In Partnership with Friends of Northampton Trails and Greenways
Stories of Bicycling History and Activism
A Public Talk by Lorenz Finison
A Public Talk by Lorenz Finison
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Date:
Speaker: Location: |
Saturday, May 11, 2019 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Lorenz Finison, author of Boston’s Twentieth-Century Bicycling Renaissance: Cultural Change on Two Wheels 33 Hawley Street, Northampton (lower level) |
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To reserve your place, email [email protected]. Limited seating.
Tickets will be purchased at 33 Hawley Street when you check in:
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Friends of Northampton Trails and Greenways (FNTG) and Historic Northampton invite you to a presentation on a unique aspect of bicycle history in Western Massachusetts at 33 Hawley Street. We are excited to offer this bike history talk during Bike Week at the new arts trust building.
Lorenz Finison is not a stranger to Northampton. He presented for Historic Northampton in 2015 when his first book was published and now his second book on bicycling history - Boston’s Twentieth-Century Bicycling Renaissance: Cultural Change on Two Wheels - is soon to be released by UMass Press. In this new book, Larry extends the story of cycling to the present day, with a focus on Massachusetts’s biking organizations and environmental activism—particularly the intersections between cycling and race, gender, and class from the 1960s and 1970s onward. In the late 1800’s, the popularity of bicycles increased exponentially. Larry will speak on the remarkable rise of cycling through the lives of several participants, including Kittie Knox, a biracial twenty-year-old seamstress who challenged the color line in 1895 to become a well-known cyclist and part of the Massachusetts Division of the League of American Wheelmen. By 1900, the bicycling craze faded. Within the next few decades, automobiles became commonplace and roads were refashioned to serve cars first. Bicycling then experienced a renaissance in the 1970s as concerns over physical and environmental health coalesced. Finison traces the activities of cycling environmental and social justice activists, and features topics of racing, touring, commuting, rails-to-trails, and how this history shapes our lives. His talk will introduce for the first time the Pedal Against Pollution of 1972 as it passed through Northampton, and the ill-fated Tour de Trump stage race which rolled through Northampton in 1990. |
Lorenz J. Finison is a social psychologist, public health practitioner, historian, and cyclist. He is a founding member of Cycling Through History, a nonprofit organization that links cyclists with maps and information about African-American heritage and history in Massachusetts. Larry is the author of two books, Boston’s Cycle Craze, 1880-1900: A Story of Race, Class, and Society (2014) and Boston’s Twentieth-Century Bicycling Renaissance: Cultural Change on Two Wheels (2019). Autographed copies will be available for cash purchase at the talk.
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