fernandez, and hot rod roadster racer George “Blonde” Pacheco, as well as drivers Dan Regan of Palo Alto, Joe Cairate from San Bruno, Glen Jensen of Menlo Park and Ted Hanning, Orval Rose, and Dave Davies, all of San Francisco.  

 

In our next installment we will reveal the results of the 1955 wintertime races in the Cow Palace.