Darryl Bullock

Black jockeys won fifteen of the first twenty-eight Kentucky Derbies. By 1921 there were none. Not fewer — NONE. They were removed from the sport entirely and it took sixty-nine years before another Black jockey rode in the Derby. Isaac Murphy was the best of them. He was born enslaved in Kentucky. He won the Derby three times — the first jockey ever to do it and rode with a win rate he reported at around forty-four per cent, a figure no modern jockey approaches. As prize money and prestige grew, white jockeys organised to force Black riders out — boxing them in on the rail, refusing to ride against them, pressuring owners. Racing associations stopped licensing them. Within twenty years, an entire profession that Black men had dominated since before the Civil War was simply emptied. This is the pattern that repeats everywhere in this archive and almost nobody names it: Black excellence does not get pushed out of the poor jobs. It gets pushed out of the jobs that become lucrative. We must never forget our history