In honor of Martin Luther King Day, the New York Flyers running club took a historic jog through Harlem. They visited historic sites, statues, churches, monuments, and buildings on the tour.
“These individuals changed the world,” said Bradford Goz, a volunteer with the New York Flyers running club who organized the historic tour honoring those who are memorialized in these places. “Running provides a unique opportunity to go at an [engaging] pace to experience sites and architecture while covering a large territory.”
The New York Flyers running club was founded in 1989 and is one of the largest clubs in the city. A small group of runners gathered on a frigid Sunday morning, the day before MLK Day, to kick off their 2025 “Harlem Heroines and Heroes Run,” which began near the Frederick Douglass Sculpture and Water Wall by Central Park North.
“I feel like a tourist,” laughed Shevon Mahon, a club member who lives in Brooklyn.
Runners covered about 6 miles, pausing to get background information about each site and learning about the circumstances that led to the development of Harlem as the nation’s “Black Mecca” for several decades. They heard about Black American icons, such as abolitionist Harriet Tubman, real estate mogul Philip A. Payton, baseball player Willie Mays, band leader Cab Calloway, tennis great Althea Gibson, entertainer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, restaurateur Sylvia Woods, civil rights leader Malcolm X, former Congressmember Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and of course, MLK himself.
Even other running clubs in the city are rooted in Black history, said Goz. Ted “the Father of Long Distance Running” Corbitt, a Black runner who made history in the 1952 Olympics, served as founding president of the New York Road Runners Club (NYRR). He also trained at the 369th (Colored) Infantry — the Harlem Hellfighters, the most famous all-Black regiment to fight during World War I, with the French. Under his leadership, the running club opened to all races, genders, and running speeds.