Book review: ‘Hard Driving’ tells the story of the man who crossed NASCAR’s color line

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Wendell Scott is frequently called the Jackie Robinson of American stock car racing. In 1952, at Virginia’s old Richmond Speedway, he was able to talk his way past a NASCAR race steward and compete, thus crossing the sport’s color line.

Except that it wasn’t a line; it was a wall, guarded by racist track promoters and white Southern fans seething over the civil rights movement. Not to mention Scott’s fellow drivers. In his long and unfailingly miserable career, carefully documented in Brian Donovan’s “Hard Driving,” Scott was often wrecked by white drivers who knew he didn’t dare retaliate. Whatever Robinson’s travails, nobody ever tried to kill him on the baseball diamond.

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