Horse Racing

Since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, African Americans have contributed to the sport of horse racing.

Horse racing was a major pastime for wealthy landowners in the American South. It was common for enslaved people to care for and train the horses and eventually, because they knew the horses so well, to ride them in races. By 1823, horse racing was the most popular American sport, and a large number of the best trainers and jockeys in the country were African Americans. The earliest African American jockey known by name was “Monkey” Simon, who rode at the Clover Bottom Race Track in Tennessee in 1806.

The Civil War put an end to racing for several years, as all available horses were needed for the military. By 1875, horse racing was again popular, and it was in that same year that the first Kentucky Derby was run. The first winner of that race was an African American jockey, Oliver Lewis.

Another African American jockey, Isaac Murphy, won the Derby three times between 1884 and 1891, a record that was not broken until 1948, when jockey Eddie Arcaro won his fourth. Murphy also had the distinction of becoming the first jockey to be inducted into the Jockey Hall of Fame. He is still considered one of the best American jockeys ever, having won 44 percent of his races. In the early days, in fact, African American jockeys dominated the sport; out of the first twenty-eight Kentucky derbies, African Americans won fifteen of them.

Many of the best-known trainers in horse racing were also African American. For example, Edward Brown trained the horse Baden-Baden, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1877, and Alex Perry trained Joe Cotton, who won in 1885. African Americans have also been involved in the sport since the early days as exercise riders, groomers, stable hands, and clockers.

After World War I, as racing became a major attraction for mainstream America, African Americans were excluded from riding and hired almost exclusively as stable hands. The reason, according to Jimmy Winkfield, the second jockey to win two Kentucky Derbies back to back, was money—“When a lot of money got in the game, the white men then, like they do now and like they've always been, wanted … to have, not only the money but also the reputation.”

It is only within the past few years that African Americans have begun playing an important role in racing again. Both rap singer MC Hammer and Motown Records founder Berry Gordy have owned and raced horses. In 2000, jockey Marlon St. Julien [Page 428]became the first African American to ride in the Kentucky Derby since 1921. He finished seventh. In that same year, William E. Summers IV chaired the Derby Festival Board, only the second African American to do so. “It's great having an African-American jockey involved in a race to come back during the year I was chair,” he said. He added that he hopes African Americans will return to the sport they once dominated.