Black History Month: Thoroughbred Racing
Thoroughbred racing was dominated by Black jockeys for decades before being unofficially banned in 1904.
In the late 19th century, Black jockeys were at the top of the sport, using horsemanship skills they had learned during enslavement.
“It’s arguable that Black jockeys were really America’s first sports stars,” Dominique Mungin, chair of the USHJA’s Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy Committee, told Chronicle of the Horse. “In particular, Black folks won 15 out of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies, and in fact, the very first Kentucky Derby featured 13 out of the 15 jockeys as Black men.”
Wikipedia
At the age of 19, Oliver Lewis won the first Kentucky Derby in 1875 on Aristides, a chestnut colt. The pair won by a reported two lengths, setting a new American record for a mile-and-a-half race. Later that season, Lewis and Aristides finished second in the Belmont Stakes in New York and won three more races at the Louisville Jockey Club.
Aristides was trained by Ansel Williamson, a former slave who would later be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. After the record-breaking season, Lewis retired for unknown reasons and spent the remainder of his life as a day laborer.
By J.H. Fenton. – From: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a50336 Re-touched slightly, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7457278
Isaac Burns Murphy is considered one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Born into slavery in 1861, his mother, America Murphy, was a house slave in Kentucky. In 1864, they became refugees at the Union Army’s Camp Nelson, where Isaac’s father, Jerry, enlisted after escaping slavery. Jerry eventually died in a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in 1865. In 1867, Isaac and his mother moved in with a family friend, Eli Jordan, a prominent horse trainer who worked for the Williams and Owings stables.
The rest, as they say, is history. Isaac became a jockey at 14, won an estimated 44% of his races, was the first jockey to win back-to-back Kentucky Derbies, and was also the Derby’s first three-time winner. Murphy died of heart failure in 1896. In 1955, he was inducted into the Jockey’s Hall of Fame in Saratoga, New York
By Unknown – http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Kentucky-Derbys-Forgotten-Jockeys.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142687322
Jimmy “Wink” Winkfield won the Kentucky Derby in 1901 and 1902, but is best remembered as the “last African American to ride a winner in the Kentucky Derby.”
“Throughout the 1900s, systemic racism pushed Black riders off the track, both physically and structurally,” Mungin stated to Chronicle of the Horse.
“Structurally, groups colloquially known as ‘anti-colored unions’ had the goal of running Black riders off the racetrack through collusion between jockeys, owners and officials,” she continued.
Not a single Black jockey participated in the Kentucky Derby from 1921 until 2000.
In response to the racism he faced, Winkfield relocated to Russia, where he won the Russian Oaks five times, the Russian Derby four times, the Czar’s Prize three times, and the Warsaw Derby twice. Forced to flee the country in 1917 due to the Russian Revolution, Winkfield moved to France. He retired in 1919 with more than 2,500 wins and later began a career as a trainer, establishing a barn just outside Paris. In 2004, he was inducted posthumously into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. The following year, in 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Winkfield.
It would take a truly inspirational story to bring Black jockeys back into the mainstream media’s attention here in the States — enter Cheryl White.
White became the first licensed Black female jockey in 1971. She is credited with 226 wins and earnings of $762,624 in Thoroughbred racing, but her career also included Quarter Horse, Arabian, Paint, and Appaloosa racing.
In total, White is estimated to have won about 750 races. She was the first woman to win the Appaloosa Horse Club’s Jockey of the Year award, earning the title in 1977 and again in 1983, 1984, and 1985.
White passed the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination in 1991, retired from riding in 1992, and became the first woman to serve as a California horse racing steward. She was inducted into the Appaloosa Hall of Fame in 2011.
“Cheryl was never a great self-promoter, and wasn’t concerned with the politics of racing,” her brother, Raymond White Jr., said in a press release after her passing in 2019. “She just did her thing. She didn’t understand what she had accomplished. I don’t know that she understood her significance, or place in history.”
Go riding.
Amanda Uechi Ronan is an author, equestrian, and wannabe race car driver. Follow her on Instagram @amanda_uechi_ronan.
