Research Catalog

Title

The great black jockeys : the lives and times of the men who dominated America's first national sport / Edward Hotaling.

Author

Hotaling, Edward.

Publication

Rocklin, Calif. : Forum, [1999], ©1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xx, 380 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

• More than a century before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, black athletes were dominating America's first national sport. The sport was horse racing, and the greatest jockeys of all were slaves and the sons of slaves. Cheered by thousands of Americans in the North and South, they rode to victory in all of the major stakes, including the very first Kentucky Derby.
• Although their glory days ranged from the early 1700s to the turn of the 20th century, the memory of these great black jockeys was erased from history.
• The Great Black Jockeys is the first book about the lives and times of the forgotten men whose extraordinary skills were a wonder to behold, men with names like "Honest Ike" Murphy, Abe Hawkins, Willie Simms, Austin Curtis, Jimmy Winkfield, and dozens more. This is also a story of a young country where whole towns turned out in cleared fields to cheer and place wagers on magnificent horses and the men who rode them, and where the greatest athletes in the land were the property of others.
• For fleeting moments on the racecourse black riders in colorful silks tasted the glory and freedom that slavery had denied them.

Subjects

• Horse racing > United States > History
• African American jockeys > Biography
• African American jockeys > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 341-364) and index.

Contents

A Preface: Jimmy the Greek for Lunch -- 1. The Birth of American Sports: Austin Curtis and the Founding Fathers -- 2. Racing on the Frontier: Simon and General Andrew Jackson -- 3. An American Life: Charles Stewart and Napoleon -- 4. The Expansion Era: From Jesse to Cato, the Freedom Rider -- 5. The Shadows of the Civil War: "Chisel'em" and the Great Slave Sale -- 6. Free at Last? The Other Abe and the Civil War -- 7. The American Spectacle: "The Orange-Clad Boy" and the Kentucky Derby -- 8. The Rise of a Star: Ike Murphy, "Proud of My Calling" -- 9. The Great Black Hopes: Willie Simms and the Gay Nineties -- 10. The Fall of America's First Stars: Jimmy Winkfield and the Last of the Great Black Jockeys.

ISBN

0761514376

LCCN

98055175

OCLC

ocm40602670

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries