Mill Talk: Kittie Knox, Cyclist

6:00 PM Unveiling, 7:00 PM Mill Talk

Kittie Knox was a young biracial cyclist in the 1890s who fought against race-based limitations in America’s post-Reconstruction reaction against Black advancement. During her cycling career (1893 – 1899), she became a well-known century (100-mile) rider, protested the League of American Wheelmen’s color bar in 1895, and refused to conform to conventions about fast riding and wearing a long skirt while cycling. For decades after her untimely death, Knox’s groundbreaking story was virtually unknown outside of the world of cycling. Scholar and writer Larry Finison has worked to bring her remarkable life back to a wider audience and will speak about Kittie Knox in the context of the late 19th century cycling craze.

The Charles River Museum has long had a display of turn of the century bicycles to represent the Waltham Manufacturing Company of Charles Metz. Metz innovated and built bicycles, motorcycles, and cars, all under the Orient brand name. Alongside Major Taylor, Kittie Knox will have a prominent representation in our gallery as a pioneering figure in the early days of cycling history and having appeared here in Waltham at the Waltham Cycling Track in its heyday.

Speaker Bio: Lorenz “Larry” Finison, St. John’s University

Larry Finison is a social psychologist by training and public health practitioner by profession and then turned to the social history of bicycling. He is the author of Boston's Cycling Craze, 1880-1900, Boston's 20th Century Bicycling Renaissance, and Bicycling Inclusion and Equity (2023). His most recent work is Kittie Knox: Exclusion and Inclusion in Boston’s Black Athletes: Identity, Performance, and Activism. He is also a friend to the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Bicycling History Collections Archives and a member of the New England Cycling Coalition for Diversity. Larry has done significant research in bringing the story of Kittie Knox’s life to a modern audience.

Mill Talks at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation are free and open to the public and are made possible by the generous support of the .

Event FAQ & Directions

There is NO Museum Visitor parking at the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill facility where we are located. We ask that you use the nearby public parking facilities.

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Host or Publisher Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation