By Tatiana Ponil

FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Wendell Oliver Scott Sr. (August 29, 1921 – December 23, 1990) was an American stock car racing driver. He was the first African-American driver and team owner to compete and win in all divisions of NASCAR at its highest level.

Scott began his racing career in local circuits in the late 1940s and obtained his NASCAR license in 1953, making him the first African-American ever to compete in NASCAR. He debuted in the Grand National Series (NASCAR highest level) on March 4, 1961, in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On December 1, 1963, he won a Grand National Series race at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Florida, becoming the first black driver and team owner to win at NASCAR’s premier level. Scott’s career was repeatedly affected by racial prejudice including being poisoned (Dover) and death threats (Spartanburg, Darlington, Talladega, Jacksonville, and Daytona). Despite these challenges he continued to compete and was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame & NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2015.

Scott was born in Danville, Virginia, a town dominated by cotton mills and tobacco-processing plants. Scott vowed as a youth to avoid such labor, and began learning auto mechanics from his father, who worked as a driver and mechanic for two well-to-do white families. Scott also raced bicycles against white children in the neighborhood. As a teen he dropped out of high school, became a taxi driver, and served as a mechanic in the segregated army in Europe during World War II. He married Mary Coles in 1943; they had seven children.

After the war, he ran an auto-repair shop. As a sideline, he took up the dangerous and illegal pursuit of running moonshine whiskey. The police caught Scott once, in 1949. Sentenced to three years probation, he continued making his late-night whiskey runs.

Scott’s wife, Mary, drove the truck that transported his car, and the pair and their seven children attended races. His daughter, Sybil, went on to become a consultant for NASCAR‘s Drive for Diversity campaign, which attempts to increase the number of women and minorities in the sport, both on the track and in the stands. His son, Wendell Jr., died in 2022.

The film Greased Lightning, starring Richard Pryor as Scott, was based loosely on Scott’s biography.

Only seven other African-American drivers are known to have started at least one race in what is now the Cup Series: Elias Bowie, Charlie Scott, George Wiltshire, Randy Bethea, Willy T. Ribbs, Bill Lester, and most recently Bubba Wallace.