agingrebel.com
Yesterday, this page published a story
titled “Profiling The 99 Percent” which contained the following
statements about the American Motorcyclist Association:
“…the AMA invented the rationale for
biker profiling. Shortly after the Hollister motorcycle “riot” in 1947,
E.C. Smith, the Executive Secretary of the AMA called the Hollister
bikers ‘outlaws’ and asserted that they represented only “one percent”
of the motorcycling community at most.”
And:“Yesterday the AMA renounced the stereotype it helped create 70 years ago.”
Maybe Not
This morning Jim Witters, who is both an experienced journalist and a spokesman for the AMA wrote The Aging Rebel
to say that the AMA “was disappointed that” this site “chose to blame
the AMA for creating the circumstances that led to such profiling.”
“The AMA represents all motorcyclists.”
Witters continued. “And the AMA mission is to promote the motorcycle
lifestyle and protect the future of motorcycling.”
The Aging Rebel stated and
believes the terms “outlaw” and “one percenter,” as applied to
motorcyclists, originated with E.C. Smith, who was then the Executive
Secretary of the AMA.
The AMA’s spokesman disagrees and wrote:
“The term ‘one-percenters’ and the role of the AMA in coining that
phrase has been the topic of much discussion over the years – ever since
an unfortunate riot involving motorcyclists in Hollister, Calif., was
reported in Life magazine in 1947. The AMA has spent
considerable time trying to determine whether or not the term originated
from the AMA: letters to the editor of Life magazine, to San Francisco newspapers, AMA archives, etc.”
“We found nothing to confirm that the AMA or an AMA official ever made that statement, though it is now a part of popular lore.
“The best any of us can figure, a local
AMA member, perhaps someone with an AMA club or district, made the
statement anonymously to a reporter and it stuck. But we have never
found any attribution to an individual.”
Thank you for reading.