Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to blaying a chocolate Barty and I'm fair down
Speaker 1: and the Kentucky Derby is coming up on May seven,
Speaker 1: and so I thought this would be an okay time
Speaker 1: to confess that I have an inexplicable fascination with horse racing.
Speaker 1: Really surprised me about you. You told me this earlier
Speaker 1: in the day. Yeah, I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's not like I mean, I've ridden horses before, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't really very much into it growing up. I
Speaker 1: had some friends who were, but even they weren't into racing.
Speaker 1: So I don't really know what it is except for
Speaker 1: just the stories behind the jockeys, behind the horses and
Speaker 1: the trainers. It always seems whenever I tune into the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby every year, I hear all these stories of
Speaker 1: triumph over adversity, and I don't know great comebacks. I
Speaker 1: imagine you have like a secret hat collection you bring
Speaker 1: out for the Kentucky Derby, Sarah, I only wish. But
Speaker 1: before we go any further, for those who aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with the Derby, It's one of the classic American horse
Speaker 1: races and probably the most widely known in the US.
Speaker 1: It started in eighteen seventy five and it takes place
Speaker 1: annually the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: The race distance is about one point to five miles
Speaker 1: one mile and a quarter and it's often called the
Speaker 1: most exciting two minutes in sports. Yeah, And like I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: we do associate things like big hats with the Kentucky Derby,
Speaker 1: mint juleps, high rollers, that kind of thing. It's a
Speaker 1: very elite event, and at least in the last one
Speaker 1: hundred years or so, it's not that racially diverse. Certainly
Speaker 1: that's not the way you think of it. But as
Speaker 1: we're gonna learn, there was a time in the early
Speaker 1: days of the Derby when African American jockeys dominated the
Speaker 1: US horse racing scene. Yeah, and so here we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the last black jockey to win the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby, Kentucky native actually, whose name was Jimmy Winkfield.
Speaker 1: And we'll take a look at his short but successful
Speaker 1: US career and the events that brought that to a close,
Speaker 1: and his remarkable experiences abroad. But first, um, we want
Speaker 1: to look a little bit at this history of African
Speaker 1: Americans and horse racing, so we can trace African Americans
Speaker 1: participation in the sport to colonial times when the British
Speaker 1: brought their passion for horse racing to America, and according
Speaker 1: to an article in The Smithsonian by Lisa KA Winkler,
Speaker 1: even founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson frequented the track,
Speaker 1: and former President Andrew Jackson had his own thoroughbreds. And
Speaker 1: black jockeys so very much a part of our an
Speaker 1: illustrious start. But the first black jockeys were slaves, and
Speaker 1: they got their skills and their affinity for horses, their
Speaker 1: connection to horses from doing sort of the menial we're
Speaker 1: cleaning the stables or grooming the owner's valuable animals. And
Speaker 1: Winkler point felt that being on the racing circuit once,
Speaker 1: once black jockeys did start making it big, gave them
Speaker 1: a sort of false sense of freedom. It was one
Speaker 1: of the few ways that they could achieve real status,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them did. They went all the
Speaker 1: way to the top in American horse racing in the
Speaker 1: first Kentucky Derby in eighteen sevent thirteen, out of fifteen
Speaker 1: jockeys were black, and among the first twenty eight Derby winners,
Speaker 1: fifteen of them were black. So they were they were
Speaker 1: dominating the horse racing scene. Yeah, exactly. And this was
Speaker 1: the environment that James Winkfield was born into on April twelfth,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two, in Kentucky, and he was the youngest
Speaker 1: son of George and Victoria Winkfield, who had a total
Speaker 1: of seventeen kids. They were farmers, basically sharecroppers, and lived
Speaker 1: in a shotgun shock so some of the kids actually
Speaker 1: had to spill out on the porch at night to sleep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but little James definitely got interested in horses and racing early,
Speaker 1: probably in no small part because he was growing up
Speaker 1: bluegrass country and he heard he probably saw the horses
Speaker 1: and also heard the stories of black jockeys making a
Speaker 1: name for themselves and getting big. And lucky for him,
Speaker 1: he didn't get big. He's stayed small, which is of
Speaker 1: course a requirement for professional jockeys. Even though he had
Speaker 1: some siblings who were six ft tall. This is quite
Speaker 1: a discrepancy because by his teen years he was only
Speaker 1: five ft tall and less than one hundred pounds, so
Speaker 1: perfect build for a jockey. Yeah, and he started out
Speaker 1: just bugging other groomers in his area until they finally
Speaker 1: gave in and let him do some of their work
Speaker 1: for free. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me
Speaker 1: if you're one of those workers. But Jimmy then got
Speaker 1: hired on as a groomer and an exercise boy, so
Speaker 1: he got his own gig. And this is how he
Speaker 1: got his experience in training and kind of got discovered
Speaker 1: just riding horses as an exerciser. And there were some
Speaker 1: trainers who were looking out for opportunities all the time
Speaker 1: to turn riders into jockeys, looking for people who just
Speaker 1: seemed to have that natural talent. And that's how Jimmy
Speaker 1: got his first break in eighteen ninety eight at age sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he rode a race at Chicago's Hawthorne Race Course.
Speaker 1: But it didn't turn out to be the big break
Speaker 1: he was really looking for it. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: quite a disaster. His horse broke next to last at
Speaker 1: the start, and then when he thought he saw an opening,
Speaker 1: he broke fourth from the rail and cut across the
Speaker 1: path of three horses and he took them all down
Speaker 1: in the process and got suspended for a year because
Speaker 1: of it. He came back though in eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: strong as ever. Yeah, he started winning races in Chicago.
Speaker 1: For example, in nineteen hundred he rode in his first
Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby and that was out of four races, four
Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby races, I should say that he would ride
Speaker 1: in total. In nineteen hundred he placed third. The next
Speaker 1: two years he placed first in the Kentucky Derby, first
Speaker 1: on a horse called His Eminence and then on Allan
Speaker 1: a Dale And this made him only the second jockey
Speaker 1: to win two successive Derby's. And I mean there's still
Speaker 1: really aren't that many jockeys who can claim that their
Speaker 1: feet indeed. And in nineteen o three he finished second
Speaker 1: because he made his move too soon, and it was
Speaker 1: a loss that always bugged him. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: hoping to go for three in a row there, it seems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read that he actually talked about that loss until
Speaker 1: his death. You know that he should have won it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one that going away. So by that time, the
Speaker 1: US horse racing scene was already changing thanks to racism, segregation,
Speaker 1: Jim Crow laws and the economy played a part. Two
Speaker 1: recessions at the time really shrunk the number of race
Speaker 1: tracks and the attendance at the race tracks that were
Speaker 1: still open. And they were also anti gambling groups going around,
Speaker 1: so that was further shutting down the number of race
Speaker 1: tracks that were operating. Yeah, definitely, they went down from
Speaker 1: three tracks in eighteen ninety five by nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: so really big dive and white jockeys also didn't like
Speaker 1: competing with black jockeys for the best mount so at
Speaker 1: times there was outright violence. I mean during races on
Speaker 1: the track, black jockeys would sometimes be pushed towards the rail. Um.
Speaker 1: There was even a riot in Chicago between the white
Speaker 1: and the black jockeys. Yeah. So times were definitely changing,
Speaker 1: and you can really tell. Even though Winkfield one more
Speaker 1: than one hundred and sixty races in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: Goodwin's annual Official Guide to the Turf admitted his name,
Speaker 1: so he he wasn't even a player even anymore, even
Speaker 1: though he was still winning. Yeah, and perhaps more seriously,
Speaker 1: or definitely more seriously, I should say, he received death
Speaker 1: threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: getting really hard for a black jockey to work in
Speaker 1: the United States anymore, and all those reasons were contributing
Speaker 1: for sure. But he really sort of put the final
Speaker 1: nail in his own coffin for his US career because
Speaker 1: in nineteen o three, he was scheduled to ride for
Speaker 1: one owner in the Futurity Stakes in New York City
Speaker 1: and then he accepted a three thousand dollar offer to
Speaker 1: switch horses and ride on the favorite. And this was
Speaker 1: a big faux pat I mean, as he can imagine,
Speaker 1: switching horses at the last minute, and it really hurt
Speaker 1: his reputation. Yeah, So after the horse switch incident, Winkfield's
Speaker 1: number of rides dropped by a third. So he ended
Speaker 1: up moving to Russia in nineteen o four, where he
Speaker 1: accepted a position with an American owned stable, and there
Speaker 1: his career really took off again. His first year there
Speaker 1: he won the Czar's Triple Crown, which is the Moscow,
Speaker 1: the St. Petersburg and the Warsaw Derby's and he was
Speaker 1: also the nineteen o four Russian National writing Champion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and over the years he just kind of kept on,
Speaker 1: winning the mof got Derby four more times on one
Speaker 1: horse alone, and then several other times on different mouths.
Speaker 1: He rode on and off for different owners, the Polish Prince,
Speaker 1: the German baron. So he wasn't just riding in Russia.
Speaker 1: He was riding in Austria and Germany and France too,
Speaker 1: and making a lot of money doing it. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: salary at one point was seventeen thousand roubles, so it
Speaker 1: would have been equal to about eight thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars at the time per year, plus ten percent of
Speaker 1: every purse that he won, So he was pretty well
Speaker 1: off to say the least. He was living in this
Speaker 1: fancy schmancy hotel, the National Hotel in Moscow, and having
Speaker 1: caviare for breakfast. As we know, though, by nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: or so, there was trouble brewing in Russia and the
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks and the Communists were getting organized, and the racing
Speaker 1: community was really at risk because it was something that
Speaker 1: rich people did. It was a symbol of the aristocracy,
Speaker 1: and so Winfield, to protect himself, had to walk around
Speaker 1: in tattered clothing to avoid getting arrested by Bolsheviks. I
Speaker 1: still think that's quite I don't know, it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine this five foot tall guy walking around and
Speaker 1: what did they think of him? Like he would still
Speaker 1: stick out, I think definitely. He was working in Odessa
Speaker 1: for Prince Loumo Misski of Poland and nineteen nineteen when
Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution finally caught up to him. When they
Speaker 1: started hearing the sound of cannons, he and the rest
Speaker 1: of the racing community, which included horsemen and their families
Speaker 1: and about two fifty two and sixty horses something in there,
Speaker 1: they all took off an escaped to Poland. It was
Speaker 1: a really hazardous journey one thousand, one hundred miles to Warsaw.
Speaker 1: They had to cross the Transylvanian Alps, and they had
Speaker 1: to actually unfortunately eat some of the horses along the
Speaker 1: way because they got desperate for food. But they did
Speaker 1: make it eventually. Yeah, And once he was in Poland,
Speaker 1: Wingfield again resumed his riding career and started to recoup
Speaker 1: his fortune, most of which he lost when he left Russia.
Speaker 1: Even though he was getting older, he did become a
Speaker 1: successful rider again. He continued as a jockey through the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. He won several stakes races and altogether he
Speaker 1: ended up winning two thousand, six hundred races in his
Speaker 1: entire riding career. That was one amazing thing I thought
Speaker 1: about this story. I kept expecting some sort of sad end,
Speaker 1: but he keeps bouncing back time after time. He does.
Speaker 1: In even when he was as he was building up
Speaker 1: his racing again and still writing, he built a stable
Speaker 1: in a home near Paris in Maison Lafitte. He had
Speaker 1: a little family there with him too, by then, a
Speaker 1: son and a daughter with his third wife, who was
Speaker 1: an exiled Russian aristocrat named Lydia de Mickowitz. So when
Speaker 1: he finally retired from writing in nineteen thirty, around the
Speaker 1: age of forty eight, he decided to devote his life
Speaker 1: entirely to training horses at his stable in France. So
Speaker 1: he stayed put there, settled there instead of traveling around
Speaker 1: racing all the time, and he trained his own horses
Speaker 1: and horses for other owners too, and he ended up
Speaker 1: doing really well by it. But unfortunately he loses his
Speaker 1: fortune once again when the Germans invade France in one
Speaker 1: and the Red Cross evacuates his family to the US.
Speaker 1: He's home, so he's back home again, and black jockeys
Speaker 1: had pretty much disappeared from the racing scene by the
Speaker 1: early twenties, and Winkfield was looking for work and signed
Speaker 1: up with the Works Progress Administration working on a road
Speaker 1: crew and later had to work as a room and
Speaker 1: an assistant trainer for a living, So I mean a groom.
Speaker 1: That's back to where he where he started as a kid. Finally, though,
Speaker 1: he got to return to France in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: and start up his operation, his racing and training stable
Speaker 1: again and he died in France March twenty three, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, at age ninety one. Again just bouncing back.
Speaker 1: It's so impressive that he had he had it in
Speaker 1: him to keep going and try again. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a phenomenal life and a phenomenal career really and very impressive.
Speaker 1: But it took Winkfield a long time to get recognition
Speaker 1: that he deserved in his home country. In the US.
Speaker 1: There's a story that's often told about he and his
Speaker 1: daughter attending the nineteen sixty one Kentucky Derby. Actually it's
Speaker 1: really sad. They were invited to a Sports Illustrated event,
Speaker 1: a dinner at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, but they
Speaker 1: almost got turned away at the door by the doorman,
Speaker 1: and they had to have him go check several times
Speaker 1: and insists that they were guests and they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be there, and they finally got in, but even
Speaker 1: when they did get there, they were essentially ignored by
Speaker 1: the people at the dinner. The dinner kind of the
Speaker 1: people at the dinner kind of came up to them
Speaker 1: and said high and shook hands, and then they didn't
Speaker 1: talk to anyone the rest of the time. His daughter
Speaker 1: said in a two thousand two NPR Weekend Edition interview
Speaker 1: that the only person who talked to us was a
Speaker 1: previous jockey who had won the derby, and that was
Speaker 1: Roscoe Goose. He was the only one who was friendly
Speaker 1: enough to talk to us. Nobody else talked to us
Speaker 1: the whole time. That's so sad and tragic and disappointing.
Speaker 1: I guess this very that's the perfect way to describe it. Disappointing.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned that. I thought this was a
Speaker 1: neat counterpoint to it. Even though he's so disrespected at
Speaker 1: this event, he said he still really enjoyed the race
Speaker 1: because that's his element. He liked it, he liked being there. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from what I've read, he really enjoyed being at the
Speaker 1: race and kind of didn't care that people had treated
Speaker 1: him that way, or really didn't seem to care. I
Speaker 1: guess because he had been through so much in his life. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvanian alps probably puts things in perspective. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: definitely change your perspective on the whole thing. I think
Speaker 1: that he was more embarrassed and worried about his daughter
Speaker 1: in that situation necessarily than himself. But regardless, things have
Speaker 1: changed a lot over the past decade. Winkfield finally got
Speaker 1: inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and in two thousand five the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives passed a bill honoring him, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: Marlin sat Julian became the first African American to ride
Speaker 1: in the Derby since ninety one. They've been a few
Speaker 1: since then, so maybe things are starting to change, starting
Speaker 1: to get back to how they were at the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, it's interesting to think of
Speaker 1: going backwards as progress, but I guess in a weird way,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what it would be. But I know
Speaker 1: that I'll definitely be watching May seven to check out
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Derby and um all the new stories that
Speaker 1: they have this year, and learn about the present day
Speaker 1: jockeys and what their deals are. UM And if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about Jimmy Winkfield, because of course
Speaker 1: we only touched on his career, we didn't really go
Speaker 1: into his personal life that much. And there's interesting stories.
Speaker 1: There's some interesting points there. It's a little tumultuous. Um,
Speaker 1: he's not necessarily always coming up roses and all those stories,
Speaker 1: so you might want to check it out. It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Their a couple of biographies. There's one Black Mice stro
Speaker 1: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drake,
Speaker 1: and there's another one called wink by Ed Hodeling. But
Speaker 1: for now we'll just move on to listener mail. So
Speaker 1: after our five Real Life Amazon podcasts, we got a
Speaker 1: few comments from listeners saying that a European Howard is
Speaker 1: a little different from a Japanese Halbard, sort of pointier
Speaker 1: and less. Let's act like yes, But we also got
Speaker 1: a really interesting email from listener Jen in California. She
Speaker 1: wrote to say, hello, ladies, I just finished listening to
Speaker 1: your Real Life Amazon podcast and I wanted to say
Speaker 1: thanks for the part on the female samarai. Nicano. I
Speaker 1: practiced a Japanese sword style called Ei. I just won
Speaker 1: two first places a competition that was almost exclusively male
Speaker 1: with male judges. There are only a handful of women
Speaker 1: that practice the traditional Samurai sword styles, let alone a blonde.
Speaker 1: I get killed bill references a lot, and there are
Speaker 1: only a rare few stories of true Samurai women warriors,
Speaker 1: So thanks for the podcast. Plus a fun fact, the
Speaker 1: halberd called the Nagi Nata was traditionally a woman's weapon,
Speaker 1: and its power comes from the core and hip, so
Speaker 1: it's easy to see why it was wielded so well
Speaker 1: by women. As practiced with it a few times. And
Speaker 1: although I love the samurai sword, the Naga nata is
Speaker 1: really a fun weapon. Keep the warrior women's stories coming,
Speaker 1: especially Japanese one. So yeah, I thought that was cool.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for the Halbard explanations. I'm impressed that there
Speaker 1: are so many Japanese weapon experts out there listening. Definitely,
Speaker 1: you know I have a Japanese weapon as well. I
Speaker 1: have a sword. Oh my gosh, so you're learning all
Speaker 1: kinds of things about me, Sarah, are you a samurai
Speaker 1: sword fighting expert. I'm not no mine is an into katana,
Speaker 1: but I don't actually know how to use it, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's better for my opponents or worse.
Speaker 1: But I guess hopefully I'll never have to find out. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: because their stories every now and then about when people
Speaker 1: really use their sword collections for for good or for defense,
Speaker 1: So I guess you never know. Well, just in case,
Speaker 1: just got it next to my bed. You've got it
Speaker 1: next to here, Kentucky Derby Hackler. All right, before I
Speaker 1: get made fun of anymore, we better, we better say
Speaker 1: goodbye for this podcast. If you have any suggestions for us,
Speaker 1: or want to tell us about your own weapon wielding skills,
Speaker 1: please write us at History Podcast at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com or look us up on Twitter at Misston
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