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Race Across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies
2020 Peace Corps Writers Paul Cowan Award for the Best Book of Non-Fiction On April 23, 1929, the second annual Transcontinental Foot Race across America, known as the Bunion Derby, was in its twenty-fifth day. Eddie “the Sheik” Gardner, an African American runner from Seattle, was leading the race across the Free Bridge over the Mississippi River. Along with the signature outfit that earned him his nickname—a white towel tied around his head, white shorts, and a white shirt—Gardner wore an American flag, a reminder to all who saw him run through the Jim Crow South that he was an American and the leader of the greatest footrace in the world. Kastner traces Gardner’s remarkable journey from his birth in 1897 in Birmingham, Alabama, to his success in Seattle, Washington, as one of the top long-distance runners in the region, and finally to his participation in two transcontinental footraces where he risked his life, facing a barrage of harassment for having the audacity to compete with white runners. Kastner shows how Gardner’s participation became a way to protest the endemic racism he faced, heralding the future of nonviolent efforts that would be instrumental to the civil rights movement. Shining a bright light on his extraordinary athletic accomplishments and his heroism on the dusty roads of America in the 1920s, Kastner gives Gardner and other black bunioneers the attention they so richly deserve.
319 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2019
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20 people want to read
About the author
Charles B. Kastner
5 books4 followersI’ve been in love with the running for over forty years. The process of running on my own two feet has a primal, and, at times, spiritual appeal to me. I’ve competed in hundreds of races from ultra-marathons to five-kilometer runs. I’ve experienced the preverbal runner’s high, but nothing I’ve done comes close to the Herculean effort required by the men who ran in two long forgotten footraces across America, nicknamed the bunion derbies. These races took place in the twilight of the 1920’s when the nation was a buzz with Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic and all records seemed there to be broken.
For the past fourteen years, I’ve studied and written about these epic footraces. My first book about the 1928 race—Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America—was published in 2007. My second about the 1929 race—The 1929 Bunion Derby: Johnny Salo and the Great Footrace across America—will be published this spring. The runners who competed in these trans-America races pushed themselves to the point of physical and mental collapse. Those that persevered to run the 3,500-mile distance across America are a constant reminder to me of the untapped sources of human potential that rest within each of us.
In my latest book, forty-three veterans from the first bunion derby return for a second try at trans-America racing. On March 31, 1929, these veterans joined thirty-four rookies in New York City for the start of the second and last Bunion Derby. Racing over mountains, and across deserts and prairies, the “bunioneers” pushed their bodies to the breaking point. The men averaged forty-six, gut-busting miles a day during seventy-eight days of non-stop racing that took them from New York City to Los Angeles in the waning months of the Roaring Twenties, just months before the Wall Street crash started the nation on its descent into the Great Depression.
The forty-three veterans dominated the race, after having learned hard-won lessons of pace, diet, and training during the first race. Among this group, two brilliant runners, Johnny Salo of Passaic, New Jersey and Pete Gavuzzi of England, emerged to battle for the $25,000 first prize along the mostly unpaved roads of 1929 America, with each man pushing the other to go faster as the lead switched back and forth between them. Chasing them relentlessly, was Eddie “the Sheik” Gardner of Seattle, an African American who showed remarkable courage as he faced down the endemic racism he encountered on a daily basis.
To pay the prize money, race Director Charley Pyle cobbled together a traveling vaudeville company, complete with dancing debutantes, an all-girl band wearing pilots’ outfits, and blackface comedians, all housed under the massive show tent that Charley hoped would pack in audiences. This is the story of, arguably, the greatest long distance footrace of all time.
To see a video trailer of the book, view it on YOU TUBE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b17pxI...
For the past fourteen years, I’ve studied and written about these epic footraces. My first book about the 1928 race—Bunion Derby: The 1928 Footrace Across America—was published in 2007. My second about the 1929 race—The 1929 Bunion Derby: Johnny Salo and the Great Footrace across America—will be published this spring. The runners who competed in these trans-America races pushed themselves to the point of physical and mental collapse. Those that persevered to run the 3,500-mile distance across America are a constant reminder to me of the untapped sources of human potential that rest within each of us.
In my latest book, forty-three veterans from the first bunion derby return for a second try at trans-America racing. On March 31, 1929, these veterans joined thirty-four rookies in New York City for the start of the second and last Bunion Derby. Racing over mountains, and across deserts and prairies, the “bunioneers” pushed their bodies to the breaking point. The men averaged forty-six, gut-busting miles a day during seventy-eight days of non-stop racing that took them from New York City to Los Angeles in the waning months of the Roaring Twenties, just months before the Wall Street crash started the nation on its descent into the Great Depression.
The forty-three veterans dominated the race, after having learned hard-won lessons of pace, diet, and training during the first race. Among this group, two brilliant runners, Johnny Salo of Passaic, New Jersey and Pete Gavuzzi of England, emerged to battle for the $25,000 first prize along the mostly unpaved roads of 1929 America, with each man pushing the other to go faster as the lead switched back and forth between them. Chasing them relentlessly, was Eddie “the Sheik” Gardner of Seattle, an African American who showed remarkable courage as he faced down the endemic racism he encountered on a daily basis.
To pay the prize money, race Director Charley Pyle cobbled together a traveling vaudeville company, complete with dancing debutantes, an all-girl band wearing pilots’ outfits, and blackface comedians, all housed under the massive show tent that Charley hoped would pack in audiences. This is the story of, arguably, the greatest long distance footrace of all time.
To see a video trailer of the book, view it on YOU TUBE at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b17pxI...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 3, 2025
It’s hard to imagine this today, but there was a time in the early 20th century when athletes would compete in ultramarathons and other endurance running events with footwear such as working boots or shoes more fit for suits. One such event, that took place in 1928 and 1929, was a transcontinental run from Los Angeles to New York, commonly called the Bunion Derby. This book by Charles B. Kastner looks at one runner who entered both years, Eddie Gardner.
Gardner was one of a handful of Black runners who ran the race and endured harsh racism when the race ran through southern states where Jim Crow laws were in effect, most notably Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Kastner does a good job of describing what Gardner and his fellow Black runners faced during that stretch of the run. It should be noted that the organizers of the race did what they could and when they became aware of discrimination when it came to lodging and meals, they did step up and provide these items, but often it wasn’t enough to offset the emotional toll this would take.
The book also portrays Gardner well, especially when he would show off his “Shiek” outfit while running. That was simply a towel around his head but his fans, especially those in the Black community, loved it. It felt like Kastner was trying to elevate Gardner into the same level of importance to the legacy of Black athletes like Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. While certainly not in the same level of importance to the acceptance of the Black athlete, Gardner’s story is still one that should be told, finishing 8th in the 1928 race and was a leading contender in 1929.
While this book told a story that needed to be told, the description of the races repetitive in nature by giving updates on who was in what place at the end of each day’s events. This was the only part that I didn’t enjoy reading – which is a rarity for me with a sports book. I usually love the description of the actual action, but in this case, the stories of the runners – Gardner, the Black runners and other contenders – were much better and made the book a good one overall.
Rating is 3 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4 for this site.
Gardner was one of a handful of Black runners who ran the race and endured harsh racism when the race ran through southern states where Jim Crow laws were in effect, most notably Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Kastner does a good job of describing what Gardner and his fellow Black runners faced during that stretch of the run. It should be noted that the organizers of the race did what they could and when they became aware of discrimination when it came to lodging and meals, they did step up and provide these items, but often it wasn’t enough to offset the emotional toll this would take.
The book also portrays Gardner well, especially when he would show off his “Shiek” outfit while running. That was simply a towel around his head but his fans, especially those in the Black community, loved it. It felt like Kastner was trying to elevate Gardner into the same level of importance to the legacy of Black athletes like Jack Johnson, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. While certainly not in the same level of importance to the acceptance of the Black athlete, Gardner’s story is still one that should be told, finishing 8th in the 1928 race and was a leading contender in 1929.
While this book told a story that needed to be told, the description of the races repetitive in nature by giving updates on who was in what place at the end of each day’s events. This was the only part that I didn’t enjoy reading – which is a rarity for me with a sports book. I usually love the description of the actual action, but in this case, the stories of the runners – Gardner, the Black runners and other contenders – were much better and made the book a good one overall.
Rating is 3 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4 for this site.
May 15, 2021
One of the more unusual characteristics of the 1920s was the emergence of endurance events in all manner of physical activity areas, from the everyday – dance, swimming, running, skating and more – to the downright bizarre – flagpole sitting anyone? Not that these kinds of events were necessarily new, consider multi-day cycling races during the latter parts of the 19th century, the long distance running that was part of the pedestrianism around the same time, or even earlier challenges such as Captain Barclay’s wager to walk 1000 miles in 1000 consecutive hours (for 1000 guineas payment) which he did in 1809. This sense of testing the limits of the human body has driven many people to incredible feats, and many entrepreneurs to attempt to make a profit out of that drive – in some cases leading to events of great longevity, such as the Tour de France.
This wasn’t just a North Atlantic thing – endurance swimming was a fairly common event in Australia and the present day Comrade’s Marathon in Kwa-Zulu Natal had its first outing in 1921. Even so, the US Transcontinental Foot Race, the so-called Bunion Derby, was very much in a league of its own, as an event that in 1928 saw runners cover over 3400 miles in 84 consecutive days, and in 1929 over 3500 miles in 74 consecutive days, or in the 1929 version just under 2 marathons a day for 2½ months through all manner of weather conditions, topography and social adversity. The Bunion Derby should probably be seen as a form of extreme ultra-marathon running.
One of the strengths of Kastner’s exploration of the two races is his sensitivity to both the physical experience of running (he is an ultra-marathoner himself and has an evidence empathy for the runners’ abilities and adversities) as well as his focus on the socio-cultural dynamics of telling the races through the experiences of the only African American running to participate in both – Eddie Gardner. This is the late 1920s, an era of systemic segregation across all of the USA, informal or semi-formal in much of the north and west, formalised and legalised as Jim Crow legislation in much of the south. Much of the power of the argument in the book turns on the experience of traversing states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri where that systemic, formalised segregation was sustained by deep seated, publicly articulated racist outlooks and personal and structural violence designed to keep Blacks ‘in their place’.
Kastner presents Gardner as publicly engaging in a mixed race sports event and therefore as an early civil rights activist, who is put in the same camp as more high profile figures as Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, both also Alabama born – although Gardner’s family moved north and west early in his life. This is a compelling argument although perhaps Kastner could have made more of Gardner’s experience as a student at the Tuskegee Institute with its incrementalist approach to change. He does well to link at least the 1928 run to the early civil rights networks such as the NAACP and Urban League, but after the initial set up and demonstration of support from at least Los Angeles based figures they are barely mentioned again. What’s more, the system of white supremacy is seen as manifest primarily in Jim Crow legislation and attitudes, not in a wider social views or in sport science itself. The argument seems to be that Gardner ran, and in doing so despite an initial wobble, he ran well and defied the attacks by on-lookers and the hostile environment. This, in itself, is evidence of defiance – but the relative weakness of the argument reflects the bifurcated character of the argument.
Much of the narrative power of the book relies on Kastner’s skill in depicting the endurance, the sheer physical challenge of running almost 2 marathons a day for 2½ or in 1928 nearly 3 months through desert, snow or sandstorm, managing ankle deep mud or concrete roads in inadequate shoes and for the most part without support teams of note. His evocative style, no doubt influenced by his own experiences, paints a powerful picture of runners struggling through mountain passes in the Rockies or negotiating crowded city and small town streets where thousands turn out to see the runners. Similarly, he is good at the drama of promoter C C Pyle’s dubious business practices and relations between the business and the athletic aspects of the venture. Yet this narrative power seems to distract from the civil rights aspects of the argument; as engaging and engrossing as the book is, it is also discordant.
Kastner has done a good job with sources, drawing well on especially Black newspapers to find his way into Gardner’s world both as an endurance athlete and as working class African American man in Seattle in the 1920s. He has been able to trace many aspects of Gardner’s life that would otherwise be difficult – his working and domestic life is at least in outline traced, in part because it is reported as part of his local sporting profile but not exclusively. To his credit Kastner also traces some of the subsequent lives of the two other African American runners to complete the 1928 Derby.
This is a great story. It is engaging and well written. My problem with it is that it feels like it is two books where Kastner is trying to make a, I suspect, sustainable case for Gardner’s place in the early pantheon of sport-related civil rights figures; unfortunately he does this obliquely – which I recognise might be a question of evidence. That said, it is a good read – engaging to the point of captivating – and an exceptionally empathetic account of an endurance event as well as granting considerable insight to the life experiences of inter-war African American professional athletes.
This wasn’t just a North Atlantic thing – endurance swimming was a fairly common event in Australia and the present day Comrade’s Marathon in Kwa-Zulu Natal had its first outing in 1921. Even so, the US Transcontinental Foot Race, the so-called Bunion Derby, was very much in a league of its own, as an event that in 1928 saw runners cover over 3400 miles in 84 consecutive days, and in 1929 over 3500 miles in 74 consecutive days, or in the 1929 version just under 2 marathons a day for 2½ months through all manner of weather conditions, topography and social adversity. The Bunion Derby should probably be seen as a form of extreme ultra-marathon running.
One of the strengths of Kastner’s exploration of the two races is his sensitivity to both the physical experience of running (he is an ultra-marathoner himself and has an evidence empathy for the runners’ abilities and adversities) as well as his focus on the socio-cultural dynamics of telling the races through the experiences of the only African American running to participate in both – Eddie Gardner. This is the late 1920s, an era of systemic segregation across all of the USA, informal or semi-formal in much of the north and west, formalised and legalised as Jim Crow legislation in much of the south. Much of the power of the argument in the book turns on the experience of traversing states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri where that systemic, formalised segregation was sustained by deep seated, publicly articulated racist outlooks and personal and structural violence designed to keep Blacks ‘in their place’.
Kastner presents Gardner as publicly engaging in a mixed race sports event and therefore as an early civil rights activist, who is put in the same camp as more high profile figures as Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, both also Alabama born – although Gardner’s family moved north and west early in his life. This is a compelling argument although perhaps Kastner could have made more of Gardner’s experience as a student at the Tuskegee Institute with its incrementalist approach to change. He does well to link at least the 1928 run to the early civil rights networks such as the NAACP and Urban League, but after the initial set up and demonstration of support from at least Los Angeles based figures they are barely mentioned again. What’s more, the system of white supremacy is seen as manifest primarily in Jim Crow legislation and attitudes, not in a wider social views or in sport science itself. The argument seems to be that Gardner ran, and in doing so despite an initial wobble, he ran well and defied the attacks by on-lookers and the hostile environment. This, in itself, is evidence of defiance – but the relative weakness of the argument reflects the bifurcated character of the argument.
Much of the narrative power of the book relies on Kastner’s skill in depicting the endurance, the sheer physical challenge of running almost 2 marathons a day for 2½ or in 1928 nearly 3 months through desert, snow or sandstorm, managing ankle deep mud or concrete roads in inadequate shoes and for the most part without support teams of note. His evocative style, no doubt influenced by his own experiences, paints a powerful picture of runners struggling through mountain passes in the Rockies or negotiating crowded city and small town streets where thousands turn out to see the runners. Similarly, he is good at the drama of promoter C C Pyle’s dubious business practices and relations between the business and the athletic aspects of the venture. Yet this narrative power seems to distract from the civil rights aspects of the argument; as engaging and engrossing as the book is, it is also discordant.
Kastner has done a good job with sources, drawing well on especially Black newspapers to find his way into Gardner’s world both as an endurance athlete and as working class African American man in Seattle in the 1920s. He has been able to trace many aspects of Gardner’s life that would otherwise be difficult – his working and domestic life is at least in outline traced, in part because it is reported as part of his local sporting profile but not exclusively. To his credit Kastner also traces some of the subsequent lives of the two other African American runners to complete the 1928 Derby.
This is a great story. It is engaging and well written. My problem with it is that it feels like it is two books where Kastner is trying to make a, I suspect, sustainable case for Gardner’s place in the early pantheon of sport-related civil rights figures; unfortunately he does this obliquely – which I recognise might be a question of evidence. That said, it is a good read – engaging to the point of captivating – and an exceptionally empathetic account of an endurance event as well as granting considerable insight to the life experiences of inter-war African American professional athletes.
August 29, 2020
The book tells the story of the first staged races across America (bunion derby) in 1928 and 1929.
It focuses on the inbreeding achievements of Eddie Gardner "the sheik", an African American runner as he puts his life at risk to compete: from death threats in the Jim Crow states to having to sleep on the floor in basements while other runners enjoy confortable hôtel rooms for two months and a half of daily ultra marathons. It provides a window to a historic time of America through the lense of ultra distance running.
It was also my first book about long distance running in the early 20th century, when the shoe or clothing technology were mainly inexistant and the science of endurance sports barely burgeoning. It shows how running can be a sport for everyone without need for expansive gear. It also shows how much the sport has evolved over the past century.
It focuses on the inbreeding achievements of Eddie Gardner "the sheik", an African American runner as he puts his life at risk to compete: from death threats in the Jim Crow states to having to sleep on the floor in basements while other runners enjoy confortable hôtel rooms for two months and a half of daily ultra marathons. It provides a window to a historic time of America through the lense of ultra distance running.
It was also my first book about long distance running in the early 20th century, when the shoe or clothing technology were mainly inexistant and the science of endurance sports barely burgeoning. It shows how running can be a sport for everyone without need for expansive gear. It also shows how much the sport has evolved over the past century.
June 17, 2022
Ok, you've got to understand that I am a seasoned ultramarathoner with 154 runs if marathon length or longer, so I practically read this book with my mouth open in awe of these "bunioneers". How can you run 3500+ miles across the USA 100 years ago with the primative equipment, support, and nutrition they were afforded. Next, throw in this was done 2 years in a row with approximately 80 CONCECUTIVE stages of up to 74 miles each, it boggles my ultramarathon mind. Finally, the thread that holds this book together is the story of Eddie Gardner, an African American born in Birmingham, Alabama (where I currently live) and his heroic trials of running through the Jim Crow South of the 1920's. He was proud to be an American (wore a USA flag on his shirt) but was still deviled by part of the hateful America he so loved. I highly recommend this book.
February 18, 2020
"Race Across America" chronicles 200 runners who had the audacity to think they could run across the entire United States in the late 1920s. Good old "American can-do" attitude saw many of the racers make it to the finish line. However, the African Americans were harassed and threatened with death in the segregated states of Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Chuck Kastner exposes horrible racial discrimination while lauding and bringing to light the heroic efforts of the African American runners.
Chuck Kastner has written a number of books on these races. However, this is his best (in my opinion) because it focuses on the African American runners. Their stories come to life (and will never be forgotten) in "Race Across America."
Chuck Kastner has written a number of books on these races. However, this is his best (in my opinion) because it focuses on the African American runners. Their stories come to life (and will never be forgotten) in "Race Across America."
December 25, 2023
The story is so very interesting. The writing is several essays pieced together. A little repetitive and tedious at times. But it's worth it to read about these strong determined men breaking unknown barriers in running.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews