A story by: Posted by Jive-Bomber on June 11, 2015

The guy crouched down next to Wally Parks. Just in this one picture of the 1946 SCTA Officials, found in Veda Orr’s Pictorial, with the name of Mel Leighton. He’s looking straight at the camera with confidence and a slight smile, knowing that he’s not the average sight in the 40s hot rod scene. Much like Veda was the ‘first lady of hot rodding’, Mel was the first black man of the dirt track racing world by a long shot.

As a very young boy in Iowa, Mel was watching guys like Barney Oldfield and Ralph DePalma tear up the wooden board track of the Des Moines Speedway in the Teens and early 20s. That gave him enough inspiration to want to race himself someday, but the odds were stacked against him. “I used to walk along in front of the garages and peek in the windows. If a white boy kept pushing his nose against the glass day after day, somebody finally would invite him in to look at the car. But not a colored boy,” he said.

Undaunted, Leighton eventually followed his racing dreams and moved to the hot bed of 1930s midget and sprint races, Los Angeles. After not being able to get a ride in anyone’s race car, he eventually just bought a car himself, running a Riley 4-port sprinter starting in 1937. After a few bad wrecks at both Ascot and Oakland in 1940, he turned the driving of his Sprint car over to a number of great drivers including future Indy stars Johnnie Parsons, Bob Sweikert and Jack McGrath (all of whom were white, of course). During this time as a car owner is also when Mel became extremely active in the SCTA, serving on the Contest board, created the S.C.T.A. Hospital Fund in 1941, and serving faithfully as Treasurer (for 10 years!).

Mel never gave up his dream to compete, and with the help of champion racer Rex Mays, Leighton eventually got his license in the sanctioning body of racing, the American Automobile Association in 1948. “There was no written rule against blacks in AAA competition, but it was almost impossible for them to register as drivers or car owners.” He tried to enter the Indianapolis 500 the following year (’49) but was turned away simply because of the color of his skin. A man who gave so much to the sport, often got little in return.

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