In the spring of 1925, Jewell Barker, a “frail and unhealthy” teenager, was told by her doctor to try riding a bicycle. Jewell began exercising in a pair of white knickers on the town and country roads in Cedar Grove, Louisiana. At first, the neighborhood looked on astonished, but soon great curiosity gave way to “resentment that a father should permit his daughter to appear on highways and streets ‘dressed up like a man’.”
According to newspaper accounts from the time, these comments escalated into violence on April 4 when her father John was enticed out of his home by a neighbor who said a man down the road wished to see him about some work. John was forced into a car, driven into the countryside, and handcuffed to a tree, while the men berated him: “You don’t control your family. You let your girl put on khaki pants and ride a bicycle.” The men stripped John and beat him fiercely. According to John’s testimony in a local newspaper, the men also threatened to “take my daughter out and give her a lecture.” After the flogging, John was told to expect another beating if his daughter appeared any more in knickers and further threatened with death if he disclosed the affair.
Photograph of Jewell on bicycle, drawings of men with cyclist
Indianapolis Times, April 28, 1925, p. 1
John’s health suffered after the flogging and the family situation came to the attention of welfare workers, who thus by chance discovered the ill health of the daughter, and the flogging. Two residents of Cedar Grove were arrested a few days later and charged with assault and conspiracy. The Shreveport newspapers covered the trial extensively, and a wire service report about the beating, with illustrations, was published across the United States and even attracted attention in England and Canada.
Commentary on the beating was uniformly critical of the actions taken by neighbors and supportive of the Barker family. The Times, published in Shreveport, condemned the “cowardly assailants” responsible for “the flogging of John Barker” as “a barbarous deed occurring in a civilized community.” In an interview published the following day, Sheriff T. R. Hughes denounced “a bunch of unscrupulous men trying to take the law into their own hands,” while also declaring that the fact that Jewell would ride a bicycle for her health while wearing bloomers is a ridiculous charge on which to take her father out and give him a flogging.
The St Louis Post Dispatch criticized “the bestial intolerance and the pruriant tyranny of American small-town life” and the damaging effects of “the filthy minds of reformers” in small cities. The Brownsville (Texas) Herald asked and answered this hypothetical question: “Do you see anything wrong in a young lady donning knickers and riding about town on a bicycle, particularly if she is advised by her physician to take that kind of exercise? Neither do we,” and then condemned the outrages perpetrated by cowards in the name of religion and mortality. The Daily News (London) stated that “It may have been ill-advised of Miss Jewell Barker to wear white cycling knickers if her neighbours were offended at them; but that the outraged neighbors should proceed to seize and thrash Miss Barker’s unfortunate father seems a thing so removed from justice, from logic and common sense that the mere European imagination boggles at it.”
Photographs of Jewell, John, and house with bicycle
Casper Daily Tribune, April 20, 1925, p. 8
This incident illustrates how a new clothing fashion challenged gender roles and provoked a violent response. Whereas the first generation of women cyclists mostly wore bloomers under a dress or skirt, the adoption of tight-fitting knickers in the 1920s made women appear more like men. Although some jurisdictions, including Livingstone Parish in Louisiana, passed laws making it illegal for women to wear knickers in public, Jewell was actually just following contemporary style — but doing so provoked a violent response by neighbors.
The assault on John Barker had certain similarities to lynchings, the most common form of extra-judicial assaults in the United States, which disproportionately victimized Black men. The fact that all participants in this incident were apparently white probably explains both the urgency of the judicial actions and the widespread condemnation of the attack. Jewell’s story is clear evidence of how violence was used to enforce gendered boundaries, but the absence of attention to race confirms the relative privilege available to white people in the American south in this era.
The final sentence published in the most widely circulated reports reveals the long-term impact of the beating: “Jewell has given up her daily cycling for fear she will be molested.” This outcome is also a reminder that similar concerns about potential threats shape decisions and practices in the present. Both surveys and first-hand accounts indicate that women cyclists report greater concern about harassment, threats, and intimidation. Women cyclists also report paying more attention to clothing, making decisions about riding outside or indoors, and selecting routes because of concerns for their safety.
A century ago, fear of violence led a young woman to stop cycling for her health, despite comm“unity condemnation of the violent incident that led to this decision. Understanding connections between historical examples and contemporary concerns may suggest ways to use community pressure to foster safer cycling for all participants.
E Thomas Ewing is a professor of history at Virginia Tech. Grace Kostrzebski is an undergraduate student majoring in history and religion & culture.
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