28 replies to this topic

[HistoryFan]

I often read about the first years of NASCAR in the 20s/30s were very wild with some shady race promoters.

I know the history of the bootlegger and moonshine, but alongside that topic: Are there any nice anecdotes or examples to figure out this time a bit more?

[Michael Ferner]

Others will no doubt chime in with more knowledge, but NASCAR was formed in 1948 or thereabouts. Whatever you read about NASCAR in the 20s/30s is bonkers!

[HistoryFan]

Yes, the NASCAR organisation was founded then, but there were some stock car races/race promoters before which were put together to NASCAR by Bill France.

[FLB]

Then, it's not NASCAR  Do you mean stock car races in general?

 

NASCAR has sort of become a generic name for stock car racing, but it's a sanctioning body much like the FIA is today or the AAA Contest Board was in the US at the time.

 

If you want to read a good (IMHO) about the early pre-NASCAR days, I'd recommend Driving with the Devil, by Neal Thompson.

Edited by FLB, 19 July 2016 - 10:57.

[HistoryFan]

yes that's what I mean.

[DCapps]

If you want to read a good (IMHO) about the early pre-NASCAR days, I'd recommend Driving with the Devil, by Neal Thompson.

 

Nooooooo! As entertaining and readable as the Thompson might be, along with with occasionally stumbling into getting some things (almost) correct, it is not much to brag about regarding its ability to get things correct in many cases. It is written by someone who is not a historian and it certainly shows in far too many instances. Although I have a number of qualms and quibbles with Dan Pierce's Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Bill France (UNC Press, 2010), he does a far better job than Thompson by any measure.

 

Randy Hall's two journal articles of early stock car racing, "Before NASCAR: The Corporate and Civic Promotion of Automobile Racing in the American South, 1903-1927" (The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXVIII, No. 3, August 2002) and "Carnival of Speed: The Auto Racing Business in the Emerging South, 1930-1950," (The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 3 (JULY 2007), pp. 245-275) are far superior to the Thompson book.

[raceannouncer2003]

Welcome back, Don.  Hope all is well.

 

Vince H.

[HistoricMustang]

Welcome back Mr. Capps.

 

Henry

[JacnGille]

Welcome back Mr. Capps.

[Henri Greuter]

Welcom and I hope to see you more often over here again mr. Capps.

 

Henri

[DCapps]

For a combined undergraduate/graduate class that I proposed, I developed a historiography for the origins of stock car racing as part of the planning and development for the class. Needless to say, the proposal never really got past the department chair's inbox despite some support from others in the department.

 

Here are just some of the books & articles that I looked at for the historiography, keeping in mind that my focus was on its origins and cultural issues:

 

Alderman, Derek H., Mitchell, Preston W., Webb, Jeffrey T., and Hanak, Derek, “Carolina Thunder Revisited: Toward a Transcultural View of Winston Cup Racing,” The Professional Geographer, 55, No. 2, 238-249.

 

Beekman, Scott, NASCAR Nation: A History of Stock Car Racing in the United States, Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2010.

 

Britt, Bloys and France, Bill, The Racing Flag: NASCAR – The Story of Grand National Racing, New York: Pocket Books, 1965.

 

Burt, William, The American Stock Car, St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing Company, 2001.

 

Butterworth, W.E., The High Wind: The Story of NASCAR Racing, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1971.

 

Chapin, Kim, Fast as White Lightning: The Story of Stock Car Racing, New York: The Dial Press, 1981.

 

Clarke, Liz, One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation, New York: Villard Books, 2008.

 

Daniel, Pete, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

 

Fielden, Greg, Forty Years of Stock Car Racing, Volume I, The Beginning, 1949-1958, Pinehurst: Galfield Press, 1998, Revised Edition, 1990.

 

Fielden, Greg, and the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, NASCAR Chronicle, Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, 2003.

 

Fielden, Greg, and the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, NASCAR: The Complete History, Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, 2007.

 

Girdler, Allan, Stock Car Racers: The History and Folklore of NASCAR’s Premier Series, Osceola, Minnesota: Motorbooks International, 1988.

 

Pillsbury, Richard, “Carolina Thunder: A Geography of Southern Stock Car Racing,” Journal of Geography, 73 (1974), 39-47, reprinted in George O. Carney, Fast Food, Stock Cars, and Rock-n-Roll: Place and Space in American Pop Culture, Lanham, Maryland: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995, 229-238.

 

Pillsbury, Richard, “A Mythology at the Brink: Stock Car Racing in the American South,” Sport Place: An International Journal of Sports Geography, 3 (1989), 3-12, reprinted in George O. Carney, Fast Food, Stock Cars, and Rock-n-Roll: Place and Space in American Pop Culture, Lanham, Maryland: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995, 239-248.

 

Shackleford, Ben, “Going National While Staying Southern: Stock Car Racing in America, 1949-1979,” PhD diss., Georgia Institute of Technology.

 

Shackleford, Ben, “NASCAR Stock Car Racing: Establishment and Southern Retrenchment,” David Hassan, ed., The History of Motor Sport, New York: Routledge, 113-131.

 

Thompson, Neal, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR, New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.

 

White, Ben, “The Formation of NASCAR,” Gary McCredie, ed., American Racing Classics, 1, No. 1 (January 1992), 6-13.

 

Wilkinson, Sylvia, Dirt Tracks to Glory: The Early Days of Stock Car Racing as told by the Participants, Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1983.

 

Wright, Jim, Fixin’ To Git: One Fan’s Love Affair with NASCAR’s Winston Cup, Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Edited by DCapps, 06 August 2016 - 02:12.

[Allan Lupton]

Yes, welcome back, and I hope we've kept this place reasonably sound in the meanwhile!

[HistoryFan]

wow that's a great list. I think I'll read some of them...

[DCapps]

wow that's a great list. I think I'll read some of them...

 

There are a number of other books and articles, such as those by Randy Hall that I listed earlier, but this is at least something of a start. Try taking a look at this, http://forums.autosp...shiners/?hl=aaa , which is really somewhat dated by now, but which might provide some additional food for thought.

[HistoryFan]

again thank you very much!

[mariner]

A lot has happened in the US South since NASCAR started for sure. I remember a US History professor telling me the biggest thing for the South was efficient air condtioning because it made large assembly type factories possible hence the arrival of auto companies etc. That finally created better paid manufacturing jobs.

 

That reminds me of a bit I read in a biography of, I think, Fireball Roberts. One of the drivers had a girl he liked who was a teacher. They stood outside her classroom talking to her , possible because the school like many Southern buildings pre aircon had no windows just blinds pulled right up up to let a breeze in. A lot has changed since then.

 

My faourite "wiild days" comment came from one older driver when Jeff Gordon got penalised for punching a fellow driver not to long ago.. " Hell" he said" in the early days everybody fought in the pits, drivers, mechanics, wives, everybody" !

Edited by mariner, 06 August 2016 - 17:34.

[DCapps]

Industrial movement into the region, especially for those such as textiles and then automotive assembly plants, certainly predated the use of air conditioning in such facilities. The introduction of air conditioning into the Southern region -- Southeast, Deep South, Southwest -- is a nice combination of cultural, technological, social, public, class, and labor history to name but a few aspects of its impact.

 

While there is, certainly, some validity to Jeff Gordon's comment, there is also very much to wary of, given the prevalence of exaggeration, mythologizing, and a certainly disregard for accurately reflecting reality that seems to stick to tales regarding the supposed past of southern stock car racing and NASCAR like flies to bull excrement and cow flop. That said, there is an undercurrent of violence in Southern sports, stock car racing being but one example, that cultural historians and sociologists are beginning to dig into.

[E1pix]

Well said... and regarding stated 'undercurrent,' IMHO it seems the War ending 151 years ago never quite did.

[BRG]

An interesting case of history being apparently written by the losers!

[DCapps]

Well said... and regarding stated 'undercurrent,' IMHO it seems the War ending 151 years ago never quite did.

 

 

An interesting case of history being apparently written by the losers!

 

Very much aided and abetted by such enablers as the what we refer to as the "Dunning School" interpretation of Reconstruction. I will spare you both the undergraduate and graduate versions of the discussion regarding the historiography of the War of the Rebellion and Reconstruction, in no small part due to my now being officially retired....

 

Similarly, I have often had the sensation that I was speaking to a brick wall (or other metaphor of your choice) when attempting to explain that: (a) Big Bill France did not invent stock car racing when he created NASCAR; (b) stock car racing did not originate in the South, being present in many areas of the country long before NASCAR; © that relatively few drivers were involved in the illegal liquor business, although the same might not necessarily be said for some of the promoters or car owners; or (d) that stock car racing did not originate in Stockbridge, Georgia, among other points, some obviously being repetitious.

[HistoricMustang]

Well said... and regarding stated 'undercurrent,' IMHO it seems the War ending 151 years ago never quite did.

Yes, it is half time:  Yankees 1 - Confederates 0

 

The second half us just beginning.

 

Ole Honest Abe's killings of 700,000+ American soldiers and civilians is again creeping into folks knowledge after being cleaned from History books. 

 

Social media if finally giving validity to the alternate and accurate view of that fight against Federal Tyranny for the soul purpose of money for Union Treasury.

 

As far as the topic at hand............I grew up 2 miles from the former Augusta International Speedway/Raceway and had stock car blood flowing through my veins............we at least I did until 1991 when big money began flowing into the sport.

 

Black drivers and even ladies where involved before Bill France "solidified" stockers into NASCAR.

 

And, once again.......welcome Don..........and, I still owe you a beer.

 

Henry 

 

 https://en.wikipedia...ing_Complex.jpg

[E1pix]

Your 'half time' comment is more than worrisome...

[Jim Thurman]

Industrial movement into the region, especially for those such as textiles and then automotive assembly plants, certainly predated the use of air conditioning in such facilities. The introduction of air conditioning into the Southern region -- Southeast, Deep South, Southwest -- is a nice combination of cultural, technological, social, public, class, and labor history to name but a few aspects of its impact.

 

While there is, certainly, some validity to Jeff Gordon's comment, there is also very much to wary of, given the prevalence of exaggeration, mythologizing, and a certainly disregard for accurately reflecting reality that seems to stick to tales regarding the supposed past of southern stock car racing and NASCAR like flies to bull excrement and cow flop. That said, there is an undercurrent of violence in Southern sports, stock car racing being but one example, that cultural historians and sociologists are beginning to dig into.

 

I didn't notice any quote from Jeff Gordon  . It's true that while it certainly has, did and still does occur, the amount of fighting and violence involved in stock car or short track racing is greatly exaggerated by some who feel it is all that goes on.

[Jim Thurman]

 

Similarly, I have often had the sensation that I was speaking to a brick wall (or other metaphor of your choice) when attempting to explain that: (a) Big Bill France did not invent stock car racing when he created NASCAR; (b) stock car racing did not originate in the South, being present in many areas of the country long before NASCAR; © that relatively few drivers were involved in the illegal liquor business, although the same might not necessarily be said for some of the promoters or car owners; or (d) that stock car racing did not originate in Stockbridge, Georgia, among other points, some obviously being repetitious.

 

   While that's an interesting historiography list above, I wonder how the authors dealt with (b), stock car racing outside the South.

[DCapps]

   While that's an interesting historiography list above, I wonder how the authors dealt with (b), stock car racing outside the South.

 

Which, other than Pillsbury, a sports geographer, for instance, is one of the major issues that this sort historiographical approach tends to reveal: the lack of attention to stock car racing as a national sport. I should point out that the sources cited are but a sampling of the overall literature on the topic -- I have many more, but does give one a good idea as to where the attention tends to be focused. Indeed, this was one of the very issues that I think that needs to be examined in far more detail than it has been/is being given.

 

Alderman, Mitchell, Webb, and Hanak, who as cultural geographers, are perhaps more typical of the sort of approach and where a great deal of this sort of work is being done in recent years. Daniel and Wright are sociologists, by the way, while Beeker is is a historian (Uni. of Rio Grand in Ohio), Hall is at Rice University, Pierce at UNC-Asheville, and Shackleford got his doctorate at Georgia Tech from the Engineering department.

 

Again, there is much more out there, but not very much of it being produced by trained historians (which would include those with undergraduate or graduate degrees in history who are independent scholars/researchers as well as those working as members of history departments or as pubic historians), which suggests that there is much bouncing the rubble, but not a great deal of consideration being given to contextual issues. This tends to allow the Southern-centric focus regarding stock car racing, especially its origins, to continue to be repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and so on and on and on. (I could be snarky and suggest this is simply another example of how there is an inclination to bend history so to make it what Southerners wish it would rather than what it might actually have been, but as a trained, professional historian heaven forbid that I would even begin to suggest such a thing -- particularly in the light of what that paragon of truth and historical veracity, Social Media, might otherwise suggest....)

 

This issue of developing a historiography for the origins and development of stock car racing is one simply means of possibly challenging the generally accepted notions regarding the topic. Of course, there are those who are not inclined to accept this sort of approach, being quite content with the folklore, legends, and mythology for any number of reasons. However, at some point this and other topics related to automotive competition history will be examined, as some already are being, and the past will change.

[E1pix]

Just a quick "Welcome Back, Don."

We don't know each other but your name has sprung up numerous times in my five years here, and always in a good way. Now I see why.

[DCapps]

While I certainly lean in the direction of the "academics" when it comes to the writing and practice of history, that being a part of my background, there are those who definitely understand the historical method, the craft of research, the importance of citing sources -- such as bibliographies and footnotes, the importance of context, and the use of evidence in suggesting interpretations of the past and events who deserve to be considered as Historians regardless whatever their background. Period. This includes those who labor in the archives and those who are the "hands-on" types doing fieldwork. In various fields of historical inquiry, such as that of automotive competition, thanks to lack of interest and apathy on the part of those within the academic realm, these Historians have done the heavy lifting and the vast bulk of the serious scholarship and deserve recognition just as much as those who are part of the colleges and universities. I am trying to beat over the head at least as many of those that I can within the academic community to begin to catch up with those who have doing the work in this particular field. In the United States, stock car racing might serve as one topic of several that could be suggested to entice them to wade into the field.

[HistoricMustang]

Your 'half time' comment is more than worrisome...

It is meant to be...........torches are being gathered and stockpiled.

 

Henry 

[HistoricMustang]

Very much aided and abetted by such enablers as the what we refer to as the "Dunning School" interpretation of Reconstruction. I will spare you both the undergraduate and graduate versions of the discussion regarding the historiography of the War of the Rebellion and Reconstruction, in no small part due to my now being officially retired....

 

Similarly, I have often had the sensation that I was speaking to a brick wall (or other metaphor of your choice) when attempting to explain that: (a) Big Bill France did not invent stock car racing when he created NASCAR; (b) stock car racing did not originate in the South, being present in many areas of the country long before NASCAR; © that relatively few drivers were involved in the illegal liquor business, although the same might not necessarily be said for some of the promoters or car owners; or (d) that stock car racing did not originate in Stockbridge, Georgia, among other points, some obviously being repetitious.

Don, it was my understanding that stock car racing originated at the pool hall in Dawsonville.

 

Seriously,  former African-American stock car racing is intensely interesting. I believe that peak was in the early '40's...........please correct if wrong.

 

Wish I had more time to dig into the particularities.

Henry