THE LEGACY OF BLACK HORSEMEN RACES TOWARDS THE FUTURE IN EAST LEXINGTON
William Wells Brown Elementary School in East Lexington stands in the heart of an important piece of horse racing history.
Erected in the heart of the original Kentucky Association racetrack, the entrance of the school looks out to sprawling fields that once encompassed a horse racing campus that would prepare some of the biggest legends in the sport’s history.
The site is rooted in African American history, a section of the city that has been home to generations of Black families. Less than half a mile away stands the foundation of Isaac Murphy’s 19th-century mansion, which today serves as a park and historical landmark paying homage to the Hall of Fame jockey.
(L) The limestone foundation of Isaac Murphy’s original house rests underneath the amphitheater seating today. (R) Sculpture designed by Tiffany and Neal Bociek and created by Andrew Light and Material Alchemy Studios.
But while many of the biggest names in horse racing history have trained and competed on the land that nearly 100 years ago housed the Kentucky Association racetrack, the space is a reminder of the legacy and eventual erasure of the Black horsemen who created horse racing as we know it today.
To support this community in building a stronger connection with its past, several organizations and academics including Phoenix Rising Lexington, named after the longest running race in the United States, are working to change the narrative to showcase how important Black horsemen were to the creation, maintenance and success of horse racing in the state and across the nation.
Isaac Murphy, illustrated by KTW’s August Northcut
These Hallowed Grounds
Image courtesy of The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame
In order to understand the significance of this space, it’s important to look back at its origins. Just 30 years after Kentucky was established as a state, affluent Lexingtonians including Henry Clay, Dr. Elisha Warfield and Jesse Bledsoe founded the Kentucky Association to house, train and race Thoroughbred horses in 1826. Two years later, “the Association opened a new one-mile track, grandstand, and stables east of Lexington’s city limits,” according to the International Museum of the Horse.
After the formation of the Association, organizers began the perennial Phoenix Stakes, which remains the oldest continuously run stakes race in the United States. But while Black horsemen, jockeys, trainers, and others, would continue to find success and lead the support on the track, they would continue to suffer in dehumanizing conditions off of it because of their enslavement.
In many instances, trainers and jockeys would have to live in the same quarters as the horses. In others, they faced even greater risk. Specifically, horse owners and breeders “would readily place inexperienced young jockeys on horses due to the simple fact that they weigh less than full-grown men. Although this practice was widespread, detailed accounts from the era mostly exist in the event of an accident or death to a child while riding.” These conditions would persist throughout the 19th century.
As the International Museum of the Horse’s programming has detailed, Black horsemen played as prominent a role in the races as they did behind the scenes. “If it was to the owner’s advantage,” the Museum’s materials stated, “they were sometimes tasked with transporting horses across state lines for sale or stud, allowing their enslaved horsemen to speak for them to other people and make decisions regarding trading and breeding in their absence.”
After receiving their freedom from the Emancipation Proclamation and through the Union’s victory in the Civil War, Black horsemen would continue to dominate the sport and bring both money and prestige to horse racing. According to the International Museum of the Horse, Lexington’s Black population skyrocketed by 133% between 1860 and 1870.
“Many newly freed African Americans began to occupy the eastern area of Lexington — simply known as East End — which was also home to the Kentucky Association racetrack, a source of steady employment.”
Still, despite the prospect of the future of a prosperous Black middle class in Lexington in the later stages of the 19th century, systemic and institutional racism in the form of legal segregation would make it impossible for Black horsemen “to earn a living in the industry they and their ancestors had helped create,” according to the International Museum of the Horse.
Kentucky Association racetrack in the 19th century, courtesy Phoenix Rising Lexington
“Although segregation was never officially introduced into horse racing, a number of informal forces effectively made it so.”
Even the most successful Black horse racing athletes faced considerable discrimination. Take for example the only Black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby in the 20th century, Jimmy Winkfield, who emerged victorious in 1901 and 1902. After developing an illustrious career as a premier jockey on racetracks across the United States, Winkfield had enough.
Because of the racism he experienced from his white peers on and off the track and from the segregationist horseracing press, he picked up a one-way ticket to Europe in 1904. He eventually landed in Russia and began a tour of winning all across Eastern and Western Europe. His success on the track resulted in a high-profile life of luxury, and he married into Russian royalty.
Jimmy Winkfield, courtesy of the Kentucky Derby Museum
From there, he continued to train horses and win competitions up until the Russian Revolution, when he escaped and took 252 horses to France. There, he remarried into the French aristocracy. For nearly 20 relatively uneventful years with continued success in horse racing, he was once again forced to escape war-torn France as the Nazis aimed to invade.
No one remembered him on his return to the United States. Still, he went South and started working in South Carolina, eventually moving to Baltimore to work at Pimlico. After the war ended, he would go back to France and continue to train horses.
In 1961, while back in the United States receiving medical care, Sports Illustrated invited him to the National Turf Writers Association dinner to honor him at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Accompanied by his daughter, they showed up to the dinner only to be denied access through the front door because of segregationist policies.
While this is a high-profile account of one of the most celebrated jockeys in horseracing history, many stories of racist aggression that Black horsemen experienced remain undocumented.
HARDBOOTS OF HISTORY MARCH FORWARD
While many organizations have begun highlighting these stories in the wake of the beginning of the one of the largest civil rights movements of the past 60 years, others began this work much longer ago. Phoenix Rising Lexington, which began in 2017, has maintained a commitment “to tell these men’s stories and raise them up out of the ashes of a whitewashed history.”
For Howard Myers, the treasurer of the organization, the focus remains both local and collaborative. In 2013, University of Kentucky professor Dr. Rosie Moosnick introduced an after-school program to William Wells Brown Elementary School. The program, which ran from 2013 to 2019, featured freshman students who worked with third to fifth grade students. To help bolster the program’s curriculum, Yvonne Giles, Education Coordinator for nearby African Cemetery No. 2, provided resource material that showcases the stories of the Black horsemen who created the horseracing industry on the very ground the school sits on.
Not far from the school sits 8 acres of history known as African Cemetery No. 2. To help tell the stories of the legacies of those buried there, Yvonne Giles exhaustively researched these figures and wrote stories that appear on placards sprinkled throughout the cemetery. The ongoing research process was started by Dr. Anne Buttler, the former director of the CESAA, who in 2000 discovered the stories of 87 men who worked in the horse racing industry. Through the research of Dr. Butler, Yvonne Giles and Cemetery Board member Allan Hetzel, the number of stories has risen to 161. The signs denoting these figures started sprouting in 2010 through a University of Kentucky, Commonwealth Collaborative Grant. Students from the University installed the signs.
“These former enslaved people became leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners, property owners and voters,” Giles told the University of Kentucky. “That history is there; it just needs a spotlight to shine.”
East Lexington’s African Cemetery No. 2 is the final resting place for many of the most formative Black horsemen in history. Kentucky to the World writer Michael Phillips and Phoenix Rising Lexington Treasurer Howard Myers explore the new educational signage throughout the restored grounds.
To enhance this programming, Phoenix Rising Lexington facilitates an annual parade called the Phoenix Festival, where students are invited to dress as jockeys as the community walks the short distance from the school to the legendary Isaac Murphy’s mansion site. A brass band leads the procession.
Courtesy Phoenix Rising Lexington
Still, the objective through all of this is to empower and support the youth in the East End of Lexington. For Howard, the most important thing is making sure that students understand how important the location of their school is and how they can use the forgotten stories of the Black horsemen who built Kentucky’s horse racing legacy to make sure that future generations will carry it on. “Phoenix Rising Lexington’s goal,” he said, “is to connect this history to the community.”
