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| James Long |
If you’re at all into horse racing, you’ve likely noticed that most aspects of the sport are non-black. If you’re not into it, that just may be the reason why. Nearly all of the trainers, caretakers, and the sport’s celebrated jockeys are either European or Italian. But that’s not how the lucrative sport started out. All the skill required to take care of and ride a massively powerful, yet physically delicate horse to victory was at one time “a black thang.”
Retired black jockey, James Long, drops knowledge about the way things were:
“The first Kentucky Derby [1875], was won by a black jockey, Oliver Lewis. The first 13 Kentucky Derbies were won by all black jockeys … just a few European riders were involved … until it became lucrative, all the money involved changed things,” he shares. “It’s the only sport around where it’s reversed. You don’t find the first black jockey because you can’t, it goes back to slavery. You can find the first black baseball, football, basketball players, but this is one of the first sports of the united states, besides boxing that was dominated by the black people first … if you weren’t black, you couldn’t touch their horses.
“Back then,
blacks were also ordered from a certain part of Africa close to Europe
for their horesmanship skills, the Barbary coast, they wanted specific
Africans from this region for their knowledge of horses. So the history is rich and deep.”
Having just returned from the 2010 Kentucky Derby, it’s blatantly obvious that things have dramatically changed since then. The equestrianism landscape is now sorely lacking in black representation, but how did the sport take such a turn?
“Money,” says Long. “Once it was recognized there was so much money to be made, things began shifting. The black jockeys at one time were considered thoroughbreds. You had the groomers and the caretakers of the horses, really the outside house n—–s, to put it bluntly. They lived like or even better than the house ones. When I watch the Derby now and see all the jockeys are white or Latin American, I’m envious, honestly. They’re making the money, which is what drove them to it and us away.”
Long feels that money caused the tide to turn, but he won’t go as far as to say it was racism as much as it was politics. He acknowledges that the way it started out with all blacks was actually rooted in a twisted brand of racism:
“I had horses that could lead, but I had an injury or they’d change riders for whatever reason, not necessarily because of color, because that just happens, the politics of it … when you begin to read our knowledge of what we thought slavery was, you know we were told that slaves never earned money, slaves never lived this way … these slave jockeys, man, they lived well. I mean, they weren’t in ratty clothes, they weren’t sleeping in ratty beds, they were represented the master, so they had to be treated well in order to perform well. It was all about the money.
“The purses then was tobacco here, cotton there, wheat farms, and if the
jockey would get beat, his mom and dad would get sold or his sister
would go somewhere but he’s staying there for the punishment because
he’s the only jockey the stable got.”
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| Painting by Michael McBride |
Along with money and politics, Long also blames the absence of African American faces on lack of knowledge:
“It’s the lack of knowledge and education that we’re not there. I’m sure when people heard that MC Hammer had a horse called Dancefloor, I mean he was flamboyant, but he came in there blind. I know he thought, ‘I’mma buy a race horse,’ and spent all his money and went to the white trainer, and he took him for a fool, and rightfully so … it’s like buying a car, I mean, it may be pretty, but it’s rusted out. By the time he figured out the deal, he didn’t realize the cold truth behind it, the history behind it. He just thought money would buy his way in, and it did, but he got no further than that. He lost the most money in thoroughbred racing than anywhere else,” Long says.
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| Painting by Michael McBride |
Michael McBride, a painter of black jockeys who has extensively studied the history of the sport, would love to see blacks return to it, but on their own terms:
“The more we’re educated, we get these young people who begin to see that if they love animals and love horses, whereas they might not be able to be jockeys, because they might be too big, they can be great trainers, let them know that the industry is there, and they need us badly. I watched the undercover boss, the guy from Churchill Downs, I saw him go down under and get on everything, there were no black faces, none,” says McBride.
