“Homage to Felicitas and the 1971 Schwinn Sting Ray Bicycle”
Felicitas at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, Washington DC
I love days where wandering leads to a new discovery. I’ve been to DC many times but for one of my friends, it was a ‘bucket list’ trip. So off we went to check the Nation’s Capitol off her list. I scheduled every day to see many of the sights and museums, but on the last day, I left it open for anything we might have missed or wanted to revisit. We decided on the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, but on the metro at 9am that day, we realized it opened at 11am. We re-routed to another museum and came back later that afternoon.
We got to the National Portrait Gallery around 2pm and there was a docent tour at 2:15pm. Perfect - this is one museum I don’t know well since I have only been here once before. The docent tour guide, Elizabeth, was so interesting, telling us the history behind the art and portraits. We were really glad we went in the afternoon and caught this tour.
We stopped at this work by Roger Shimomura, a Japanese American born in 1939, Seattle. This work expresses the artist’s feeling of alienation; as a young child, he and his family were incarcerated at Minidoka, ID during WWII. Notice Roger put himself as George Washington with samurai warriors as his troops on San Francisco Bay. (The dark shadow to the back right shows an homage to “Washington Crossing the Delaware” without George Washington.)
As Elizabeth was sharing about this artist and his incarceration during WWII, my friend said, “Janice wrote a book about the camps.” So I briefly told Elizabeth about the Munemitsu/Mendez connection. I was quite shocked when she said, “Felicitas Mendez?”
“Shimomura Crossing the Delaware” by Roger Shimomura (Born 1939).
I said, “yes, Felicitas Mendez!” Elizabeth got excited and said that we were taking a quick detour from the tour route to show me something. Going down the hall about 10 yards, we entered another gallery to see this:
Miné Okubo, Self Portrait, 1941
Me: “That’s Felicitas!” But what was she doing here with a Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle from the 1970s!
Elizabeth: “Is this the same Felicitas?”
Me: “Yes, this is her, but I’ve never seen this picture of her before.”
Elizabeth: “The docents and I always wondered about her. We don’t have very much information on her. Just this short text on the sign.”
Me: “Well, I wrote a book which tells more of her life that I can send you.”
Elizabeth: “Let’s talk after the tour.”
And with that, we went on to the Presidential Portrait Gallery. There were only about 10 people on this tour, and one of the men was a descendent of President Harrison! Now Elizabeth was really delighted; “Rarely do I have a tour where anyone has connections with the art, and this tour has the two of you!”
A random, unplanned docent tour led me to Felicitas at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, Washington DC.
Back to Felicitas and the Schwinn Sting Ray. At the end of the tour, I exchanged emails with Elizabeth and told her I’d send her a book so she could read it and share it with the docents about this woman, Felicitas Mendez, that they were all curious about.
To the left of the Schwinn bicycle was this vest - in honor of Felicitas!
Artist Miguel Luciano created this leather vest with civil rights buttons and embroidered Felicitas “La Prieta” Mendez on it. “La Prieta” is Spanish for “the dark-skinned woman” and can have different connotations from affectionate, neutral, to highly offensive.
Obviously, in his creative expression, Felicitas is noted with affection as a dark-skinned woman, one who had experienced and fought racism because of her dark skin several times in her life.
The artist connected the fight for civil rights back to Felicitas' childhood as one of the Puerto Rican families that was recruited by the Arizona Cotton Growers Association to pick cotton in the Southwest. When they got to Arizona, hidden relocation fees decreased their pay checks and terrible housing led 1,500 Puerto Rican workers to a historic strike against the Association. Years ago, I had heard from Sylvia that this was the reason Felicitas’ father moved the family to Westminster, CA when she was a child.
Then as adults, Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez were the lead plaintiffs in Mendez, et al. v. Westminster, et al. in a fight for school desegregation in California.
Luciano honors the legacy of Felicitas and the Puerto Rican families with his work… but I had to dig a little deeper on why a Schwinn Sting Ray Bicycle?
A picture of Felicitas Mendez I have never seen before.
The 1970 white Schwinn Sting-Ray “Krate” bicycle was actually called a Schwinn “Cotton-Picker.” Its design was iconic and the silhouette totally unique, from its banana seat with enough room for two to ride and its chopper style handle bars. The springy front fork allowed the rider to jump up and down and bounce the bike over curbs with its ornamental stick shift. Schwinn designed it to resemble a muscle car; it was designed to make older siblings and dads jealous.
With all this wonderful design, Schwinn names the expensive white bicycle, “cotton picker,” a name that sounds racist and degrading. It was only made for 2 years, and historians wonder if production was stopped because of the degrading name, especially for black and brown farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s.
Another perspective is that 10 year old kids preferred more colorful options like the “lemon peeler” yellow, “pea picker” green, “orange krate” orange, or “apple krate” red.
The more colorful options outsold the white “cotton picker.” And yes, that is what they named the colorful bikes - after agricultural produce!
In those days, there was a tradition of Puerto Rican Schwinn clubs and artist Miguel Luciano chose to honor Felicitas and her Puerto Rican heritage with this assemblage. Now displayed at the Smithsonian’s American Art Gallery, a random change of plans gave me the pleasure to see it. The artist envisioned that Felicitas would wear the vest and ride the bike, honoring her Puerto Rican heritage and legacy for equal rights. Bravo, Felicitas! I believe she would have loved riding it.
What might have seemed like the wrong time, change of plans, and catching a random tour was not random at all. It was divine intervention. So grateful that Elizabeth was our tour guide and her curiosity of Felicitas led to a divine connection indeed. By the way, she wrote back telling me she loved reading about Felicitas and shared “The Kindness of Color” with the docents! Sharing history with docents at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, check that off my bucket list!
For more information on the Schwinn Sting Ray “Cotton Picker” Bicycle:
In the Press
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