Go to a racetrack today and you might be hard-pressed to see black jockeys. There are a few, but not many. People might think horse racing is a sport that never much included black athletes but they would be wrong. In fact, there was a time when black jockeys dominated the sport and rode off with a number of wins in the greatest race of all, the Kentucky Derby.
Black jockeys ran in races all the way back to colonial times after the British came to America and brought with them their passion for the sport. When President Andrew was sworn into the White House in 1829, he came with his beloved racehorses and best black jockeys.
Racing was particularly popular in the South and many of the jockeys were slaves who started out cleaning stalls and as grooms caring for the horses. Because they spent so much time with the horses, they developed the skills and talents needed to calm horses and work with them.
Being a jockey allowed them to travel on the racing circuits and ride against white jockeys, even earn a little money. After the Civil War, racing in the South pretty much shut down as emancipated black jockeys went north to race at tracks in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, where the real money was. They were skilled athletes who knew horses inside and out.
The first black jockey ever to win the prestigious Kentucky Derby was 19-year-old Oliver Lewis in 1875. That year, he was one of 13 black jockeys in a 15-horse race. He was a Kentucky native and rode a horse named Aristides, a colt actually trained by a former slave. Two years later, a 17-year-old black jockey named William Walker won the Derby. Isaac Murphy was the first black jockey to win three Kentucky Derby races, in 1884, 1890, and 1891. He was also the first black jockey inducted into the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame in 1955. He rode at a time when black jockeys were accepted as the norm. In fact, black jockeys came home the winners of 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derby races.
The youngest black jockey to win a Derby did so in 1892. Alonzo “Lonnie” Clayton was only 15. In 1895, James “Soup” Perkins took the Derby. Willie Simms won the 1896 and 1898 Derbies, and sadly, the last black jockey to win was Jimmy “Wink” Winkfield, who took home the winning titles in 1901 and 1902. Murphy, Simms, and Winkfield were all inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.
But by 1921, these amazing black athletes vanished from the Derby races and from racing in general for many reasons, including rampant racism. Racetracks were closing due to poor attendance, and there was volatile competition with white jockeys that sometimes got violent. Winkfield got death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. He eventually left for Europe and became something of a celebrity on and off the racetrack, until his own stables were raided by Nazis in 1940.
Groups against gambling fought hard to close down more tracks and many blacks were able to find more opportunities up north than riding as jockeys for the benefit of white owners and breeders.
Today, there is a handful of black jockeys racing, but the sport is dominated by jockeys from all over the world, especially Spanish-speaking countries. Some of the black jockeys of the past have been featured in books, documentaries, and historical programs, and have races named after them to commemorate their contributions, such as the Jimmy Winkfield Stakes run at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, New York. Black History Month is the perfect time to pay tribute to these pioneers and encourage people to research their amazing place in racing history, one that continues as black owners and breeders now come into the sport.
But it all began in the past when young black men with few if any options found a chance for opportunity beyond the stalls they toiled in, on the backs of four-legged athletes as they rode to victory in the greatest race of all, the Kentucky Derby, and into the history books.
