RACING’S PIONEERS

Keeneland Library exhibit pays tribute to African American horse people

By Rena Baer

Photos by Rick Samuels

Photos

WWhile Isaac Murphy and Jimmy Winkfeld are familiar names in the annals of horse racing history, many other African American contributors to the sport have gone unrecognized and their stories untold.

A new exhibit at Keeneland Library, “The Heart of the Turf: Racing’s Black Pioneers,” seeks to change that and start conversations by highlighting 80 African American horsemen and women from the mid-1800s to thepresent,capturingmoments in their careers through stories, artwork, videos, and photos.

Keeneland Library has one of the largest-known photograph collections of early African American horsemen, including photos of one of the very frst photographers who took his camera to the racetrack. “And they’re not just star-studded photographs. Tere are photos of the backside; photos of horses being washed or shod; photos of Byron McClelland, a white horse trainer and owner, with a primarily Black staf in the 1890s,” said exhibit curator Roda Ferraro. “Te library has information and image resources that other researchers have used for decades, and we are pleased to have this opportunity to bring them all together and share them with the public.”

Ferraro and library director Becky Ryder compiled more than 100 historical photographs of Black horsemen and women for the exhibit. Together with the exhibit’s historical consultant, Yvonne Giles, they uncovered stories of some African Americans who had been captured by the camera but overlooked by history. Tese stories and photos are shared on interpretive panels throughout the library, along with period artwork on loan from the Kentucky Derby Museum, the International Museum of the Horse, and private collections.

“We could have told 10 stories in a very diferent way — and there are absolute advantages to doing that — but we chose to share life and career highlights of as many people as possible to shed light on the varied roles and contributions [of

African Americans] over time,” said Ferraro. “What is so powerful is how those 80 stories run the gamut of roles that are essential to this industry.”

Te exhibit documents the unparalleled success of Black jockeys until segregation forced them out of the picture or into less visible roles. In addition to the plethora of stories about people, the exhibit contains several references to Lexington’s East End community, where many African Americans lived and worked nearby at the Kentucky Association racetrack. Te track, one of the frst and foremost of its time, was built in 1828 and successfully ran for over a century until the height of the Depression and deterioration closed its gates in 1933.

“Te whole East End community thrived, particularly post-slavery, because all of these horsemen had these skills as enslaved individuals when released from