V 10 N. 3 Race Across America Eddie Gardner and the Bunion Derbies book review

Race across America

Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies

By Charles B. Kastner (Seychelles 1980-82)

Syracuse University Press

December 2019

319 pages

Hardcover - $75.00

Paper – $29.95

Reviewed by Thomas E. Coyne

This is a book worth reading!  And well-illustrated, besides!

Actually, it is three books in one, drawing on Charles Kastner’s previous histories

 of the, now largely forgotten, 1928 and 1929 C. C. Pyle’s International-Trans-

Continental Foot Races.  The two races are covered but this is, equally, a focused look 

at race relations in the United States in the 1920’s and the efforts of African Americans 

to achieve full integration into white America.

Author Kastner uses the story of Edward  “Eddie” Gardner to tell his tale. Gardner,

born in Alabama, was a respected African American distance runner in the greater 

Seattle, Washington community. In 1928 he participated in the trans-continental race 

planned by the Route 66 Highway Association to draw attention to the nation’s best-known

national highway.  The Association contracted with C. C. Pyle to conduct the event.

Pyle succeeded, displaying a flair for attention and ballyhoo plus a level of incompetence

and callousness that, in retrospect, makes one marvel even more at the tenacity of the

runners who completed, not one, but two such races.

Money, not glory, was the motivation for these runners.  They were international distance

running stars and poor, but athletic, working class Americans.  The latter, with the same 

desire as countless other Americans, generations before them, who had walked East to 

West next to their covered wagons in pursuit of a better life for their families.

Pyle offered his competitors a shot at $25, 000 for the winner with $10, 000, $5,000 and 

$2,500 for second, third and fourth.  Finishers five through ten would win $1,000.  In 1928, 

this was life changing money for the average person.  To seek it, one hundred ninety-nine 

starters toed the line on March 4, 1928 in Los Angeles and, after running 3,422.3 miles, 

fifty-five crossed a finish line on May 26 in New York City.  

A year later, reality had set in.  Seventy-seven contestants, including forty-three repeaters 

from the first race, started on March 31st in New York City and, running a different route

of 3,553.6 miles, nineteen finished on June 16th in Los Angeles.

A major difference; the runners in the 1928 race received their prize money.  The finishers 

in the 1929 run received worthless promissory notes and never collected. 

In his two previous books the author focused on the races with some attention given to 

efforts by the African American runners to show their fellow white citizens they could 

compete as well as white athletes as distance runners.  In this writing, Kastner shines his 

light on Gardner who finished in eighth place in the 1928 race.  In 1929 he was the sole 

African American to return for the second running and led the run in its early stages but

succumbed to injury and fatigue and dropped out after 1,536.60 miles.

Eddie Gardner clearly wanted to successfully represent his race and African American

newspapers were the primary sources of information about that effort.  Yet, there is no 

doubt he also had the same motivation as the white runners.  Finishing in the top money

 meant a better life for him and his family.

Gardner, however, had to face the Jim Crow South as well as racial prejudice in other

states on his journeys and Kastner’s recounting presents a sobering look at race history 

in the United States.  To the credit of his fellow competitors, Gardner was treated as a 

respected comrade runner who shared the same miserable treatment C. C. Pyle gave 

everybody.  

Kastner deserves accolades for the years of research that have gone into his three books 

about C. C. Pyle’s Bunion Derbies.  This account gives graphic descriptions of men who

ran through rugged terrain and terrible weather conditions at paces per mile that would 

be respectable in modern day marathons and ultra-marathons.  

While the author does not comment on the hundreds of subsequent runs across America, 

he should take pleasure in knowing that the spirit of the bunioneers lives on.  Since Andy

Payne’s 1928 run of 3,422.3 miles in 84 days the cross-continent record has now dropped 

to Pete Kostelnick’s 2016 run of 3100 miles in 42 days-six hours-30 minutes.

Read the book!  The will power of these runners will impress you.

Thomas E. Coyne has been a runner since 1947.  In all that time he never once 

felt the urge to run one step more than the 26.2 mile marathon distance.

Ed. Note: Some of you may recall that Thom Coyne also reviewed the first two books
of this trilogy. The link to that review is: Vol 4 N. 3 April 29, 2014


This review was originally done for a blog by Thom Coyne's brother  John Coyne   for returned Peace Corps Volunteers.  Mr. Kastner was a volunteer in The Seychelles 1980-82

michael gregory	6:18 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

George---I sent you several emails about Andy Payne of Okla City who won the 1928 Bunion Derby.  He became the clerk of the Okla Supreme Court for 34 years.