Most Americans think of horse racing only when the Kentucky Derby arrives the first Saturday of May, but at the turn of the 20th century, jockeys were year-round celebrities — on a par with Tom Brady, Simone Biles and Shohei Ohtani as they competed in the nation’s first mass-spectator sport.
And during the roughly 40-year post-Civil War period bound by the start of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, African Americans were among the sport’s biggest superstars. They drew legions of fans, an eager press and fat purses that were unthinkable for the overwhelming majority of Black men at the time.
Isaac Murphy, who was born into slavery in 1861 and went on to shatter records and earn millions, outraced almost all of them, Black and White. The first jockey to win the Derby three times, Murphy became a hero to White children, stayed in Whites-only hotels and socialized with rich White men, his somber visage gracing pullout posters in racing magazines. A stallion was named in his honor.
Yet Murphy paid a price for his outsize success. And starting just a few years after his early death in 1896, there would be no more Black Derby winners and then, for nearly eight decades, no Black jockeys in the Derby at all. By 2000, when Marlon St. Julien finished seventh atop Curule, the golden age of the Black jockey had largely been forgotten.
Murphy was “one of the first Black superstar athletes,” and his “life encompasses so much about American history at the time,” said Katherine Mooney, a professor of history at Florida State University and author of “Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of the Black Jockey.” Before the advent of the automobile, when Americans were both dependent upon and captivated by horses, Murphy “became a symbol for everybody because racing was so popular,” Mooney said.
African American jockeys — who won 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies — served as a lens into the privileges and limits of Reconstruction as the majority of Black people experienced freedom for the first time. Their lives, Mooney said, began to answer a question: “What would America be like if Black men were heroes?”