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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm to blaying a chocolate Barty and I'm fair down

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Speaker 1: and the Kentucky Derby is coming up on May seven,

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Speaker 1: and so I thought this would be an okay time

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Speaker 1: to confess that I have an inexplicable fascination with horse racing.

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Speaker 1: Really surprised me about you. You told me this earlier

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Speaker 1: in the day. Yeah, I don't even know what it is.

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Speaker 1: It's not like I mean, I've ridden horses before, but

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Speaker 1: I wasn't really very much into it growing up. I

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Speaker 1: had some friends who were, but even they weren't into racing.

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Speaker 1: So I don't really know what it is except for

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Speaker 1: just the stories behind the jockeys, behind the horses and

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Speaker 1: the trainers. It always seems whenever I tune into the

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Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby every year, I hear all these stories of

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Speaker 1: triumph over adversity, and I don't know great comebacks. I

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Speaker 1: imagine you have like a secret hat collection you bring

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Speaker 1: out for the Kentucky Derby, Sarah, I only wish. But

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Speaker 1: before we go any further, for those who aren't familiar

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Speaker 1: with the Derby, It's one of the classic American horse

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Speaker 1: races and probably the most widely known in the US.

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Speaker 1: It started in eighteen seventy five and it takes place

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Speaker 1: annually the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Speaker 1: The race distance is about one point to five miles

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Speaker 1: one mile and a quarter and it's often called the

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Speaker 1: most exciting two minutes in sports. Yeah, And like I've mentioned,

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Speaker 1: we do associate things like big hats with the Kentucky Derby,

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Speaker 1: mint juleps, high rollers, that kind of thing. It's a

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Speaker 1: very elite event, and at least in the last one

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Speaker 1: hundred years or so, it's not that racially diverse. Certainly

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Speaker 1: that's not the way you think of it. But as

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Speaker 1: we're gonna learn, there was a time in the early

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Speaker 1: days of the Derby when African American jockeys dominated the

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Speaker 1: US horse racing scene. Yeah, and so here we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about the last black jockey to win the

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Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby, Kentucky native actually, whose name was Jimmy Winkfield.

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Speaker 1: And we'll take a look at his short but successful

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Speaker 1: US career and the events that brought that to a close,

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Speaker 1: and his remarkable experiences abroad. But first, um, we want

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Speaker 1: to look a little bit at this history of African

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Speaker 1: Americans and horse racing, so we can trace African Americans

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Speaker 1: participation in the sport to colonial times when the British

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Speaker 1: brought their passion for horse racing to America, and according

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Speaker 1: to an article in The Smithsonian by Lisa KA Winkler,

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Speaker 1: even founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson frequented the track,

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Speaker 1: and former President Andrew Jackson had his own thoroughbreds. And

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Speaker 1: black jockeys so very much a part of our an

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Speaker 1: illustrious start. But the first black jockeys were slaves, and

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Speaker 1: they got their skills and their affinity for horses, their

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Speaker 1: connection to horses from doing sort of the menial we're

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Speaker 1: cleaning the stables or grooming the owner's valuable animals. And

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Speaker 1: Winkler point felt that being on the racing circuit once,

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Speaker 1: once black jockeys did start making it big, gave them

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Speaker 1: a sort of false sense of freedom. It was one

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Speaker 1: of the few ways that they could achieve real status,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of them did. They went all the

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Speaker 1: way to the top in American horse racing in the

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Speaker 1: first Kentucky Derby in eighteen sevent thirteen, out of fifteen

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Speaker 1: jockeys were black, and among the first twenty eight Derby winners,

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Speaker 1: fifteen of them were black. So they were they were

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Speaker 1: dominating the horse racing scene. Yeah, exactly. And this was

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Speaker 1: the environment that James Winkfield was born into on April twelfth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two, in Kentucky, and he was the youngest

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Speaker 1: son of George and Victoria Winkfield, who had a total

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Speaker 1: of seventeen kids. They were farmers, basically sharecroppers, and lived

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Speaker 1: in a shotgun shock so some of the kids actually

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Speaker 1: had to spill out on the porch at night to sleep. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but little James definitely got interested in horses and racing early,

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Speaker 1: probably in no small part because he was growing up

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Speaker 1: bluegrass country and he heard he probably saw the horses

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Speaker 1: and also heard the stories of black jockeys making a

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Speaker 1: name for themselves and getting big. And lucky for him,

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Speaker 1: he didn't get big. He's stayed small, which is of

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Speaker 1: course a requirement for professional jockeys. Even though he had

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Speaker 1: some siblings who were six ft tall. This is quite

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Speaker 1: a discrepancy because by his teen years he was only

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Speaker 1: five ft tall and less than one hundred pounds, so

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Speaker 1: perfect build for a jockey. Yeah, and he started out

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Speaker 1: just bugging other groomers in his area until they finally

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Speaker 1: gave in and let him do some of their work

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Speaker 1: for free. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me

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Speaker 1: if you're one of those workers. But Jimmy then got

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Speaker 1: hired on as a groomer and an exercise boy, so

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Speaker 1: he got his own gig. And this is how he

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Speaker 1: got his experience in training and kind of got discovered

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Speaker 1: just riding horses as an exerciser. And there were some

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Speaker 1: trainers who were looking out for opportunities all the time

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Speaker 1: to turn riders into jockeys, looking for people who just

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Speaker 1: seemed to have that natural talent. And that's how Jimmy

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Speaker 1: got his first break in eighteen ninety eight at age sixteen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so he rode a race at Chicago's Hawthorne Race Course.

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Speaker 1: But it didn't turn out to be the big break

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Speaker 1: he was really looking for it. In fact, it was

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Speaker 1: quite a disaster. His horse broke next to last at

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Speaker 1: the start, and then when he thought he saw an opening,

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Speaker 1: he broke fourth from the rail and cut across the

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Speaker 1: path of three horses and he took them all down

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Speaker 1: in the process and got suspended for a year because

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Speaker 1: of it. He came back though in eighteen ninety nine,

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Speaker 1: strong as ever. Yeah, he started winning races in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: For example, in nineteen hundred he rode in his first

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Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby and that was out of four races, four

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Speaker 1: Kentucky Derby races, I should say that he would ride

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Speaker 1: in total. In nineteen hundred he placed third. The next

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Speaker 1: two years he placed first in the Kentucky Derby, first

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Speaker 1: on a horse called His Eminence and then on Allan

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Speaker 1: a Dale And this made him only the second jockey

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Speaker 1: to win two successive Derby's. And I mean there's still

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Speaker 1: really aren't that many jockeys who can claim that their

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Speaker 1: feet indeed. And in nineteen o three he finished second

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Speaker 1: because he made his move too soon, and it was

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Speaker 1: a loss that always bugged him. I mean, he was

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Speaker 1: hoping to go for three in a row there, it seems. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've read that he actually talked about that loss until

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Speaker 1: his death. You know that he should have won it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the one that going away. So by that time, the

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Speaker 1: US horse racing scene was already changing thanks to racism, segregation,

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Speaker 1: Jim Crow laws and the economy played a part. Two

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Speaker 1: recessions at the time really shrunk the number of race

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Speaker 1: tracks and the attendance at the race tracks that were

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Speaker 1: still open. And they were also anti gambling groups going around,

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Speaker 1: so that was further shutting down the number of race

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Speaker 1: tracks that were operating. Yeah, definitely, they went down from

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Speaker 1: three tracks in eighteen ninety five by nineteen o eight,

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Speaker 1: so really big dive and white jockeys also didn't like

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Speaker 1: competing with black jockeys for the best mount so at

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Speaker 1: times there was outright violence. I mean during races on

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Speaker 1: the track, black jockeys would sometimes be pushed towards the rail. Um.

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Speaker 1: There was even a riot in Chicago between the white

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Speaker 1: and the black jockeys. Yeah. So times were definitely changing,

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Speaker 1: and you can really tell. Even though Winkfield one more

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Speaker 1: than one hundred and sixty races in nineteen o one,

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Speaker 1: Goodwin's annual Official Guide to the Turf admitted his name,

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Speaker 1: so he he wasn't even a player even anymore, even

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Speaker 1: though he was still winning. Yeah, and perhaps more seriously,

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Speaker 1: or definitely more seriously, I should say, he received death

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Speaker 1: threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, so it was

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Speaker 1: getting really hard for a black jockey to work in

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Speaker 1: the United States anymore, and all those reasons were contributing

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Speaker 1: for sure. But he really sort of put the final

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Speaker 1: nail in his own coffin for his US career because

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Speaker 1: in nineteen o three, he was scheduled to ride for

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Speaker 1: one owner in the Futurity Stakes in New York City

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Speaker 1: and then he accepted a three thousand dollar offer to

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Speaker 1: switch horses and ride on the favorite. And this was

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Speaker 1: a big faux pat I mean, as he can imagine,

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Speaker 1: switching horses at the last minute, and it really hurt

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Speaker 1: his reputation. Yeah, So after the horse switch incident, Winkfield's

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Speaker 1: number of rides dropped by a third. So he ended

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Speaker 1: up moving to Russia in nineteen o four, where he

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Speaker 1: accepted a position with an American owned stable, and there

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Speaker 1: his career really took off again. His first year there

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Speaker 1: he won the Czar's Triple Crown, which is the Moscow,

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Speaker 1: the St. Petersburg and the Warsaw Derby's and he was

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Speaker 1: also the nineteen o four Russian National writing Champion. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and over the years he just kind of kept on,

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Speaker 1: winning the mof got Derby four more times on one

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Speaker 1: horse alone, and then several other times on different mouths.

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Speaker 1: He rode on and off for different owners, the Polish Prince,

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Speaker 1: the German baron. So he wasn't just riding in Russia.

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Speaker 1: He was riding in Austria and Germany and France too,

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Speaker 1: and making a lot of money doing it. Yeah, his

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Speaker 1: salary at one point was seventeen thousand roubles, so it

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Speaker 1: would have been equal to about eight thousand, five hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars at the time per year, plus ten percent of

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Speaker 1: every purse that he won, So he was pretty well

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Speaker 1: off to say the least. He was living in this

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Speaker 1: fancy schmancy hotel, the National Hotel in Moscow, and having

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Speaker 1: caviare for breakfast. As we know, though, by nineteen seventeen

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Speaker 1: or so, there was trouble brewing in Russia and the

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Speaker 1: Bolsheviks and the Communists were getting organized, and the racing

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Speaker 1: community was really at risk because it was something that

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Speaker 1: rich people did. It was a symbol of the aristocracy,

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Speaker 1: and so Winfield, to protect himself, had to walk around

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Speaker 1: in tattered clothing to avoid getting arrested by Bolsheviks. I

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Speaker 1: still think that's quite I don't know, it's it's hard

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Speaker 1: to imagine this five foot tall guy walking around and

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Speaker 1: what did they think of him? Like he would still

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Speaker 1: stick out, I think definitely. He was working in Odessa

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Speaker 1: for Prince Loumo Misski of Poland and nineteen nineteen when

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Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution finally caught up to him. When they

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Speaker 1: started hearing the sound of cannons, he and the rest

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Speaker 1: of the racing community, which included horsemen and their families

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Speaker 1: and about two fifty two and sixty horses something in there,

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Speaker 1: they all took off an escaped to Poland. It was

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Speaker 1: a really hazardous journey one thousand, one hundred miles to Warsaw.

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Speaker 1: They had to cross the Transylvanian Alps, and they had

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Speaker 1: to actually unfortunately eat some of the horses along the

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Speaker 1: way because they got desperate for food. But they did

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Speaker 1: make it eventually. Yeah, And once he was in Poland,

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Speaker 1: Wingfield again resumed his riding career and started to recoup

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Speaker 1: his fortune, most of which he lost when he left Russia.

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Speaker 1: Even though he was getting older, he did become a

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Speaker 1: successful rider again. He continued as a jockey through the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. He won several stakes races and altogether he

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Speaker 1: ended up winning two thousand, six hundred races in his

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Speaker 1: entire riding career. That was one amazing thing I thought

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Speaker 1: about this story. I kept expecting some sort of sad end,

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Speaker 1: but he keeps bouncing back time after time. He does.

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Speaker 1: In even when he was as he was building up

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Speaker 1: his racing again and still writing, he built a stable

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Speaker 1: in a home near Paris in Maison Lafitte. He had

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Speaker 1: a little family there with him too, by then, a

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Speaker 1: son and a daughter with his third wife, who was

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Speaker 1: an exiled Russian aristocrat named Lydia de Mickowitz. So when

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Speaker 1: he finally retired from writing in nineteen thirty, around the

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Speaker 1: age of forty eight, he decided to devote his life

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Speaker 1: entirely to training horses at his stable in France. So

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Speaker 1: he stayed put there, settled there instead of traveling around

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Speaker 1: racing all the time, and he trained his own horses

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Speaker 1: and horses for other owners too, and he ended up

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Speaker 1: doing really well by it. But unfortunately he loses his

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Speaker 1: fortune once again when the Germans invade France in one

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Speaker 1: and the Red Cross evacuates his family to the US.

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Speaker 1: He's home, so he's back home again, and black jockeys

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Speaker 1: had pretty much disappeared from the racing scene by the

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Speaker 1: early twenties, and Winkfield was looking for work and signed

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Speaker 1: up with the Works Progress Administration working on a road

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Speaker 1: crew and later had to work as a room and

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Speaker 1: an assistant trainer for a living, So I mean a groom.

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Speaker 1: That's back to where he where he started as a kid. Finally, though,

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Speaker 1: he got to return to France in nineteen fifty three

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Speaker 1: and start up his operation, his racing and training stable

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Speaker 1: again and he died in France March twenty three, nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four, at age ninety one. Again just bouncing back.

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Speaker 1: It's so impressive that he had he had it in

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Speaker 1: him to keep going and try again. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: a phenomenal life and a phenomenal career really and very impressive.

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Speaker 1: But it took Winkfield a long time to get recognition

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Speaker 1: that he deserved in his home country. In the US.

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Speaker 1: There's a story that's often told about he and his

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Speaker 1: daughter attending the nineteen sixty one Kentucky Derby. Actually it's

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Speaker 1: really sad. They were invited to a Sports Illustrated event,

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Speaker 1: a dinner at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, but they

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Speaker 1: almost got turned away at the door by the doorman,

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Speaker 1: and they had to have him go check several times

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Speaker 1: and insists that they were guests and they were supposed

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Speaker 1: to be there, and they finally got in, but even

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Speaker 1: when they did get there, they were essentially ignored by

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Speaker 1: the people at the dinner. The dinner kind of the

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Speaker 1: people at the dinner kind of came up to them

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Speaker 1: and said high and shook hands, and then they didn't

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Speaker 1: talk to anyone the rest of the time. His daughter

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Speaker 1: said in a two thousand two NPR Weekend Edition interview

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Speaker 1: that the only person who talked to us was a

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Speaker 1: previous jockey who had won the derby, and that was

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Speaker 1: Roscoe Goose. He was the only one who was friendly

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Speaker 1: enough to talk to us. Nobody else talked to us

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Speaker 1: the whole time. That's so sad and tragic and disappointing.

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Speaker 1: I guess this very that's the perfect way to describe it. Disappointing.

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Speaker 1: I think you mentioned that. I thought this was a

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Speaker 1: neat counterpoint to it. Even though he's so disrespected at

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Speaker 1: this event, he said he still really enjoyed the race

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Speaker 1: because that's his element. He liked it, he liked being there. Again, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: from what I've read, he really enjoyed being at the

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Speaker 1: race and kind of didn't care that people had treated

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Speaker 1: him that way, or really didn't seem to care. I

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Speaker 1: guess because he had been through so much in his life. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: Pennsylvanian alps probably puts things in perspective. Yeah, that would

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Speaker 1: definitely change your perspective on the whole thing. I think

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Speaker 1: that he was more embarrassed and worried about his daughter

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Speaker 1: in that situation necessarily than himself. But regardless, things have

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Speaker 1: changed a lot over the past decade. Winkfield finally got

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Speaker 1: inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in two

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Speaker 1: thousand four, and in two thousand five the House of

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Speaker 1: Representatives passed a bill honoring him, and in two thousand

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Speaker 1: Marlin sat Julian became the first African American to ride

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Speaker 1: in the Derby since ninety one. They've been a few

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Speaker 1: since then, so maybe things are starting to change, starting

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Speaker 1: to get back to how they were at the end

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Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, it's interesting to think of

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Speaker 1: going backwards as progress, but I guess in a weird way,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of what it would be. But I know

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Speaker 1: that I'll definitely be watching May seven to check out

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Speaker 1: the Kentucky Derby and um all the new stories that

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Speaker 1: they have this year, and learn about the present day

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Speaker 1: jockeys and what their deals are. UM And if you

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Speaker 1: want to learn more about Jimmy Winkfield, because of course

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Speaker 1: we only touched on his career, we didn't really go

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Speaker 1: into his personal life that much. And there's interesting stories.

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Speaker 1: There's some interesting points there. It's a little tumultuous. Um,

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Speaker 1: he's not necessarily always coming up roses and all those stories,

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Speaker 1: so you might want to check it out. It's really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: Their a couple of biographies. There's one Black Mice stro

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Speaker 1: The Epic Life of an American Legend by Joe Drake,

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Speaker 1: and there's another one called wink by Ed Hodeling. But

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Speaker 1: for now we'll just move on to listener mail. So

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Speaker 1: after our five Real Life Amazon podcasts, we got a

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Speaker 1: few comments from listeners saying that a European Howard is

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Speaker 1: a little different from a Japanese Halbard, sort of pointier

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Speaker 1: and less. Let's act like yes, But we also got

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Speaker 1: a really interesting email from listener Jen in California. She

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Speaker 1: wrote to say, hello, ladies, I just finished listening to

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Speaker 1: your Real Life Amazon podcast and I wanted to say

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Speaker 1: thanks for the part on the female samarai. Nicano. I

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Speaker 1: practiced a Japanese sword style called Ei. I just won

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Speaker 1: two first places a competition that was almost exclusively male

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Speaker 1: with male judges. There are only a handful of women

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Speaker 1: that practice the traditional Samurai sword styles, let alone a blonde.

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Speaker 1: I get killed bill references a lot, and there are

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Speaker 1: only a rare few stories of true Samurai women warriors,

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Speaker 1: So thanks for the podcast. Plus a fun fact, the

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Speaker 1: halberd called the Nagi Nata was traditionally a woman's weapon,

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Speaker 1: and its power comes from the core and hip, so

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Speaker 1: it's easy to see why it was wielded so well

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Speaker 1: by women. As practiced with it a few times. And

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Speaker 1: although I love the samurai sword, the Naga nata is

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Speaker 1: really a fun weapon. Keep the warrior women's stories coming,

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Speaker 1: especially Japanese one. So yeah, I thought that was cool.

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Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for the Halbard explanations. I'm impressed that there

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Speaker 1: are so many Japanese weapon experts out there listening. Definitely,

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Speaker 1: you know I have a Japanese weapon as well. I

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Speaker 1: have a sword. Oh my gosh, so you're learning all

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Speaker 1: kinds of things about me, Sarah, are you a samurai

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Speaker 1: sword fighting expert. I'm not no mine is an into katana,

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Speaker 1: but I don't actually know how to use it, which

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's better for my opponents or worse.

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Speaker 1: But I guess hopefully I'll never have to find out. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: because their stories every now and then about when people

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Speaker 1: really use their sword collections for for good or for defense,

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Speaker 1: So I guess you never know. Well, just in case,

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Speaker 1: just got it next to my bed. You've got it

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Speaker 1: next to here, Kentucky Derby Hackler. All right, before I

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Speaker 1: get made fun of anymore, we better, we better say

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Speaker 1: goodbye for this podcast. If you have any suggestions for us,

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Speaker 1: or want to tell us about your own weapon wielding skills,

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Speaker 1: please write us at History Podcast at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com or look us up on Twitter at Misston

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Speaker 1: history or on Facebook. And if you want to check

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Speaker 1: out what we've been blogging about lately, you can look

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Speaker 1: us up on the homepage where at www dot how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To

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Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon

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Speaker 1: in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how

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Speaker 1: stuff works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today

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Speaker 1: on iTunes, m