Veronica Davis traces the inspiration for her all-female, African American bike club to a morning in 2011 when she pedaled past a public housing project in Southeast Washington, D.C. Co-owner of an environmental-sustainability consulting firm called Nspiregreen, Davis was taking a shortcut on her daily bike commute when she overheard a young black girl shouting to her mother, “Mommy, mommy, it’s a black lady on a bike!”
“At first, I didn’t understand why she was so excited,” says Davis. The 34-year-old civil engineer had started bike commuting about a year earlier, shortly after launching her business, partly to save money as the start-up got off the ground. “And then later, thinking about it, I realized I was probably the first cyclist riding down her street that looked like her.”
That experience led to a conversation among friends, which led to a Facebook group, Black Women Bike D.C., which exploded after a story in the Washington Post. Davis says she knew more African American women were bicycling in the District of Columbia — “I saw them” — but sensed they weren’t linked together in any type of community.
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