{"id":132144,"date":"2017-05-26T10:23:49","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T17:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=132144"},"modified":"2017-05-26T10:23:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T17:23:49","slug":"why-arent-there-any-black-drivers-in-the-indy-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=132144","title":{"rendered":"Why aren&#8217;t there any black drivers in the Indy 500?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"exclude-from-newsgate\">INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 <\/span>The tale of Charlie Wiggins, then known\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cthe Negro King of Speed,\u201d goes something like this:<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cWiggins Specials,\u201d and he dreamed of entering his cars in the Indianapolis 500.<\/p>\n<p>But at the time, while Indianapolis was the Western Hemisphere\u2019s epicenter of racing,\u00a0it also was a\u00a0hub of white supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan counted\u00a0\u00a0 &#8230;\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indystar.com\/story\/sports\/motor\/2017\/05\/24\/why-arent-there-any-black-drivers-indy-500\/340775001\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">More<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stoked News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 The tale of Charlie Wiggins, then known\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cthe Negro King of Speed,\u201d 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 \u201cWiggins Specials,\u201d and he dreamed of entering his cars in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automobile","category-formula-1-indy-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132145,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132144\/revisions\/132145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}