Murphy's example of what African Americans could achieve when competing on a level playing field became the focus of black leaders such as T. Thomas Fortune, who recognized that public spectacles like horse racing could provide metaphors for American race relations. For Fortune, the question of identity was not that much of a concern for blacks, who were in the process of developing a new sense of themselves as first-class citizens through their striving and development; in contrast, whites' ideas about civilization and their place in it were unraveling quickly because most whites believed the myth of black inferiority. The public success of black men and women caused whites to question who they were, how these changes in society would shape their futures, and, ultimately, what they could do to make it stop.
The realization that blacks could rise above their previous station based on their pursuit of education, gainful employment, and power as consumers undermined whites' sense of racial superiority. In the spring of 1896, three months after Isaac's death, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson heralded the beginning of Jim Crow segregation. The “separate but equal” policy adopted by the U.S. government unleashed hell on earth for African Americans, who became the focus of retribution by whites jealous of their success. Subjected to public humiliation, harassment, and even lynching, African Americans were forced to fight back, leave their homes, or learn to negotiate the changing times using the skills honed during slavery.
Murphy's death also marked the demise of the black jockey in American horse racing. By the end of the century, only a handful of quality black jockeys could be found on American racetracks. Great riders like Anthony Hamilton (1866–1904), Willie Simms (1870–1927), and Jimmy Winkfield (1882–1974), the last black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, were shut out by a system that favored white jockeys and wanted to rid the tracks of black competition. Eventually, all three would leave the United States to race in Europe.
In 1895 Simms became the first American jockey to win a race at Newmarket in England, riding an American Thoroughbred named Eau Gallie. Simms's style of riding on the neck of his horse was ridiculed by the English elite, until he won the Crawford Plate at Newmarket.2 His success helped change how the English thought about horse racing and jockeyship. In 1901 Simms traveled to France and raced at the Jockey Club in Paris. After retiring, Simms made a name for himself as a capable trainer, using his expertise to teach young riders about jockeyship. He later developed an interest in steeplechase racing and helped shape the sport with his style of riding. Simms would die in 1927, outliving Murphy by nearly thirty years.
The same year Murphy died, his close friend Anthony Hamilton became the focus of a scheme to purge horse racing of its most visible and successful black riders. Accused of pulling a horse at Brighton Beach on July 23, 1896, Hamilton was suspended and brought before Jockey Club officials. After a meeting with the stewards, who questioned him about his “peculiar rides on Hornpipe,” he was allowed to return to racing.3 Despite the stewards' findings and the lack of evidence that Hamilton had done anything wrong, like Murphy, he too became the focus of racial taunts and slurs. On the track, white jockeys colluded to keep him from winning major races by boxing him in, which would eventually limit the number of mounts he was offered and the amount of money he could make. Like Simms, Hamilton would eventually leave America for Europe. In 1901 he was contracted to ride for J. Metcalf, who owned one of the most important stables in Austria-Hungary. Later that year Hamilton applied for a passport to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he would race Russian-bred horses for wealthy breeders in Warsaw. Hamilton's success in Europe would end with his untimely death in Italy in 1904.
Following the death of Hamilton, Jimmy Winkfield also left the United States for Europe, where he earned a living racing horses for wealthy owners in Russia and Austria-Hungary. With back-to-back Kentucky Derby victories (1901 and 1902), Winkfield had been one of the top jockeys in the United States, but like Hamilton, he chose to leave because of the hostile environment. European jockeying paid well, and it was attracting talent from several countries. In the “Land of the Czars,” Winkfield became the premier jockey for General Michael Lazareu, whose wealth and love of horses made the duo a lethal combination on Russian tracks, especially in the Warsaw Derby. Over a ten-year period, Winkfield would earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, marry interracially, move to France, and live like no other American jockey could have imagined. Winkfield was the last of the great black jockeys, and with his death in 1974, the era came to a close. The memories associated with them also began to fade into obscurity.
In 1955, the year Isaac Murphy became the first black jockey inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in Saratoga, New York, controversy erupted over where he had been buried. The Lexington Herald carried the erroneous wire story from Mobile, Alabama:
There are perhaps still a few around who recall the tragic death some 58 years ago in a spill at the old Lexington track where some 15 horses trampled him [Isaac Murphy] to death. But even fewer probably recall that his body was shipped to Mobile, Alabama, and buried in a white cemetery.
It was the wish of Willie Cottrill, owner of Buchanan, Murphy's first Derby winner, that the jockey be buried in the family plot. The owner and breeder, one of the wealthy men of his time, died before Murphy, but his wish was carried out. A head marker once designated the jockey's grave, but it has long since disappeared.4
Clearly, the paternalistic tone of this editorial harks back to a time when white men could lay claim to black bodies as property, in life and in death. Joe Thomas, a reporter for the Lexington Herald, wrote a the response that would begin the search for Isaac Murphy. “Faux pas,” Thomas began his June 28, 1955, column:
Isaac Murphy was not killed in a spill at the old Lexington track. He is buried in Lexington and it was very unlikely that his body was ever sent to Mobile, Alabama, for internment in the family plot of Willie Cottrill, owner of Buchanan, Murphy's first Kentucky Derby winner.
This department apparently was the victim of some Alabama folklore, which is now taken for fact. The source of the information in Sunday's Turf Topics was a Mobile newspaper.
Actually, the great Negro rider died in his bed of pneumonia February 12, 1896. He had last ridden at the previous fall at the local track and had won on his last mount. Obituary accounts written at the time make no mention of his burial anywhere but Lexington.5
Thomas's column would motivate newspaperman Frank Borries (1914–1968) to look for Murphy's grave and validate the Hall of Fame jockey's final resting place.
Unfortunately, by 1955, African Cemetery Number 2 had been neglected for decades. Overgrown “weeds, briers and brambles” consumed the sacred space and covered the overturned grave markers and headstones. With the help of Gene Webster (the son of Richard Webster, a contemporary of Murphy's), Borries located the burial site of the great jockey from Lexington.6 All that remained was a four-foot-tall concrete marker, erected in 1909 by a group of men from the community who wanted to honor Murphy's memory. The discovery of the whereabouts of Murphy's grave led to a controversial attempt to honor his memory.
In January 1967 the vice president of the Kentucky Club Tobacco Company, Stuart F. Bloch, saw an opportunity to both gain publicity for his company and honor the memory of Isaac Burns Murphy. The idea was for the tobacco company to create a monument to Murphy and rebury him at Man o' War Park in Lexington, Kentucky. By May, a committee had been formed that included Judge Joe Johnson, Mayor Fred Fugazzi, and Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro as acting chairman. Apparently, no one discussed the proposal with Lexington's African American community, which would be losing one of its symbols of achievement and success. In addition, this plan would take Isaac away from, Lucy, who had been buried next to him, and separate him from the generations of African Americans buried in the sacred space. Rather than taking Murphy from his community and using his likeness as a commodity, a better course of action would have been to clean up the cemetery and provide funding for
its maintenance, but that would have involved a public acknowledgment of past wrongs.
In the years following, Frank Borries began research for a biography on Murphy. Although he was unable to complete it, the project was taken up by his wife, Betty (1915–2006). Her Isaac Murphy: Kentucky's Record Jockey (1988) was the first to offer a glimpse of the man who was considered one of the most important jockeys in American horse racing. In subsequent years, sports historians have recognized Murphy's significance as a jockey, but few have depicted him as a man who knew his place in the world. Few have attempted to understand the rootedness provided by African American communities and the sense of agency instilled in their children. The legacy of Isaac Burns Murphy is one of complex origins, a sense of purpose, and an extraordinary degree of intelligence. Lexington, Kentucky, is fortunate to have him as a model of the best kind of nobility: humble, dignified, human.
Acknowledgments
This project began soon after I completed my doctoral studies at Emory University in 2007. I had never heard of Isaac Burns Murphy until I began researching the importance of sports to African Americans during the mid- to late nineteenth century. Though Murphy's life and career were the focus of the first chapter of my dissertation, the story was far from complete. After consulting with my mentors—the late Rudolph P. Byrd and emeritus professor of urban studies at Emory University, Dana White—I decided to pursue a more in-depth biography of Murphy. Several grants and fellowships allowed me to travel to archives, repositories, and special collections across the country, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in American Studies, a John H. Daniels Fellowship at the National Sporting Library for the Study of Horse and Field Sports, a University of Missouri Research Board Grant, a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, and several Emory University Travel Grants.
I owe tremendous thanks to the archivists and staff members at the numerous repositories I visited over the last ten years. In fact, since the time I started this project, the amount of information available has more than quadrupled. I used both traditional means of researching in the archives, painstakingly reading every newspaper, letter, and diary in the various collections, as well as digital technology, whereby I was able to photograph documents, images, and obscure publications and consult them at my convenience. Still, in my opinion, the sense of discovery one feels among the actual books and collections can never be replaced by technology. I am thankful for all the research librarians and archivists who still get excited about old card catalogs that contain useful information for researchers interested in knowing the price of hemp in 1850 or what kinds of licorice were sold at the general stores in Louisville.
I am a firm believer that the archives and research libraries are essential to understanding the course of human history from a local, national, and global perspective. These include the Keeneland Research Library and Repository; the University of Kentucky Special Collections; the Kentucky Historical Society; the Kentucky State University African American Center for Excellence; the Filson Society; the Churchill Downs Museum; Berea College; the Transylvania University Archives; the Lexington Public Library; the Camp Nelson Foundation; the Camp Nelson National Cemetery; the Alexander Gumby Collection at Columbia University; the Chicago History Museum; the African American Civil War Museum; the Arcadia Public Library; the Bancroft Special Collections at the University of California at Berkeley; Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library; the Library of Congress; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
While I was on leave from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, I was supported by provost Gayle Hackett, chair of the History Department Gary Ebersole, and colleagues Jesse Choo, Mary Ann Wynkoop, John Herron, Diane Mutti-Burke, Lou Potts, and Drew Bergerson. In Lexington, I was welcomed by Professor Gerald Smith at the University of Kentucky, and in Frankfort, by Professor Anne Butler at Kentucky State University.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to previous researchers and writers, whose collective work on the history of black jockeys has been invaluable. I begin with Frank Borries, whose early research on Murphy became the foundation for the biography Isaac Murphy: Kentucky's Record Jockey (1988), completed by his wife Betty after Frank's death. Ed Hotaling's Great Black Jockeys (1999) accounts for the role of African Americans in the development of horse racing. The husband-and-wife team of Monica Renae and James Robert Saunders published an excellent work titled Black Winning Jockeys of the Kentucky Derby (2003). Maryjean Wall's How Kentucky Became Southern (2010) is important to an understanding Kentucky's evolution as a center for horse development.
I must extend a heartfelt thank you to the University Press of Kentucky for allowing me the space and flexibility to tell the story of Isaac Burns Murphy in a unique way. If I have learned anything from reading biographies—and I have read my share—it is that every life is different and therefore cannot be approached through a universal formula or a single template. A special thank you to Linda Lotz, whose critical eyes and ears helped shape and polish this very important work.
To Paige Knight and Julie Newton, colleagues specializing in preservation and digitization at Emory University, thank you for your assistance in attaining the photographs for this book.
Finally, I want to express my thanks and appreciation to the people in my life who were most patient, supportive, and understanding of the time and effort required to create such a volume: my wife, Navvab; my son, Ellington; and my daughter, Sofia.
The result is a glimpse of a life that had previously been taken for granted. It is my hope that this contribution will encourage the meaningful work of others who share an interest in the prince of jockeys: Isaac Burns Murphy.
Chronology
1861 Isaac Burns Murphy is born on David Tanner's farm in Clark County, Kentucky.
1868 Lucy Carr is born in Frankfort, Kentucky.
1874 Isaac begins as an apprentice with James T. Williams and Richard Owings after his mother loses her money in the Lexington branch of the Freedmen's Bank.
1875 Isaac has a mount in the final race of the Louisville Jockey Club meeting on May 22, 1875. In his first taste of the big time, he rides J. T. Williams's Lady Greenfield to a last-place finish.
1876 Before the fall meeting of the Louisville Jockey Club, Isaac changes his last name from Burns to Murphy, at the request of his mother to honor his grandfather.
1877 Isaac rides for J. W. Hunt-Reynolds for the first time at the Nashville Blood Horse Association meeting.
1878 Isaac is suspended in Cincinnati after being accused of slashing another jockey with his whip.
1879 Isaac wins the Louisville Cup on Hunt-Reynolds's Fortuna, the Tobacco Stakes on Churchill and Johnson's Little Ruffin, the Clark Stakes for three-year-olds on Hunt-Reynolds's Falsetto, the Tennessee Stakes for two-year-olds on G. W. Bowen and Company's Wallenstein, and the Merchant's Stakes on Hunt-Reynolds's Blue Eyes. America Murphy dies of cancer.
1880 J. W. Hunt-Reynolds dies on September 22 at the Westfeldt family reunion in North Carolina.
1881 Isaac wins the Grand Prize of Saratoga on J. T. Williams's Checkmate.
1882 Isaac rides at the Coney Island Jockey Club on Ed Corrigan's Pearl Jennings.
1883 Isaac marries Lucy Carr in Frankfort and purchases a home on Megowan Street in Lexington.
He advertises his services in the Kentucky Live Stock Record and signs a contract to ride for California millionaire Elias J. Baldwin.
1884 Isaac wins his first Kentucky Derby on William Cottrill's Buchanan.
He wins the first American Derby at Chicago's Washington Park on Corrigan's Modesty.
1885 Isaac wins his second American Derby on E. J. Baldwin's Volante.
1886 Isaac wins his third American Derby on E. J. Baldwin's Silver Cloud.
1887 Isaac appears on three different tobacco cards produced by manufacturers W. S. Kimball Company, Goodwin and D. Buchner, and the Kinney Brothers.
1888 Murphy claims
his own colors: black jacket, red cuffs, white belt, and red cap with a green tassel. Isaac wins his fourth American Derby on E. J. Baldwin's Emperor of Norfolk.
1889 A biographical sketch of Murphy appears in the Kentucky Leader on March 20.
1890 Isaac wins his second Kentucky Derby on Ed Corrigan's Riley.
Riding J. B. Haggin's Salvator, Isaac beats Ed Garrison on Tenny in a match race at the Suburban. At Monmouth Park, he is accused of being drunk but is later exonerated, and a plot to poison him is exposed.
1891 Isaac wins his third Kentucky Derby on Kingman. Jockey William Walker marries Hannah Estill at the Murphys' home.
1892 Jockey Anthony Hamilton and his bride, the former Annie L. Messley, attend an engagement party in their honor at the Murphys' home in Lexington. Isaac is released from his contract with the firm of Ehret, McLewee, and Allen but receives his full salary of $10,000.
1893 The Murphys celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary by renewing their vows and throwing a party at their Lexington home, attended by their friends from around the country, including the top black jockeys in America.
1894 Murphy signs to ride for the McClellands. Isaac appears in A. H. Spink's stage play The Derby Winner.
1895 Isaac rides in twenty races and wins only two.
1896 Murphy dies at home. His funeral is attended by more than 500 people, and he is buried in African Cemetery Number 2.
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