Joan Newton Cuneo

rdf:langString Joan Newton Cuneo

rdf:langString Joan Newton Cuneo

rdf:langString Joan Newton Cuneo (July 22, 1876, Holyoke, Massachusetts – March 24, 1934, Ontonagon, Michigan) was an American racing driver. Cuneo was very successful in races against both male and female racers until the racing associations restricted races to men only. She was a strong advocate for women drivers and an advocate for the Good Roads Movement in the United States. She first became famous as a daring automobilist in 1905, after her marriage to Andrew Cuneo in 1898 and the birth of her two children, Antonio (A. Newton Cuneo (1899) and Maddalena (Dolly) Cuneo (1901). Between 1905 and 1912 she would enjoy national celebrity because of her success as a daring racer willing to compete against all comers, both male and female. Unfortunately after women were banned from organized racing, she was no longer able to race and was reduced to setting women's speed records. After her husband's scandalous involvement with a showgirl, they divorced. Joan Cuneo then moved away from New York City where she had lived with her husband and children, first to Vermont and then to the upper peninsula of Michigan. There she married James Francis Sickman, her childhood sweetheart, shortly before her death. Until recently, she had received only a brief mention in automotive history "as the woman who got women banned from racing."