Wendell Scott never saw the checkered flag wave after his first, and only, NASCAR win.

The black driver from Danville, Va., wasn't handed a trophy and never considered kissing the race queen following a 200-lap race at Jacksonville's Speedway Park. Not in 1963.

One of stock car racing's most significant days remains mired in controversy nearly five decades later. Questions over scoring and racial tension remain unanswered. Some believe that Sunday afternoon race merely confirmed what was wrong with Southern-based stock car racing. Others say it became one of NASCAR's finest days because it righted a huge wrong.

It took two hours - long after the fans left the Jacksonville track - before NASCAR upheld a protest by Scott. Racing rival Buck Baker originally was declared the winner. He took the checkered flag. NASCAR then pored through its hand-written scorecards and agreed that Scott actually drove two extra laps. Official records now show him two laps ahead of the field.

Scott eventually was declared the winner and received the first-place check. He received a trophy - not the original - four weeks later before a race in Savannah, Ga.

If a black driver won a NASCAR race today, it would be hailed as a landmark event, one that elevates social fairness in a sport perceived to be steeped in blue-collared, sometimes prejudged, history.

When Scott won, few noticed. At the time, other than races at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR had no real national significance. The importance of that victory took years to gain traction.

Scott left an endearing legacy during a tumultuous time. Few can understand the obstacles Scott faced 47 years ago, yet he showed up 495 times with his No. 34 race car during a 13-year NASCAR career with the same objective - to drive hard and win. To him, it was about racing. To others it was about race.

The times

Wendell Scott avoided controversy as much as possible, but it was impossible to steer clear of the obvious struggles for a black man in a white sport, especially during the height of the civil rights movement.

Most of his friends said Scott was proud of his heritage, but insisted when it came to racing, he'd rather be known for his mechanical and driving abilities. It was a lifelong struggle to achieve any level of respect, especially after he made his first NASCAR start in 1961 - coincidentally in a car he bought from Buck Baker.

"He got a lot of abuse in the sport when he first started," said longtime NASCAR driver Buddy Baker, Buck's son. "I heard stories of the way he was treated in the drivers meeting and things like that. In the early days our sport had stuff like that going on, I guess."

Around the country, the civil rights movement had pushed the country's social conscience to a breaking point. It was a year when police used fire hoses and dogs to break up black demonstrators in Birmingham; a year when 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., to hear Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

It also was a year Scott was banned from Darlington (S.C.) Raceway for its two annual races -the Rebel 500 and Southern 500.

Franklin Scott, one of Scott's seven children, said his father often drove with a loaded pistol under his seat for protection.

Dale Inman, Richard Petty's longtime crew chief, said Scott once drove to a race in a new black Cadillac, and when he got there the car was covered in dust.

"He said he drove through the orchard to get there because he wanted to stay off the main roads," Inman said.

Scott never had the benefit of significant sponsorship. It was tough for white drivers to find a sponsor; it was impossible for a black man. Like others, he scratched for a meager existence, often relying on the generosity of others to keep his car on the track.

"He did the best he could with what he had to work with," Inman said. "He didn't bother nobody. We threw a bunch of stuff in a drawer on the truck, and we called it 'Wendell's drawer.' He could come up there and take whatever he needed. We had bearings and tie rods and things like that in there."

Scott was eager to return favors.

"Wendell was a gentleman," said Jacksonville's Willie Carter, 74, who raced 17 years at Speedway Park. "I remember going to Atlanta, and I tore the car up pretty bad. Back then we didn't have trailers to tow the cars home. We had tow bars on the back of the truck and we pulled the car home. Everybody was leaving the track and we had the whole front end of the race car out.

"Wendell came by with his crew, and he had a cutting torch. He stopped and wanted to know if he could help. They all jumped off and helped us get that car so we could tow it back home - two or three hours they worked - to Jacksonville. He was the only one who stopped to help us.''

Some race promoters cringed at the idea of a black man winning with a white crowd watching. But it didn't keep Scott from showing up and racing hard.

He was generally competitive and finished his career with 20 Top-5 finishes. His breakthrough race, and the only NASCAR event he ever led, was in Jacksonville.

The race

Speedway Park was a rickety racetrack on Jacksonville's Westside, at what's now an apartment complex on the corner of Lenox Avenue and Plymouth Street. The grandstands were crude and splintered; the racing surface primitive.

It was owned by Pat Patrick, who usually served up weekend racing shows for the locals, then served them cheeseburgers around the corner at his restaurant, Pat's Drive-In on Normandy Boulevard, after the race.

NASCAR first came to the half-mile oval in 1951, but it wasn't a regular fixture on the Grand National Series schedule. The race on Dec. 1, 1963, was just the sixth NASCAR-sanctioned event at Jacksonville - and would be the last.

The track surface was filled with deep ruts on two of the turns.

"The track was really rough that night," recalled ninth-place finisher Johnny Allen, one of four living drivers from the race. "The ruts got so deep in [Turns] 1 and 2 you could only see the top of the cars as they went through there. Cars were breaking down all over the place."

Irwin "Speedy" Spiers, who built cars that won more than 1,000 races, put Jimmy Lee Capps in a 1963 Plymouth at his hometown track. After starting third, Capps crashed on the 50th lap after being hit by Ned Jarrett's car. Spiers, 83, still builds engines in a shop on the eastside of Jacksonville, and he still believes the primitive conditions created the perfect environment for Scott to win.

Every car had to make stops for repairs. Jarrett had a big lead early, but was sidelined for more than 20 laps while his team replaced a rear wheel hub. He returned and got back in the top three before getting knocked out 19 laps from the finish with more wheel problems.

Richard Petty, who went on to become the winningest driver in NASCAR history, led 103 laps and appeared to be pulling away to an easy victory when his steering broke from the craggy conditions. With Petty fading, Scott took the lead with 25 laps remaining. When he crossed the finish line after 200 laps, there was no checkered flag. Another lap later, still no flag. He crossed the line again, but Baker was declared the winner.

"Everybody was in and out of the pits; nobody knew who was leading the race," Carter said. "The owners didn't know. I was there when they were discussing it after the race. It was an honest mistake. They didn't know who won the race.

"There was a beauty queen there that night and Wendell walked up to Buck Baker, and said, 'Mr. Buck, you can kiss that beauty queen, but that trophy's mine. I won that race.' That's when the controversy started."

Keeping up with the stops without the benefit of electronic scoring was nearly impossible. Each team manually kept track of the laps, and between the confusion caused by all the breakdowns, the noise and the dust, it was easy to lose track.

It also left some believing the wrong man may have gotten credit for winning.

"Wendell didn't win that race; he inherited it," Spiers said. "Wendell stopped and got out of his car. There ain't no way he won that race. That thing was so messed up that day. It was whoever lasted the longest.

"But Buck never contested it. He knew he won that race. Buck drove for me a couple times after that race. We talked about it. He was glad Wendell got paid for winning. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I was there. I watched the race, and I'm still not sure."

Once race steward Johnny Bruner realized the scorecard was missing two of Scott's laps, he was declared the official winner. Scott also was given credit for completing 202 laps - two more than Baker.

"I always thought it was a legitimate scoring problem," said Jarrett, who went on to win two points championships and became a longtime NASCAR television analyst. "It was common to recheck scorecards after a race back then. It happened all the time. When you have manual scoring, there's going to be plenty of room for a scoring error.

"They found the problem and Wendell won. It turned out the way it was supposed to."

Baker was placed second, followed by Jack Smith in third. Only 10 of 22 cars were still running at the end, and four of those were at least 15 laps behind.

The lost winner's trophy remains one of the biggest controversies of Scott's historic victory, and it fuels some of the racial claims now being made against NASCAR and the racetrack.

The trophy he was given in Savannah wasn't the original. It was a piece of wood without a top or any kind of inscription. It has since fallen apart.

The whereabouts of the original trophy remain a mystery.

The legacy

During the past 47 years, the significance of Scott's victory has been twisted to fit a variety of agendas. Some, including some of his children, believe their father was the victim of a sinister plan by NASCAR and Speedway Park officials to keep a black man from enjoying a victory.

The 1-hour, 55-minute delay to check the scorecards meant the 5,000 fans were gone. So was the beauty queen. Some insist matter-of-factly the delay was deliberate; a way to make sure nobody was around to appreciate the historic significance of the day.

NASCAR vice president Jim Hunter, who has spent nearly 40 years in the sport, disagreed, saying: "No one in NASCAR ever said anything about any racial problems from that event. It was simply another event where a scoring recheck was required and in those days, scoring rechecks were time-consuming because you had to go through individual scoreboards which was a tedious task.

"This is the last thing Wendell would have wanted."

Several stories were written years later about the track turning off the scoreboard during the final 27 laps so fans wouldn't know Scott was leading. Problem is, the track didn't have a scoreboard.

The controversial ending has even divided some of Scott's family. Sons Franklin and Wendell Jr. remain bitter to this day over how the finish of the Jacksonville race was handled. But others just want to put the disputed finish to rest.

"Daddy didn't like the controversy," said daughter Sybil Scott. "He didn't like to promote negativity. There are a lot of stories out there. I think even [the family] has some different viewpoints."

A crash at the Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in 1973 ended Scott's racing career. He returned to Danville and spent the rest of his life working as a mechanic.

He died in 1990 following a long battle with spinal cancer.

Scott was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame at Talladega in 1999, and has a helmet, racing suit and a door from his race car currently on display at the new NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C.

What Scott never had was the trophy for winning the Jacksonville race. Wendell Scott Jr. told nascar.com in 2007 that Buck Baker kept the trophy. He also said Buddy Baker has since apologized for his father's behavior.

Buddy Baker angrily denied that this week.

"I never said that," Baker said. "My dad would have made a bigger stink if he thought he won that race. As far as I'm concerned, Wendell won the race, and my dad never told me anything different. Wendell got the money and that's good enough for me.

"I'm sure my dad, after all the races he won, wouldn't covet a trophy he didn't win. My dad had so many trophies we had them stacked up out in the carport."

While others argued about the final results and whereabouts of the trophy, Scott and Baker remained not only driving competitors, but friends.

"What I will take to my grave is knowing daddy calling Buck Baker," Sybil Scott said. "They were fine. We're not trying to erase history, but we still want daddy's real trophy."

The mementos of Scott's career now are divided among his children. There is a small trophy case, an unofficial memorial in downtown Danville that holds other trophies, gloves and trinkets earned in a career that continues to be defined in both racing and social terms.

Like the rest of his racing career, it's a simple collection earned through equal amounts of fear, determination and reverence - a career that can't be defined by a missing trophy.