Who what the first African American to win a nascar race?

Most sources that document the early history of stock car racing list Wendell Scott as the first African-American NASCAR driver, and understandably so. Scott was a true racer - the first and only African-American driver ever to win in the Grand National/Winston Cup series. That victory came in 1963 at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Florida, in a race which also featured Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett, David Pearson, and other top NASCAR stars of the day.

Over the course of his 13-year career, Scott competed in 495 Cup races from 1961 to 1973. He posted 20 top-5 and 147 top-10 finishes including his win, and finished in the top 10 in points three times - sixth in 1966, and ninth in both 1968 and 1969. Wendell Scott was the first African-American NASCAR driver to race at the Cup level on a long-term basis, but historical sources which dig a little deeper typically list Charlie Scott (no relation to Wendell), as the first African-American driver ever to compete in a Cup race.

A 2008 article on NASCAR.com states, "Charlie Scott will go down in history as the first African-American driver to make a NASCAR race. He competed on the Daytona Beach road course in 1956 in a Kiekhaefer Chrysler. When the checkered waved, Scott found himself in 19th place, earning $75 dollars for his efforts."

That was Charlie Scott's only race, and it occurred on February 26, 1956. I recently came across an interesting bit of information that may change NASCAR history: A page from the August 1, 1955, edition of the San Mateo (CA) Times newspaper, with an article about that weekend's NASCAR race at Bay Meadows Speedway. The 250-lap Grand National Series race was held on July 31, 1955, on the one-mile San Mateo dirt track.

It featured several NASCAR stars of the time, including Lee Petty, Marvin Panch, Buck Baker, Ed Negre (making his Cup series debut), and Tim Flock -- the race winner, who also won the Grand National title that year. Finishing 28th that day in a field of 34 cars, in front of 15,000 fans, was Elias Bowie, making his first and only NASCAR Cup appearance. Elias Bowie was African-American.

According to relatives, Mr. Bowie was something of a pioneer in areas besides racing. He owned several transportation companies in Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, CA, primarily jitney buses and taxi cabs, at a time when it was still rare for African-Americans to own businesses. The race in which Bowie competed was marred by several accidents, though no serious injuries resulted.

"(The) most spectacular crash came when a tire hurtled from the car of Carl Hammill of Sacramento as it went into the south turn," reads the article. "The car flipped over and spun helplessly like a turtle on its back.