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Drag racing's first black superstar was also a champion of the underdog independent Chevrolet campaigners
Malcolm Durham, recognized by many as drag racing's first black superstar and voted number 48 on NHRA's Top 50 Drivers list in 2001, died June 22 after a battle with lung cancer. He was 66.
Durham was considered to be the quarter-mile sport's equivalent of Major League Baseball's Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 broke that sport's color barrier when he became the first African-American player to sign with a Major League team. Durham played a similar pioneering role during the 1960s, when he became a crowd favorite on the match race trail with his series of Strip Blazer Chevrolet entries.
"We encountered some problems in the South because those people didn't want to accept us," said Durham. "But for me, being black was actually a plus because it made me unique, and I tried to capitalize on it as much as possible. During the late 1960s, I averaged $800 per appearance, and that made me one of the highest paid drivers in the business."
In the mid-1960s, Durham was given the nickname "D.C. Lip" in an attempt to ally himself with the controversial Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius clay. But Durham was actually a soft-spoken, hard-working individual whose storied match race accomplishments were the result of many long hours of hard work.
Raised on a family farm in Goldsboro, N.C., Durham gained his initial mechanical experience working on tractors. He began racing in 1957 at Easy Street Dragstrip in Newton Grove with a 225-horsepower '56 Chevy.
After moving to Washington,...