You're listening to Comedy Central, not he ah Well, Hello, welcome to see P Time the only show. Let's hold the culture. Today we'll be discussing blacks in horse racing. Usually when you think of horse racing, the only black thing that comes to mind is the horse itself. It turns out many of the people riding them have been black too. Not to take anything away from those black horses, though,
stay strong, my horse brothers. For many years, in the early days of organized horse racing, black jockeys were extremely common in the sport, partly because black people had a lot of experience taking care of horses during slavery, and partly because riding horses was the best way to prevent the police from stopping you for a broken tail light. Take the Kentucky Derby, the biggest event in the sport.
It's so popular you've probably heard of it, even if you're not a gambling at it that blew his kids college money and lost the house on weekend races. Sorry, baby Whispering Willow was supposed to be a sure thing. In the first Kentucky Derby in eighteen seventy, thirteen out of fifteen jockeys were black and The winner of that race was Oliver Lewis. Oliver rode to victory on his horse Aristides. Strange name, but it was the eighteen hundreds.
If you've got a black jockey, you got to at least give the horse an extra white name to balance things out. Despite its success, Lewis retired from racing the very same year he won the Derby, which is understandable. With the prize money he won, he could finally achieve the dream of every black man in eighteen seventy five, Kentucky moving out of Kentucky, and not only were black people the first to do it, but they were some of the best, like Isaac Burns Murphy seeing here thinking
about racism. Probably Isaac was considered one of the greatest jockeys in history. He was the first person to win the Kentucky Derby three times, and his win record is still unmatched to this day. At Murphy was the first rider ever to be inducted into the Horse Racing Hall of Fame, which is the highest honor jockey can receive other than being told you're actually taller than I expected.
But despite their success in the sport, black riders soon all but disappeared from horse racing, making it yet another thing that started out very black but became very white, much like Rock and Roll or Brooklyn. And that's because of the early nineteen hundreds, there was a concerted effort to push black jockeys out of the sport. White races engaged in harsh tactics both on and off the track. They would hit black riders with riding crops or run
them into the rail. Two times Derby winner Jimmy Winkfield was even threatened by the Kool Klux Klan. The irony he in the KKK both love riding horses. If equestrianism can't trump hate, then I don't know what can. The harassment got so bad that in nineteen o four, Winkfield left the country to become a racing superstar in Russia. Do you know how bad it's got to get for a black man to move to Russia. They didn't even have black people over there back then, Although maybe that's
the secret. I gotta get in earlier before they learn how to do racism. But soon enough, practically the only black jockeys you could find were those creepy little statues on rich white folks lawns between ninete and the year two thousand, not a single black jockey even raced in the Derby. Do you understand how long that is? It took all the way until the Baja men released who let the dogs out for a black person to compete again. I'm not saying that the tour a related unless now
that you're being crazy right now. One black rider who did make waves during those years was Cheryl White, the first licensed black female jockey in America. Cheryl started her career racing straight out of high school, which means she was the most influential black teenager on a horse until Little nos X came around, and she didn't need the
help of Mola Cyrus's daddy. Just seventeen years old, White was already winning racist and gracing the cover of Jet magazine, which is incredibly impressive nowadays, most seventeen year old I know could only make the cover of Dumbass up to No Good magazine. I see you boys doing the vapor before school. I will snitch on you, watch man. So the next time you think of horse racing, think about the black jockeys that blazed the trail back in those
early days. I'll just think Sea Biscuit. Well the guy who wrote Sea Biscuit or how much money you lost by not betting on Sea Biscuit? Maybe I'm not coming home for a little while. I'm so sorry. Well that's all the time we have for today. I'm Roy Wood Jr. And this has been CEP time. And remember what the culture uh? Because somebody help me put on this fake mustache as a gentleman named Knuckles swinging a body to get some money and I don't have it for him,
and I gotta get the hell out of here. Come on there, okay, oh right, this location has been compromised. Come on, Jennifer Lewis The Daily Show with Trevor No Ears edition. Subscribe to The Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive contents, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast