![]() ![]() press room at the 92nd Academy Awards held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA. Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver with their Best Animated Short Film for Hair Love in the. “I wanted to make sure that everybody kind of knew that, Hey, you know African-Americans have had a place in NASCAR for a long time and had success in NASCAR as well.” “What a great individual,” Steward added. So, he actually had other people racing for him too towards the end of his career as well. ![]() He was also one of the first Black team owners. “Some of the stories that I got I've gotten from his son who was on his crew, were absolutely amazing. “Wendell, he was a racer, but also he was as much of an innovator and an engineer as well as a racer,” Steward said. Steward is working with the family, and NASCAR as well. Soon Wendell Scott Ventures was born with plans for a docuseries and a fictionalized limited series for TV/streaming that through the lens of his life will cover themes of family, racism, American culture and racing. “You know maybe there's a way to be able to be helpful to you and to the family to kind of help get Wendell's name out there kind of more into the kind of the cultural lexicon in the same way that Jackie Robinson is to baseball and others.” And as Steward’s company grew from publishing into animation and other media, he told the family: Soon the Scott family and David Steward II had a working relationship. It turned out the gentleman was Wendell Scott’s grandson. ISC Archives/CQ-Roll Call Group via Getty Images Wendell Scott competed in 496 NASCAR events scoring 147 top-10 finishes and a win in 1963. And I was like, ‘what, this sounds familiar!” “And I was sitting there, and a gentleman and his wife were talking to one of our staffers and I kind of overheard this story about ‘my grandfather was a racer’ and all this stuff. “We happened to have a booth there with one of our companies,” Steward said. The plans for the Wendell Scott project began to take shape shortly after at, of all places, a trade show. “I kind of put it in the back of my mind, I'm like, I need to get in touch with the Scott family.” “And I'm like, you know what, this is a great story to be told too,” he said. “I think it's time now that people know more about it…during that time too, you had Jackie Robinson's movie coming out and you had all these things kind of coming out, about the first African-Americans and, and different, sports and arenas and stuff.” In addition to being the subject of the 1977 film Greased Lightning starring Richard Pryor, Scott inspired the character of River Scott in Disney/Pixar’s Cars 3 which came out in 2017. (But) what's current, you know, it wasn't really much current about it. “I remember seeing this Richard Pryor movie Greased Lightning that was put out a number of years ago,” he said. He found that no one had yet to really tell Scott’s story. Steward II did some research and learned of Wendell Scott and his accomplishments. animation studios in America, and one that won a 2020 Academy Award for the animated short film Hair Love. “It's kind of like, well, who was the first and, you know, what did he have to go through to make it possible, even for Bubba to be there?”ĭavid Steward II is a producer who co-founded Lion Forge Animation, one of the only Black-owned. “As we're supporting Bubba,” the younger Steward said. The company sponsored Bubba Wallace in 2018 when he was racing for Richard Petty Motorsports and in 2019 purchased the naming rights to Gateway Motorsports Park, now known as World Wide Technology Raceway outside St. His father David Steward is a successful entrepreneur and founder of World Wide Technology. Steward has a history with NASCAR as well. Louis native is a producer who co-founded Lion Forge Animation, one of the only Black-owned animation studios in America, and one that won a 2020 Academy Award for the animated short film Hair Love. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2015, again becoming a first for NASCAR as the first African American to be enshrined in the Hall.ĭavid Steward II knows Scott’s story well. Wendell Scott would live until 1990 when cancer took his life. Scott would go on to compete in 496 NASCAR events scoring 147 top-10 finishes and race until a crash that nearly killed him ended his career in 1973. That error was later reversed, but Scott was never awarded the trophy. A “clerical error” however, denied him a chance of any sort of celebration. Wendell Scott would score another first, winning a NASCAR sanctioned race in Jacksonville in 1963. ![]() Scott still faced racism in the sport yet worked hard most often working on his cars himself with very little outside help. NASCAR would grant Scott a license to race in 1953, and he became the sports first driver of color. ![]()
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