I was thinking about the day that we were at the Harley Davidson shop in Toledo, Ohio. That was on Saturday, August 7, 2010. We were listening to their in-store broadcast program, Female Trailblazers. They mentioned Avis & Effie Hotchkiss, a mother-daughter team and the first women to ride cross-country on a motor cycle. They rode from Brooklyn, New York to San Francisco, California in 1915. They left their home in May, reached San Francisco in August and returned home in October.
The next woman named was Dorothy “Dot” Robinson born April 22, 1912. She was considered one of the most enthusiastic & active women in motorcycling. She was the daughter of a sidecar manufacturer and owner of a Harley-Davidson dealership. Dot worked with her father starting at age 16. She met her future husband at the dealership and married in 1931. They brought the franchise from her father and she became the co-owner. She competed in endurance races in the Great Lakes and worked as a motorcycle courier for a private defense contractor during War World II. Dot was the first president of the Motor Maids and held that position for 25 years; she logged in up to 50,000 miles a year to help increase the visibility of the club. In her lifetime, she estimated having logged over 1.5 million total miles. In 1998 she was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
Bessie Stringfield was the third and last women discussed. She started riding when she was 16 years old. At age 19 she became the first African–American woman to travel cross-country solo. This was in the 30’s & 40”s when it was rare to see a woman riding and even more rare to see an African American woman riding. When I looked her up on the internet, I learned that she was known as the Motorcycle Queen of Miami. She traveled in 48 states and later rode in Europe, Brazil and Haiti. She encountered racism, bigotry and sexism. At that time, due to racism and discrimination, African Americans had difficulties finding places (hotels, etc.) to stay. Bessie once told a reporter, “I knew the Lord would take care of me and he did. If I found black folks, I’d stay with them. If not I’d sleep at filling stations on my motorcycle.” During World War II, she joined a motorcycle dispatch unit of the army. For four years she was a courier. Bessie was honored in 1990 by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) “Heroes of Harley-Davidson.” Ten years later there was an award bearing her name to honor women regarding the sport of motorcycling. Bessie was inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame in 2002. She died in 1993 at age 82 after having owned 27 different Harley-Davidsons.
Weren’t they amazing?
