The Prince of Jockeys

by Pellom McDaniels III

  77. See Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

  78. Nicodemus Town Company, broadside, circa 1877, Kansas Historical Society, reproduction in Photograph Collection E185.1877*1.

  79. “Colored Emigrants: Their Departure Yesterday Evening for Kansas,” Lexington Press, September 6, 1877, 4.

  80. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 149–53.

  81. George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1990), 1.

  82. “King of the Pigskin Artists,” 24.

  83. “The Louisville Race,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 6, no. 14 (October 6, 1877): 212.

  84. “Baltimore Races,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 6, no. 18 (November 3, 1877): 278.

  85. “Obituary—Death of Creedmoor,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 6, no. 20 (November 17, 1877): 308.

  86. “Kentucky Association,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 7, no. 20 (May 18, 1878): 307.

  87. “King of the Pigskin Artists,” 24.

  88. Ibid.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Catherine Thom-Bartlett, “My Dear Brother”: A Confederate Chronicle (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1952), 88.

  91. “Death of Col. J. W. Hunt-Reynolds,” Tri-Weekly Yeoman, September 25, 1880; Thom-Bartlett, “My Dear Brother,” 89.

  92. “Fleetwood Stock Farm,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 3, no. 5 (January 29, 1876): 65.

  93. “Death of Col. J. W. Hunt-Reynolds”; Journal of Proceedings of the Forty Eighth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Kentucky (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1876), 17–20; Charles F. Hinds, Ascension Episcopal Church: Frankfort, Kentucky, 1836–1996 (Frankfort: HAE, 1996), 53–57.

  94. “Death of Col. J. W. Hunt-Reynolds”; Thom-Bartlett, “My Dear Brother,” 89. In 1867 J. W. Hunt-Reynolds sent $1,000 to Columbus, Georgia, to support the widows and children of Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War. “A Wealthy Young Kentuckian,” Memphis Daily Avalanche, February 1, 1867, 1.

  95. Tax Commissioner's Book, Franklin County, KY, 1875, 42.

  96. “Kentucky Association Races: Third Day,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 8, no. 11 (September 14, 1878): 165.

  97. Ibid.

  98. “Louisville Jockey Club—Fall Meeting,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 8, no. 14 (October 5, 1878): 213.

  99. “An Interview with F. B. Harper—Some Inconsistencies Worth Noting,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 8, no. 5 (August 3, 1878): 72.

  100. Maryjean Wall, How Kentucky Became Southern (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 127.

  101. Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (New York: Basic Civitas, 1998), 27.

  102. “Seventh (Extra) Day,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 8, no. 14 (October 5, 1878): 213.

  103. Ed Hotaling, The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America's First National Sport (Rocklin, CA: Forum Prima Publishing, 1999), 242.

  104. See Gayle Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  105. Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), 69.

  106. “Jockey Ike Murphy: Methods of Training and Riding,” Kansas City Star, July 11, 1885, 4.

  107. Ibid.

  108. “Kentucky Association: First Day,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 9, no. 20 (May 17, 1879): 306.

  109. “Louisville Jockey Club,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 9, no. 21 (May 24, 1879): 324.

  110. “Coming Races at Detroit,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 9, no. 26 (June 28, 1879): 405.

  111. “Isaac Murphy: Biographical Sketch of the Great Lexington Jockey,” Kentucky Leader, March 20, 1889, 3.

  112. Michelle Wallace, Righteous Disposition: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 9.

  113. “Race Horses at Saratoga,” New York Herald, June 18, 1879, 5.

  114. Hotaling, They're Off! 135.

  115. “Colored Jockey,” Macon Telegram, November 25, 1879, 2.

  116. “Saratoga,” Spirit of the Times 97, no. 20 (July 26, 1879): 624.

  117. Ibid.

  118. Tarleton, “Isaac Murphy: A Memorial,” 136.

  119. Census Year: 1880, Census Location: Lexington, Fayette, Kentucky, p. 294, l. 6, Archive Roll 18, Archive Collection T655, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

  120. Walter Harrison Cripps, Cancer of the Rectum: Its Pathology, Diagnosis, and Treatment (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1880), 173.

  121. The University of Kentucky archives contain a wonderful narrative of the Spencer family history, including the story of Benjamin Franklin Spencer, a Frankfort resident who became a shoemaker. Spencer lived in Frankfort at the same time as Isaac Murphy, so they may have known each other, and Spencer may have made Murphy a pair of boots.

  122. “Negro Emigration from Kentucky,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 11, no. 11 (March 13, 1880): 169.

  123. “Funeral of Colonel J. W. Hunt Reynolds,” Lexington Weekly Press, October 6, 1880, 2.

  7. An Elegant Specimen of Manhood

  1. Ed Hotaling, The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America's First National Sport (Rocklin, CA: Forum Prima Publishing, 1999), 249.

  2. Laura Hillenbrand discusses the activities of jockeys in Tijuana, Mexico, where they “lived high and hard, riding by day, roaming the town in dense, noisy scrums by night, pouring into Molino Rojo, then the Turf Club saloon, then on to wild exploits in town, chasing giggling girls buck naked down motel corridors, stealing all the room keys to the town's biggest hotel.” Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), 84.

  3. For more on how jockey clubs participated in the sex industry, see Alain Corbin and Alan Sheridan, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge, MA: Fellows of Harvard College, 1990); Walter J. Fraser, Savannah in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 165.

  4. See Eric Lott's discussion of the “White Negro” in Love and Theft (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 49–55.

  5. Myra B. Young Armstead, Lord, Please Don't Take Me in August (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

  6. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 242.

  7. Ibid.

  8. “State and Suburban,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, October 29, 1880, 3.

  9. “Names Claimed,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 16 (April 16, 1881): 251; “Turf Talk,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, April 18, 1881, 2.

  10. “Immigration,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 20 (May 14, 1881): 305; George F. Seward, “Mongolian Immigration,” North American Review 134, no. 307 (June 1882): 565.

  11. Anna Pegler-Gordon, In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 2–3; Kerry Abrams, “Polygamy, Prostitution, and the Federalization of Immigration Law,” Columbia Law Review 105, no. 3 (April 2005): 641–716.

  12. Sarah Barringer Gordon, “The Liberty of Self-Degradation: Polygamy, Woman Suffrage, and Consent in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83, no. 3 (December 1996): 819.

  13. Alexander Crummell, “The Dignity of Labour,” in Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South, ed. J. R. Oldfield (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 69.

  14. Seward, “Mongolian Immigration,” 567.

  15. Abby Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 4.

  16. For a discussion of the rep
resentation of black men as jockeys, see Maryjean Wall, “Kentucky's Isaac Murphy: A Legacy Interrupted” (MA thesis, University of Kentucky, 2003), 81–88.

  17. Frederick Douglass, “The Color Line,” North American Review 132, no. 295 (June 1881): 568.

  18. Ibid., 575.

  19. “Fleetwood Farm,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 16 (April 16, 1881): 249.

  20. Ibid., 250.

  21. “The Turf,” Daily Inter-Ocean, May 6, 1881, 5.

  22. “Kentucky Association,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 20 (May 14, 1881): 307.

  23. “Louisville Jockey Club Spring Meeting,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 22 (May 28, 1881): 340.

  24. Ibid., 342.

  25. “Louisville Spring Meeting,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 23 (June 4, 1881): 361.

  26. Ibid., 345.

  27. “St. Louis Jockey Club,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 25 (June 18, 1881): 388.

  28. Ibid.

  29. “Death of Ansel Williamson,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 13, no. 26 (June 25, 1881): 409.

  30. Annette Gordon Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 44.

  31. Ansel Williamson, jockey Ed Brown (later known as “Brown Dick”), and an unidentified groom are depicted in an oil painting of R. A. Alexander's most prized horse, Asteroid. It took artist Edward Troye three months to complete the painting, which is signed and dated December 11, 1864. Whether Troye's intent was to record the lives of these three black men, or whether his goal was simply to capture Asteroid's greatness, the painting illustrates that these men were more than human chattel. Indeed, Williamson and Brown were considered two of the top black horseman of the era and have been recognized as significant contributors to the sport of horse racing both during and after slavery.

  32. Marcy S. Sacks, Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 6–7.

  33. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 58.

  34. Ibid., 74.

  35. Ibid., 64.

  36. Ralph E. Luker, “Missions, Institutional Churches, and Settlement Houses: The Black Experience, 1885–1910,” Journal of Negro History 69, no. 3–4 (Summer–Autumn 1984): 105–6.

  37. In Robert Dowling's discussion of works by African Americans refuting white outsiders’ commentary on black life, he references the work of Anna Julia Cooper. In A Voice from the South, Cooper responds to William Dean Howell's novel An Imperative Duty, which, according to Dowling, paints a narrow picture of black life. Robert Dowling, Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 82–83.

  38. “Editor's Historical Record,” Harper's Magazine, November 1881, 956; Ira Rutkow, James A. Garfield (New York: Times Books, 2006), 1–3; Justus D. Doenecke, The Presidencies of James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1981), 95–96.

  39. “The Great Need of Kentucky,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 14, no. 4 (July 23, 1881): 56.

  40. “Ed Corrigan and Some Incidents of His Picturesque Career,” Muskegan News Chronicle, August 10, 1912, 10.

  41. These numbers were derived by estimating how much Murphy received in riding fees plus 10 percent of the winnings in purse races and 20 percent in stakes races. He was responsible for his own travel costs, accommodations, and food.

  42. C. J. Foster, “Isaac Murphy, Colored Jockey,” New York Sportsman 14, no. 3 (January 20, 1883): 34.

  43. “Isaac Murphy, the Noted Jockey,” Frankfort Roundabout, January 27, 1883, 2.

  44. Michelle Wallace, Righteous Disposition: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 9.

  45. The only known photograph of Lucy Carr Murphy is in the T. T. Wendell Collection at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. From the image, it is apparent that she was a beautiful woman.

  46. Douglas A. Boyd, Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 19.

  47. “Convention of Colored Men at Frankfort, February 23rd,” Kentucky Statesman, March 1, 1870, 4.

  48. See Victor Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 160–76.

  49. Victor B. Howard, “The Struggle for Equal Education in Kentucky, 1866–1884,” Journal of Negro Education 46, no. 3 (Summer 1977): 320.

  50. Boyd, Crawfish Bottom, 19.

  51. “First Class Jockey,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 17, no. 11 (March 17, 1883): 170.

  52. “Stock Gossip,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 17, no. 12 (March 24, 1883): 180.

  53. Emma Lou Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 44.

  54. Irvine Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (Springfield, MA: Willey, 1891), 483.

  55. “The Prince of Jockeys: Isaac Murphy of Kentucky in and out of the Saddle,” New York Age 3, no. 40 (July 5, 1890): 1.

  56. “Sentiment and Doings of Our People,” New York Globe, January 27, 1883, 2.

  57. Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Signs 14, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 912–13.

  58. Ibid., 915.

  59. Lexington had paved streets before 1893, but the city had to use a vitrified brick to maintain the stability of major roads and streets. Brick Roadways: Interstate Vitrified Brick and Paving Company (Philadelphia: Press of Allen, Lane and Scott, 1894), 110.

  60. “Kentucky Association,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 17, no. 19 (March 12, 1883): 292.

  61. James C. Claypool, The Tradition Continues: The Story of Old Latonia, Latonia, and Turfway Racecources (Fort Mitchell, KY: T. I. Hayes, 1997), 3.

  62. “Latonia Jockey Club,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 17, no. 23 (June 9, 1883): 360.

  63. Claypool, The Tradition Continues, 5.

  64. “The Three Cities’ Course Opened with Great Success,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, June 10, 1883, 1.

  65. St. Clair Drake and Horace A. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 48; Christopher Robert Reed, Black Chicago's First Century, vol. 1, 1833–1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005), 238.

  66. Reed, Black Chicago's First Century, 232.

  67. “Social Gossip,” New York Globe, August 18, 1883, 3.

  68. “Saratoga Letter,” New York Globe, August 18, 1883, 4.

  69. At its core, democratic capitalism is a Marxist formulation that benefits workers.

  70. “The Civil Rights Decision,” New York Globe, October 20, 1883, 2.

  71. Abraham L. Davis and Barbara Luck Graham, The Supreme Court, Race, and Civil Rights (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), 46–48; Loren P. Beth, John Marshall Harlan: The Last Whig Justice (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 222–39; Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 93.

  72. Deed from Green Clay Goodloe and Betty B. Goodloe to Isaac Murphy, Deed Book 68, p. 525, Fayette County Court, November 5, 1883.

  73. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 249.

  74. Daniel Carter is listed in the 1883–84 Townsend's Lexington City Directory (Lexington: Transylvania Printing Company, 1884), 40, as one of several paper hangers. Freedmen's Bank documents (Freedmen's Bank Records, 1865–1871, Ancestry.com; original data from Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, 1865–1874, micropublication M816, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC) list a painter named Daniel Carter who was married to Mary Belle and had a daughter named Winnie. This could be the same individual. By employing black labor, Murphy had a positive impact on hi
s community.

  75. “Rain at the Race Track: Interferes with the Race Track, But Improves the Course,” Kentucky Leader, January 19, 1890, 3. I would like to thank Anne Butler, PhD, of Kentucky State University for insight into Murphy's role in the Lincoln Lodge Masons.

  76. See Joseph Mason Andrew Cox, Great Black Men of Masonry 1723–1982 (New York: Blue Diamond Press, 1982); Loretta J. Williams, Black Freemasonry and Middle Class Realities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980); Edward Nelson Palmer, “Negro Secret Societies,” Social Forces 23, no. 2. (December 1944): 207–12; Mary Ann Clawson, “Fraternal Orders and Class Formation in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (October 1985): 672–95.

  77. Buddy Thompson, Madame Belle Brezing (Lexington: Buggy Whip Press, 1983), 61.

  78. “Ed Corrigan's Career,” Kansas City Times, July 17, 1885, 2.

  79. Joe Drape, Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend (New York: William Morrow, 2006), 36.

  80. “Sporting Summary,” New Hampshire Patriot, December 20, 1883, 8.

  81. Turf, Field and Farm, December 14, 1883, 2.

  82. “Professional Jockeys,” Springfield Republican, January 1, 1884, 8.

  83. David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 2002), 146.

  84. “Isaac Murphy: Methods of Training and Riding,” Kansas City Star, July 11, 1885, 4.

  85. Boston Herald, August 1, 1883, 3.

  86. “Sprays of Sport,” Rocky Mountain News, March 24, 1884, 2.

  87. Quoted in David W. Zang, Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 39.

  88. Toledo Blade, April 27, 1883, 3.

  89. Sporting Life, September 24, 1883, 3.

  90. Kentucky Live Stock Record 19, no. 19 (May 10, 1884): 201.

  91. “The Turf,” Kentucky Live Stock Record 19, no. 20 (May 24, 1884): 322.

  92. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 250.