INDIANAPOLIS — The tale of Charlie Wiggins, then known as “the Negro King of Speed,” goes something like this:
In the 1920s, Wiggins rose to prominence in Indianapolis as an expert mechanic and fearless driver. The auto garage owner built his own racing machines, which he called “Wiggins Specials,” and he dreamed of entering his cars in the Indianapolis 500.
But at the time, while Indianapolis was the Western Hemisphere’s epicenter of racing, it also was a hub of white supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan counted … More
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