Kentucky Colored School House

Kentucky Derby's Black Jockey Jimmy Winkfield

A Rollercoaster Life:

Wink could have been America's greatest racing phenomenon, were it not for history. Two-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Jimmy Winkfield's life was a rollercoaster of fame and obscurity, enduring racism, world war, death threats, and exile. While life was high he attained celebrity, wealth, and true love, though his two greatest romances were with horses, and his exiled home, the United States. Wink's journey is an odyssey through history, tragedy, spunk, and old-fashioned American ingenuity.

Humble Beginnings:

Born in 1880 in Chilesburg, Kentucky, Jimmy Winkfield grew up around horse racing; his heroes were the great black jockeys of the 1890s. In Wink: The Incredible Life and Epic Journey of Jimmy Winkfield (McGraw-Hill; November, 2004; Hardcover, $22.95), author Ed Hotaling tells how the shoeshine boy became a stable hand, and progressed to exercising the horses. Finally, just sixteen, Wink got his chance to race. And race he did.

A Victiem of Racism:
He won back-to-back Kentucky Derbies in 1901 and 1902-one of only four jockeys ever to do so. Wink's Derby wins were also the high-water mark for black jockeys in America. At the turn of the century a combination of big money, violence by white jockeys, threats from the Ku Klux Klan, and racism forced the great black jockeys from U.S. racing. Jimmy Winkfield, out of options in his native America, bought a steamer ticket for Europe - where horse racing was still king and jockeys were celebrities.

A Sensation in Russia:

The rides began to dry up in Kentucky, too, thanks to Jim Crow, so he headed to Russia, where he took the drastic step of signing on as a stable jockey to Gen. Michael Lazarev, an Armenian oil magnate. Winkfield was 21, stood five feet tall and couldn't speak a word of Russian

Shortly after arriving, Wink won the All-Russian Derby and the Czar's Prize in Russia, then went on to win numerous other major purses in Europe. He became the dominant athlete in Czarist Russia's only national sport, winning its national riding championship an unheard-of three times. He became fabulously wealthy, married a Russian heiress, and lived large in Moscow. But the Russian Revolution of 1917 drove the entire aristocratic horse racing community south to Odessa on the Black Sea.

Escaping to Paris:

In 1918, even as the revolutionary army was moving into Odessa and burning down the racetrack, Wink and his fellow riders, trainers and owners drove 200 thoroughbreds across the Transylvanian Alps to Poland - a thousand-mile odyssey - eating horseflesh to survive. Amazingly, Wink made it to Poland and beyond, to Paris, where he shared the limelight with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, and royalty from around the world.

World War Two:

By 1940 he was training horses on the grounds of his villa outside Paris. Unfortunately, history was to again intervene in Wink's life and livelihood. The Nazis were poised to occupy France. When German soldiers commandeered his property and confronted him at his own stables, Wink defended himself with a pitchfork. Once again, Wink was forced to flee in the face of historic catastrophe.

Finally Home Again:

After decades of exile, Wink returned to the United States in 1961 one last time, when he was invited, as a two-time winner, to a Kentucky Derby banquet. But when he and his daughter arrived at Louisville's historic Brown Hotel, they were told they couldn't use the front door; after a long delay they were let in, but everybody at the banquet ignored them. Except for an old competitor. A great white jockey named Roscoe Goose recognized Jimmy even though he hadn't seen him since their derby days sixty years earlier, came over, introduced himself, and sat down next to him. One of the last public photos of Jimmy, included in the book, was taken at the Kentucky Derby the following day. He was sitting next to his old rival Roscoe, both in suits and hats, smoking cigars, smiling and telling stories to incredulous reporters. Wink had outrun racism once again.

This is the wonderful, true, and nearly unbelievable story of a great athlete and a great man who proved, in at least ten countries, that he was one of the greatest jockeys ever. He died at his lovely home and training ground outside in Paris, at age 94, still homesick for the Kentucky bluegrass of his boyhood. (source: "Jimmy Winkfield" McGraw-Hill Press Release)

Read more about the "African American Jockeys in the Kentucky Derby" here.

Spelunking Slaves at Mammoth Cave

Geologically, Mammoth Cave is a network of underground caverns in central Kentucky believed to be the world's largest cave system. Understanding Mammoth Cave as a social and political space, however, means grappling with its singular place in the history of American slavery. During the War of 1812, the cave was an important source of saltpeter (used in the manufacturing of gunpowder), and African American slaves provided the principal labor for its mining and extraction. Following the war, when the price of saltpeter dropped dramatically, mining became inviable. In the decades that followed, as the cave emerged as a popular tourist destination for U.S. and European travelers, its economic value continued to depend on slave labor.1 ("Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869," by Peter West, 9 February 2010)

Though it was by no means unusual that male and female slaves worked as cooks, laundresses, porters, and chambermaids in the hotel located near the cave entrance, Mammoth Cave slavery was noteworthy: the guides who led visitors on tours of the cave during the antebellum era were black men either owned by the cave's proprietor or leased out by a neighboring slaveholder. In a compelling racial scenario largely overlooked by historians, these slaves were responsible for the conduct and well-being of the many white men and women who journeyed through the cave in the decades leading up to the Civil War. ("Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869," by Peter West, 9 February 2010)

By far the most famous of these cave guides was Stephen Bishop, who began working at Mammoth Cave when his owner, Franklin Gorin, purchased the property above the cave in 1838. The next year, in 1839, Gorin sold the property, along with Bishop and another slave, to Louisville physician Dr. John Croghan.3 Until his death in 1857, Bishop accompanied thousands of visitors on cave tours, explored miles of the cave's passages and chambers, and produced detailed maps of the caverns still lauded for their accuracy. In the dozens of first-hand cave narratives that appeared in the 1840s and 50s, Bishop was often celebrated for his handsome and exotic appearance, his extensive knowledge of the cave's topography and history, and his bravery and winsome personality. Today, Bishop continues to capture the imagination, appearing as a central figure in a 2000 Yale Younger Poets volume of poetry, a 2004 children's novel, and a work of historical fiction. ("Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869," by Peter West, 9 February 2010)

"Trying the Dark":

Drawing of Stephen Bishop, enslaved cave guide and cave explorer

The cave also offered a participatory form of tourism shaped by the racial dynamics of the visitor/guide relationship and the reality of slavery as a defining presence. As Child's 1843 narrative moves deeper into the caverns, she describes the rivers — first the "Styx," then the "Lethe," and finally the "Jordan." While the first two names are borrowed from classical mythology, the Old Testament "Jordan" invokes slavery.22 "The guide usually sings while crossing the Jordan," writes Child, "and his voice is reverberated by a choir of sweet echoes" (415). We know that Bishop and his fellow guides would often sing spirituals while rowing visitors on the river Bishop named the "River Jordan." At one spot along the Jordan, the cave ceiling hung so low that "[p]assengers are obliged to double up, and lie on each other's shoulders, till this gap is passed" (414).

The River Styx in Mammoth Cave

On the far shores of the Jordan, Bishop would play a notorious trick. As Bullitt describes in Rambles, Bishop set up the long-awaited supper for travelers along the river shore.23 When some among the group of exhausted and well-fed (and often, slightly inebriated) visitors inevitably resisted the suggestion of heading back to the cave entrance, Bishop would casually comment, "we had as well be going, for the river might take a rise and shut us up here" (99). The risk was real, but guides had a supply of boats stowed within easy reach. Travelers, as described by Bullitt, had no knowledge of this: "In a second we were all in motion, and hurrying past beautiful incrustations, through galleries long and tortuous, down one hill and up another" until they finally reach the Jordan, "which we found to our great relief had not risen" (99-100). When they realize that they have been tricked by Bishop, "we were too happy in having our fears relieved, to fall out with him" (100).

Given that Child's one explicit mention of slavery — in the final line of her article she hopes that Bishop's "last breath may be a free one" (419) — is removed by every writer who borrowed liberally (sometimes without attribution) from her, we might read the "Jordan" River as a site where Bishop and his fellow guides attempted to bring the vocabulary of slavery into a place that its proprietor sought to depoliticize. It was known among visitors that Bishop had named most of the underground chambers, hallways, and rivers. And it is on the "Jordan" that visitors were forced to pile on top of one another in positions evoking the Middle Passage, while Bishop would sing to them. Some accounts describe boatfuls of tourists joining in the singing of slave spirituals and minstrel songs.

Eyeless Fish found in the rivers inside of Mammoth Cave

Whatever Bishop intended by christening the waterway the "Jordan", it was apparently the only name to trouble Croghan. For even though Bishop's other names would survive, in Bullitt's 1845 Rambles (which was either ghost-written or commissioned by Croghan himself, and is still available today in cave souvenir shops) the "Jordan" has been renamed the "Echo" River. Perhaps the name was seen as a transgression by those who wanted to place the cave beyond the whiff of political controversy.

Inside of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

Racial power and its reversibility is a motif in cave accounts. Charles Peterson's 1852 "Two Days in Mammoth Cave" evokes a nightmare in which the white mind is subjected to the presence of dark power.24 Using second-person voice, he invites readers to identify with the narrator's perspective, when he describes the cave's nihilistic solitude. "Suddenly you see before you a huge sarcophagus, apparently hewn from the solid rock. It is a size to suggest thoughts of the Titans who warred against Saturn, or those mysterious giants who are said to have lived before the flood. Yes pause with strange awe before it. . . . [the] "imagination whispers that, within this mighty tomb, reposes perhaps some wizard of colossal race" who might, if properly provoked, "drag you down to darkness and death" (156).

Mammoth Cave Map by the slave Stephen Bishop

One oft-repeated story from the realm of white nightmare involved a region of the cave called the "Haunted Chamber." As told by the Rev. Horace Martin, a young miner wanders off alone to dig up some underground salts. When he fails to reappear, six black miners were formed into a company to go in search of the miner (who is presumably white).25 "They were Negroes," Martin writes, "and previous to starting on their errand of mercy were stripped half naked. It may, therefore, be imagined how extraordinary was their appearance" (33). Here Martin switches back to the perspective of the lost miner, describing the terror and madness of his solitude: "He thought that he had quitted earth — was disembodied — in fact, that he was in the place of torments said to be reserved for sinners" (33). Seeing the black bodies of the six miners in the rescue company, he imagines they are demons: "He had never seen anything like them. They were spirits, sent to drag him to his punishment. He hears their yells. [. . .] Nearer and nearer they come. He is conscious of their hot and hissing breath" (34).

Many Mammoth Cave writers described "trying the dark," a trial that involved the cave guide leaving a visitor deprived of any lamplight for a few minutes of tortuous solitude.

In William Lyman Fawcett's account of a trip to the cave soon after the Civil War, he describes a conversation with the guide Nick Bransford about what Fawcett calls the "ordeal of darkness" (678).26 "Is there any danger," Fawcett asks, "and from what?" At the only moment in the entire piece where Nick's voice appears, the guide replies, "Nobody knows, massa . . . only some people's nerve can't stan' it, dat's all" (678).

Nick Bransford

"The mention of that odious word, 'nerve,'" writes Fawcett, "sounded so much like the familiar solicitation, 'Try your nerves, gentlemen?' from the electrical-machine man, — who is found on the curb-stone of some thoroughfare in every city, — that for one brief instant the prestige of the great cave was gone" (678). Urged on by the soft-spoken Nick (who calls the author "massa"), Fawcett decides that perhaps the experience of total darkness is "only claptrap after all" — an underground version of some cheap carnival gimmick.

After Nick leaves him alone, Fawcett describes visions before him, those "subjective creations of the brain, outlined in the dark" (678). The terror of perfect blindness and solitude is overwhelming, heightened by a sense of reversed racial power: "It began to be terrifying to think that release from this hell of silence was dependent upon one man's will, and he too a man I had never seen until within a few hours. Where was he now, my dark-faced guide?" (679) Finally, Fawcett hears "the firm, substantial sound of a mortal footstep," and the closing words capture his relief: "There he is at last! Blessed be his black face! how unlike the pale, phosphorescent forms I fancied just a little while ago! How foolish seem all those dreadful fancies now, so terribly real then!" (679).

The gothic terrors of the cave are experienced by the white author entangled with racialized power. If the white tourist is at the mercy of a black man he has only met hours earlier, how does white identity remain coextensive with superior authority? Fawcett blesses the appearance of Nick's "black face" because its "firm, substantial" reality allows him to duck the darker question. The nihilistic implications of "total darkness" are more suggestively captured in other accounts. Barnwell melodramatically laments, "White and black were, as some philosophers prove, all the same. How little could I ever before conceive of blindness! Oh! the oppressive stunning weight! The feeling of unknown, unavoidable, invisible danger! — utter inability to defend one's-self, entire subjection to those who possess this invaluable gift!" (309). As his group waits in darkness for Stephen's return, Barnwell concedes the utter dependence on their guide: "Our feelings were getting somewhat unpleasantly excited, and our conversation, for some time forced, had dwindled away to silence, ere Stephen appeared. The light displayed three pale countenances and three pairs of eyes that had rather more than a natural brilliancy; and yet in daylight danger there could perhaps scarcely be found three more reckless fellows. Stephen laughed when he saw us stretched along the rocks, and withal so doleful, and walking to one side, covered his lamp in a measure with his cap, and told us to look above us" (309).

Here Bishop played his famous trick in the hall known as the "Star Chamber," the most famous of the cave's many illusions. "[W]hat was our astonishment," Barnwell writes, "on seeing the stars shining brightly in the dark heavens" (309). These "stars" are the embedded pieces of polished mica on the cave ceiling that give the "Star Chamber" its name. That this experience immediately followed the ordeal of "total darkness" suggests that the cave's illusions were, like its darkness, fraught with questions of dependence and power. When the guide walked away, visitors were left to despair; when he returned they enjoyed the beauty of a virtual night sky. Without Bishop scripting their experience the white tourists have no way of knowing who or where they are.

While these accounts highlight the role of the guide, the illustrations of the "Star Chamber" in Martin's and Bullitt's books portray an effect produced without the aid of the guide's manipulations and tricks. Though tourists, under the sway of the guide's authority, playfully imagined themselves in an underground drama, the pictorial representations elide the guide's role.

The experiences of "trying the dark" and the "Star Chamber" appear more wrapped up in antebellum racial politics when one considers the brief description of Mammoth Cave in Russell Lant Carpenter's Observations on American Slavery [1852].27 Carpenter, an anti-slavery British Unitarian Minister, devotes a long paragraph to Stephen Bishop, whom he describes as "[t]he most intelligent slave that I ever met" (46). Framing his own experience of "total darkness" within a book-length critique of American slavery, Carpenter is explicit about what is at stake when the white tourist is left alone by the black guide: "The confidence which we repose in one another flashed vividly on my mind, when I found myself several miles from the entrance alone with him, a complete stranger. I was of course completely in his power — yet I felt no fear. The solitude was very awful in that immense cavern, especially when he left me for a few minutes to arrange some lights" (47).

Instead of following through on what other writers portray as a moment of gothic terror, Carpenter uses the remainder of the paragraph to praise Bishop for the unique model of autonomy he represents:

"I was conscious of some reverence for a man who raised himself from the degradation to which human laws and prejudices would consign him. How much more enviably free is such a bondsman than those who are burdened with nothing — no bonds of affection, no weight of knowledge" (47). While the vast majority of antebellum writers portray "total darkness" as a scene of white racial anxiety, Carpenter renders it as a symbol of a rare model of black "freedom" under the degrading institution. "Free," I have suggested, is a problematic way of describing any slave, and yet Carpenter's characterization brings to the surface the political undertones of the other portrayals we have encountered. That a British abolitionist would see the slave guide as an embodiment of agency suggests that the many American commentators sensed these guides as symbols that threatened traditional racial hierarchies.

Materson Bransford

American writers were careful to depict moments where guides lowered themselves — both literally and figuratively — for reasons of cave etiquette and visitor well-being. Only a few paragraphs before celebrating Bishop as a "Christopher Columbus" of the underworld, Bayard Taylor describes a boat journey down the Echo River: "Mat waded out and turned the craft, which was moored to a projecting rock, as near to us as the water would allow, after which he and Stephen carried us one by one upon their shoulders and deposited us in it" (209). Upon arriving at the Echo River, Taylor reports, "Twice again were the guides obliged to carry us on their shoulders through the shallows, and once we succeeded in passing along a narrow ledge of rock overhanging a deep pool, only by using Stephen's foot as a stepping-stone" (210). Other narratives make clear that in addition to carrying cave visitors on their shoulders, Stephen and his fellow guides would routinely lie down on their backs in mud, offering up the bottoms of their feet to allow men and women safe and clean passage through challenging sections of the cave. These scenes offer a symbolic reconciliation of the paradox of the guide's combined authority and subjection.

A related example of the paradoxical nature of guide authority centered on the meals that visiting groups enjoyed while underground. Willis repeatedly expresses a desire to peek inside of Stephen's basket, which was filled with various provisions; he jokingly writes that "at Stephen's request" he "duly recognized" the noteworthy sites as they passed and identified by the guide — "hoping, all the while, that the next announcement would be the kindly rock on which we were to dine" (176). The nominal power that Bishop held over the appetites of cave visitors was answered, in Willis's text and elsewhere, by the guide's status as a racial inferior. During their meal, Willis reports, "Our guide modestly remembered that he was a slave, and, after spreading the repast under the weight of which he had toiled so far, he seated himself at a distance; but remembering his merits and all the geology and history he had given us on the way, we voted him to 'the first table,' by an immediate and general remonstrance" (178). Such is the idiosyncratic balancing act between Willis's playful subjection before the tyranny of Stephen's basket, and the authority that the tourists held over the slave.28

Ultimately, cave visitors were invited to "try the dark" not only by testing themselves in the face of total blackness, but by playing dependent to the slave's staged authority. Bishop's naming of the "River Jordan" and the various games that were staged on or beside the river — the flooding hoax, the stacking of tourist bodies, the singing of slave spirituals — suggests that cave visits involved the contained reversal of traditional racial roles.

Trying the Dark: Mammoth Cave and the Racial Imagination, 1839-1869, Peter West, Adelphi University, Published: 9 February 2010

The Kentucky Derby’s African American Jockeys

James Winkfield was a two-time Kentucky Derby winner and raced across Europe after racism kept him from being the best athlete in America's most popular sport.

The Smithsonian Magazine's article by Lisa Winker entitled "The Kentucky Derby's Forgotten Jockeys: African American jockeys once dominated the track. But by 1921, they had disappeared from the Kentucky Derby and would not return for nearly eighty years," on 24 April 2009 states: "When tens of thousands of fans assemble in Louisville, Kentucky, May 2 for the 135th Kentucky Derby, they will witness a phenomenon somewhat unusual for today’s American sporting events: of some 20 riders, none are African American. Yet in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, 13 out of 15 jockeys were black. Among the first 28 derby winners, 15 were black. African American jockeys excelled in the sport in the late 1800s. But by 1921, they had disappeared from the Kentucky track and would not return until Marlon St. Julien rode in the 2000 race."

In 1892, Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton became the youngest jockey to win the Kentucky Derby at the age of 15.

African American jockeys’ dominance in the world of racing is a history nearly forgotten today. Their participation dates back to colonial times, when the British brought their love of horseracing to the New World. Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson frequented the track, and when President Andrew Jackson moved into the White House in 1829, he brought along his best Thoroughbreds and his black jockeys. Because racing was tremendously popular in the South, it is not surprising that the first black jockeys were slaves. They cleaned the stables and handled the grooming and training of some of the country’s most valuable horseflesh. From such responsibility, slaves developed the abilities needed to calm and connect with Thoroughbreds, skills demanded of successful jockeys.

For blacks, racing provided a false sense of freedom. They were allowed to travel the racing circuit, and some even managed their owners’ racing operation. They competed alongside whites. When black riders were cheered to the finish line, the only colors that mattered were the colors of their silk jackets, representing their stables. Horseracing was entertaining for white owners and slaves alike and one of the few ways for slaves to achieve status.

James Winkfield retired from horse racing in 1930 after a career 2,600 wins.

After the Civil War, which had devastated racing in the South, emancipated African American jockeys followed the money to tracks in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “African Americans had been involved in racing and with horses since the beginning,” says Anne Butler, director of Kentucky State University's Center for the Study of Kentucky African Americans. “By the time freedom came they were still rooted in the sport.”

The freed riders soon took center stage at the newly organized Kentucky Derby. On opening day, May 17, 1875, Oliver Lewis, a 19-year-old black native Kentuckian, rode Aristides, a chestnut colt trained by a former slave, to a record-setting victory. Two years later William Walker, 17, claimed the race. Isaac Murphy became the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbys, in 1884, 1890, and 1891, and won an amazing 44 percent of all the races he rode, a record still unmatched. Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton, at 15 the youngest to win in 1892, was followed by James "Soup" Perkins, who began racing at age 11 and claimed the 1895 Derby. Willie Simms won in 1896 and 1898. Jimmy "Wink" Winkfield, victorious in 1901 and 1902, would be the last African American to win the world-famous race. Murphy, Simms and Winkfield have been inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.

William Walker was already under contract at the age of 11 to an owner named Wood Stringfield and at the age of 13, he claimed a stakes victory.

In 2005, Winkfield was also honored with a Congressional House Resolution, a few days before the 131st Derby. Such accolades came long after his death in 1974 at age 91 and decades after racism forced him and other black jockeys off American racetracks.

Despite Wink’s winning more than 160 races in 1901, Goodwin's Annual Official Guide to the Turf omitted his name. The rising scourge of segregation began seeping into horse racing in the late 1890s. Fanned by the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine, Jim Crow injustice pervaded every social arena, says Butler.

“White genteel class, remnants from that world, didn't want to share the bleachers with African American spectators, though blacks continued to work as groomers and trainers," she says.

At the age of 14, James "Soup" Perkins won the Latonia Oaks. The Times called him "the best lightweight jockey of the West."

Racism, coupled with the economic recessions of the period, shrunk the demand for black jockeys as racetracks closed and attendance fell. With intensified competition for mounts, violence on the tracks against black jockeys by white jockeys prevailed without recourse. Winkfield received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Anti-gambling groups campaigned against racing, causing more closures and the northern migration of blacks from southern farming communities further contributed to the decline of black jockeys.

Isaac Murphy was one of America's first sports stars. At the age of 14, he rode his first race at Louisville in 1875.

Winkfield dealt another serious blow to his career by jumping a contract. With fewer and fewer mounts coming his way, he left the United States in 1904 for Czarist Russia, where his riding skills earned him celebrity and fortune beyond his dreams. Fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he moved to France, raced for another decade and retired in 1930 after a career 2,600 wins. In 1940, Nazis seized his stables, causing Winkfield to return to States, where he signed on to a Works Progress Administration road crew. Back in France by 1953, he opened a training school for jockeys. In 1961, six decades after winning his first Kentucky Derby, Winkfield returned to Kentucky to attend a pre-Derby banquet. When he and his daughter Liliane arrived at Louisville's historic Brown Hotel, they were denied entry. After a long wait and repeated explanations that they were guests of Sports Illustrated, they were finally admitted. Wink died 13 years later in France.

After his 1903 run in the Kentucky Derby, black Americans practically disappeared from Goodwin’s official list of jockeys. In 1911 Jess Conley came in third in the derby and in 1921, Henry King placed tenth. Seventy-nine years would pass before another African American would ride in the Derby. Marlon St. Julien took seventh place in 2000.

Willie Simms won the Kentucky Derby in 1896 and 1898. Simms also changed the sport of horse racing when he introduced the natural American riding style to England.

"I'm not an activist,” says St. Julien, who admitted during an interview a few years ago that he didn’t know the history of black jockeys and “started reading up on it.” Reached recently in Louisiana, where he is racing the state circuit, he says “I hope I’m a role model as a rider to anyone who wants to race."

Longtime equestrian and Newark, New Jersey, schoolteacher Miles Dean would agree that not enough is known about the nation’s great black jockeys. In an effort to remedy that, he has organized the National Day of the Black Jockey for Memorial Day weekend. The event will include educational seminars, a horse show, parade, and memorial tribute. All events will be held at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville.

Last year, Dean rode his horse, Sankofa, a 12-year-old Arabian stallion, in a six-month journey from New York to California. He spoke at colleges and communities to draw attention to African American contributions to the history and settlement of the United States.

Oliver Lewis rode Aristides to victory in the inaugural Kentucky Derby.

"As an urban educator I see every day the disconnect students have with their past. By acknowledging the contributions of African American jockeys, I hope to heighten children's awareness of their history. It's a history of great achievement, not just a history of enslavement.” Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Kentucky-Derbys-Forgotten-Jockeys.html#ixzz1HFE7NeUv