Origins: Los Angeles, 1959
The Chosen Few Motorcycle Club is one of the oldest documented continuously running US one-percenter clubs and is widely cited as one of the first racially integrated outlaw motorcycle clubs.
| Field | Documented detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | Around 1959, Los Angeles, California |
| Founding members (per published club history) | Lionel, Lil Frank, Roger, Hawk, Slim, Shirly Bates, Champ |
| Historical context | Black riders organizing in late-1950s LA when most existing clubs were closed |
| Documented presence | US (multiple states), Philippines |
| Distinction | Among the earliest racially integrated 1%er clubs in the US |
We are not a motorcycle club. Bobber Brothers is a brand built by riders who respect the culture and the history. What follows is the documented history of the Chosen Few MC. For broader cluster context, our motorcycle clubs complete guide is the cluster reference.
Los Angeles in the Late 1950s
To understand why the Chosen Few formed, you need to understand what riding looked like for Black men in late-1950s America.
The American Motorcyclist Association and the broader organized riding world were white spaces. Outlaw motorcycle clubs - the Hells Angels had formed in 1948, the Outlaws in 1935, the Bandidos would come later - were white organizations. The motorcycle industry marketed to white consumers. Rallies, runs, and events catered to white crowds.
Black riders existed in large numbers. They always had. But the infrastructure of organized riding - the clubs, the events, the institutional support - was not built for them.
Los Angeles and Oakland were at the center of a new Black biker scene emerging in the late 1950s. The Chosen Few’s founders wanted to ride and enjoy that scene under their own banner. Not as guests in someone else’s club. Not as tokens. As a fully structured motorcycle club with their own patch, their own rules, and their own identity.
The founding members came from the working-class neighborhoods of LA. They were men who worked during the week and rode on weekends. The motorcycles they rode were the same American iron everybody else rode - Harleys and Indians, because that is what you rode if you were serious. The culture demanded it then and it still does in most traditional MC settings today.
One Percenter Status and Integration
The Chosen Few MC identifies as a one percenter club - meaning they align with the outlaw tradition that operates outside the sanction of the American Motorcyclist Association. The 1%er designation carries specific weight in the MC world: it signals a club that lives by its own rules and answers to no mainstream authority.
What makes the Chosen Few historically significant beyond their longevity is their claim as one of the first fully integrated outlaw motorcycle clubs in America. While the club was originally founded by and for Black riders, membership opened to other races over the decades. This integration happened organically, driven by the reality that the people who showed up, earned their way through prospecting, and committed to the club came from varied backgrounds.
In a motorcycle world that was - and in many ways still is - deeply divided along racial lines, a club that moved from Black-only to mixed-race while maintaining its identity and its 1%er status is noteworthy. It did not happen because of a policy memo. It happened because the club valued commitment and loyalty over the color of a rider’s skin.
Structure and How They Operate
The Chosen Few follow the traditional MC organizational model:
Three-piece patch. Top rocker with the club name, center patch with the club insignia, bottom rocker with the chapter location. The three-piece patch is the mark of a serious MC. Wearing it means you prospected, you earned it, and the club trusted you enough to carry their name on your back.
Officers. President, vice president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant-at-arms, road captain. The standard hierarchy used by virtually every structured MC in the country - a model that traces directly to military organizational structure, which makes sense given how many MC founders were veterans.
Prospecting. Before a rider earns the full patch, they go through a probationary period that tests commitment, loyalty, and willingness to put the club ahead of personal interests. The prospect period is a filter. It is supposed to be. Not everyone makes it through.
Mandatory meetings. Church. Regular chapter meetings where business gets handled. Not optional. The discipline that keeps a club alive for sixty-plus years does not happen by accident.
American iron. Members ride American-made motorcycles. Harleys dominate, as they do in every traditional MC. This is not a suggestion. It is a requirement that goes back to the post-WWII roots of the entire outlaw club movement.
Chapters Nationwide and Beyond
From that Los Angeles garage, the Chosen Few expanded across the country over the decades. Chapters have been established in multiple states, with the club maintaining a presence that stretches coast to coast.
The expansion also reached the Philippines - a testament to the global reach of American motorcycle culture and the specific connections that develop when riders from different countries share the same values and the same code.
Each chapter operates under the national structure, with the Los Angeles mother chapter maintaining its founding authority. The growth was deliberate. The Chosen Few prioritized quality of membership and alignment with the club’s values over rapid expansion. This is a club that would rather have ten committed chapters than fifty paper ones.
That deliberate approach to growth is one of the key reasons the club has survived as long as it has. In the MC world, clubs that expand too fast often fracture badly. Chapters that do not have genuine local roots and genuine local leadership tend to collapse or cause problems for the national organization. The Chosen Few avoided that by growing organically, chapter by chapter, through riders who sought the club out rather than being recruited.
Black Motorcycle Culture: The Parallel Tradition
The Chosen Few are part of a larger tradition of Black motorcycle clubs in America that stretches back to the 1950s. Organizations like the East Bay Dragons (Oakland, founded in 1959), the Soul Brothers MC, the Wheels of Soul, the Outcasts MC out of Detroit, and dozens of others have histories running parallel to - and largely separate from - the white-dominated MC world.
These clubs formed for the same fundamental reason: exclusion. When the mainstream MC world would not have Black riders, Black riders built their own clubs, their own events, their own culture. They developed their own traditions, protocols, and riding styles that both mirror and diverge from the broader MC landscape.
The Chosen Few’s founding in 1959 places them among the earliest wave of Black MCs in America. Their survival for more than sixty years places them among the most durable. In a subculture where clubs form and dissolve constantly, where internal politics can destroy an organization in a season, lasting six decades is not a given. It is earned.
The racial divisions in motorcycle culture have softened in some places and persist stubbornly in others. The Chosen Few’s own evolution from a Black-only club to an integrated one reflects the broader, uneven movement toward a more inclusive riding world. But that movement is far from complete, and anyone who tells you race does not matter in the MC world is not paying attention.
The Bikes
Walk through any Chosen Few event and you see a cross-section of American motorcycle culture.
Harley-Davidsons dominate. Baggers - Road Glides, Street Glides, Road Kings - are heavily represented, many of them custom-painted in ways that factory designers never imagined. The bagger culture within the Black riding community runs parallel to but distinct from the broader bagger scene. Louder paint. Bigger wheels. More chrome - or in recent years, more blacked-out builds with selective chrome accents.
Custom choppers, old-school Softails, Dynas with ape hangers, and the occasional Sportster build that someone sank more money into than the bike cost new. Indian motorcycles have gained ground in recent years, particularly the Chieftain and Challenger models.
What you will not see much of: metric bikes. The traditional MC standard of American-made motorcycles holds. A bone-stock Road King ridden 20,000 miles a year still commands more respect than a $50,000 show bike that never leaves a trailer. The culture has always been about riding, not posing. Miles matter more than money. That has been true since 1959 and it has not changed.
A Note on the Chicago Picnic
The name “Chosen Few” is associated with a massive annual motorcycle picnic held in Chicago every summer - one of the largest motorcycle events in the Midwest. It is worth noting that the relationship between the Chosen Few MC (the 1%er club founded in Los Angeles around 1959) and the Chicago-based Chosen Few annual picnic may involve different organizations or chapter events. The details are not always clear in public sources, and we present this distinction rather than conflating the two.
What is clear is that the “Chosen Few” name carries weight in multiple motorcycle communities across the country, and the Chicago event - regardless of its exact organizational relationship to the LA-founded club - has become a genuine institution in Black riding culture. The event draws tens of thousands of attendees every summer and features group rides through the city that shut down streets and draw residents onto porches and overpasses to watch. That level of community engagement, sustained over decades, is rare in any subculture.
What the Chosen Few Represent
The Chosen Few MC’s significance goes beyond their patch or their territory. They represent a specific truth about motorcycle culture: it was never exclusively white, it was never exclusively outlaw in the Hollywood sense, and the clubs that last are the ones built on genuine brotherhood rather than image.
A club founded by seven men in a Los Angeles garage around 1959 that is still active today, with chapters across the country and in the Philippines, has proven something that no amount of marketing or media coverage can replicate. They showed up. They kept showing up. And they are still showing up.
For riders interested in the deeper structure of motorcycle clubs - the hierarchy, the codes, the unwritten rules - our complete guide to motorcycle clubs covers the full landscape. The Iron Horsemen MC in Cincinnati and the Outcasts MC in Detroit represent two more clubs that have held their ground for decades through different approaches. And the guardian bell tradition shows how motorcycle culture builds its bonds through small acts of protection between riders - the same spirit that built the Chosen Few from the ground up.
If you ride and you want to carry the culture on the road, our patches and merch and riding tees are made by riders, for riders. We are not an MC. We are a brand built by people who respect what organizations like the Chosen Few built - and we make gear for everyone who shares that respect.
Sources
- One Percenter Bikers: Chosen Few MC - Club profile with expansion and structure details
- Lowbrow Customs: Black Biker History - Choppers and Motorcycle Clubs - Feature on Black motorcycle club history including the Chosen Few
- ABC7 San Francisco: East Bay Dragons - Oakland’s Oldest Black Motorcycle Club - Context on parallel Black MC founding era in California
