Motivation Quote by Major Taylor

Major Taylor ends on a knife edge: a public thank-you that doubles as a survival strategy. “In closing” signals performance, the forced calm of a Black athlete speaking in a country that could cheer his victories and still deny his humanity. The phrase “sorely beset” is old-fashioned restraint doing heavy lifting. He’s not naming the full inventory of what “white riders” meant in the late-19th- and early-20th-century cycling circuit: deliberate interference, collusion, harassment, exclusion from tracks and lodging, the constant reminder that talent doesn’t cancel segregation. He compresses that violence into decorum because decorum is what white audiences demanded as the price of being heard.

Then comes the rhetorical pivot: “I have also enjoyed the friendship of countless thousands of white men.” It reads conciliatory, almost grateful, but the subtext is tactical. Taylor is refusing the trap of being cast as either a grateful exception or an angry agitator. By stressing friendships, he protects his own legacy and livelihood, signaling that his critique isn’t “race hatred” but testimony. He also implicitly indicts the “white riders” by isolating them as a subset, not the whole, which lets white listeners place themselves on the “good” side without having to confront how the sport’s institutions enabled the abuse.

The line works because it’s simultaneously generous and damning. Taylor is offering a bridge while pointing to the river beneath it: racism wasn’t an aberration around him; it was the weather. The friendship clause isn’t absolution. It’s a way of saying, with measured defiance, that solidarity existed - and therefore the cruelty was a choice.