Archive - January 13, 2020

  Race across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies By Charles B. Kastner (Seychelles 1980-82) Syracuse University Press 329 pages December 2012 $75.00 (hardcover); $29.95 (paperback ) Reviewed by Thomas E. Coyne • This is a book worth reading!  And well-illustrated, besides! Actually, it is three books in one, drawing on Charles Kastner’s previous histories of the, now largely forgotten, 1928 and 1929 C. C. Pyle’s International-Trans-Continental Foot Races.  The two races are covered but this is, equally, a focused look at race relations in the United States in the 1920s and the efforts of African Americans to achieve full integration into white America. Author Kastner uses the story of Edward  “Eddie” Gardner to tell his tale.  Gardner, born in Alabama, was a respected African American distance runner in the greater Seattle, Washington community. In 1928 he participated in the trans-continental race planned by the Route 66 Highway Association to . . .