Member Story: Shantell Williams

Shantell Williams is inspiring others by following in the tire tracks of motorcycle pioneer Bessie Stringfield

For Shantell Williams, “Shut up and ride!” is more than a slogan – it’s a motivating factor in her life. In 2016, after riding motorcycles for only eight months, Shantell set out on her Road Glide Ultra on an 11,000-mile, 48-state journey. She did it to honor Bessie Stringfield, the first African American woman to ride a motorcycle solo across the United States – no small accomplishment in 1930, during the Jim Crow era. Ms. Stringfield later crisscrossed the country eight times and served as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider during World War II.

Although Shantell was fortunate not to encounter all the obstacles Bessie faced, she still experienced moments of crippling self-doubt during her long trip. “Every time I wanted to quit, I thought about Bessie,” Shantell says. “It would bring tears, because it would be so convenient just to quit. But I thought, ‘Shut up and ride.’ Tears and all, I shut up and rode. That’s what Bessie did for me.”

Inspiration
The impetus for Shantell Williams’ 27-day motorcycle journey began in third grade, although she didn’t realize it until years later. A class lesson about slavery impacted her deeply. “I was hurting, and I remember trying to ignore it,” she recalls. After school, she asked her mother, “Who’s a famous hero that looks like me, and not Harriet Tubman?” In those pre-internet days, it was a question that couldn’t be answered by a simple Google search. “I remember watching TV, just to see someone who looked like me. And I remember I started wishing I was other races, because that’s the only thing you’re seeing.”

Thirty years later, Shantell found her hero. Her husband, Cobbin, showed her a black and white photograph of Bessie Stringfield perched jauntily atop her motorcycle, “and I went, ‘Oh, she looks like me. And he goes, ‘No, you look like her.’”

Her curiosity piqued, Shantell scoured the internet. “I remember going to Google, and it just sparked something in me. I went back to third grade learning about slavery, and trying not to let it show that I felt bad. And suppressing [my feelings] until I was 40 years old, my husband showing me that picture, I realized, ‘So there was someone!’”

Even though she’d only ridden a short time, Shantell knew what she had to do, telling her husband, “Listen, I’m going to do 48 states. I know the kids start school in three weeks, but if Bessie did this in the ’30s and ’40s, I can do it.” That was on a Monday, and she left the following Friday.

Leap of Faith
Shantell, a mother of 10 and owner of Shantell’s Just Until, a popular southern and soul food restaurant in downtown Sanford, Florida, hit the road in late July of 2016. She embarked with no planned route, limited funds, and no specific agenda, other than to draw attention to Bessie’s accomplishments. “I have a lot of faith. And faith brings courage. A lot of times, I’d try to have a plan, and then I’d laugh,” Shantell remembers. “I’d be overwhelmed, thinking I’m going to do a thousand miles and I’d be very discouraged after, say, five hundred. So I’d go, ‘OK, Shantell. We’re just gonna do three to five gas tanks [each day], and that number would psych me up.” Knowing what Bessie faced also helped keep Shantell going. “Bessie did this before the interstates. Before it was safe for a Black woman to ride, so she’d have her goggles, helmet, and face mask; you didn’t know if she was male, female, Black, or white. Not to mention Jim Crow America at that time, not just in the South.”

Shantell persevered through long riding days, buoyed by random conversations with strangers at gas stations and encounters with children along with way. “I could see [the curiosity] in kids’ faces and the questions they’d ask,” she explains. “Like, ‘How’d you get the bike; who taught you to ride?’ And to share those stories with them, you could see the lights come on. I could relate because I knew how I would feel as an eight-year-old girl seeing a woman like me riding a bike.”

Although she rode solo, Shantell was accompanied by what she calls her “Mini Me” – a Muppet-like doll strapped to the passenger seat, complete with dreadlocks and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt – and that led to some interesting encounters. “I got stopped in Utah by a police officer,” she says. Apprehensive at first, she noticed the policeman laughing as he approached her. “And he goes, ‘We got nine 911 calls saying there’s a Black lady riding a bike with a baby on the back!’ And I was like, ‘That’s Mini Me!’ and he says, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve been following you; I can see it’s a Muppet.”

Two Heroes
Back home in Sanford, Florida, Shantell is now working to produce a television program called “Shut Up and Ride Show” and last year, she re-rode the 48 states accompanied by a video crew. Shantell may have found her hero, but along the way she has also given a new generation of young girls two heroes to look up to: Bessie Stringfield and Shantell Williams.

Find out more about Bessie Stringfield at insurance.harley-davidson.com/the-open-road/profiles/bessie-stringfield

Follow Shantell on Instagram @shutupandrideshow

Words by Glen Abbott
Photos by Mike Dunn

First published in Vol. 105 Issue 03 of The Enthusiast^®.