Cycling Through Black History

On a bike, you feel everything: the air, the ground beneath you, the beat of your heart. You’re alive in a way that’s undeniable. Over the years, riding supported me physically and spiritually. It comforted me to get around using my own strength, feeling that pulse of life.

As I was approaching 40, working too hard in marketing jobs, driving because I had to, I felt that sense of freedom slipping. I needed something just for me, a way to quiet the noise of events and demands, but I also wanted a challenge. So I biked from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, 35 days with just my thoughts as company. No music, no distractions — only the hum of the road. The next year, I rode from Miami to New York City, through plantations and swamps in the Deep South. As a person of color alone in that landscape, I couldn’t escape the layers of history around me. Freedom took on a different kind of weight; it was hanging in the air, stitched into the roads I traveled.

In 2014 and 2020, I retraced the path of the Underground Railroad from New Orleans to Niagara Falls. Every mile felt like I was stepping into a story greater than mine. And in 2022, I rode 1,900 miles from Fort Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis to re-create the 1897 ride of 20 Black infantrymen — a unit of Buffalo Soldiers — who, with their commanding officer, were testing whether bikes could serve as troop transport through brutal heat and snow. I fought through 105-degree stretches in the Nebraska Sandhills, trudged up Montana’s steepest inclines. If I thought about quitting, my wife’s voice was in my ear: “You have to do this. You’re bringing history to life.”

Erick Cedeño retraces routes of the past to bring history to life.

Damon Casarez

Now, in my 50s, these rides feel just as essential. My wife and I have a 3-year-old son, and with that comes a deeper need to understand where we came from. As a husband and father now, my trips are much shorter. I won’t ride at night. I need to protect myself for my family. But there are still so many roads calling. Last summer, I spent a few days riding the Black Belt of historic sites around Selma, Alabama. Riding is freedom.