Speaker 1: Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
Speaker 1: examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome
Speaker 1: and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last time we talked about football,
Speaker 1: the explosion of the game across college campuses, and how
Speaker 1: it became a truly American invention. Today we'll be speaking
Speaker 1: a little more broadly, not about a specific sport, but
Speaker 1: rather an ugly ideology that made its way into the
Speaker 1: world of early American athletics. Today will be examining sport,
Speaker 1: and Jim Crow will be focusing on the stories of
Speaker 1: two African American men, Isaac Murphy the jockey and Marshall
Speaker 1: Major Taylor the Cyclist. Will also look at one of
Speaker 1: the first racially fueled major American horse races, which was
Speaker 1: decided by a photo finish by the way, just f
Speaker 1: y I, and how it ended the existence of the
Speaker 1: black jockey, and finally, how white American cyclists banned together
Speaker 1: to segregate their sport, which inevitably killed its growth. So,
Speaker 1: without any further ado, here's Matt As, someone with a
Speaker 1: PhD in American history here is something that I believe
Speaker 1: if you want to understand American history, you need to
Speaker 1: understand African American history. And here, very simply is why,
Speaker 1: in my mind, the story of American history is the
Speaker 1: story of a clash, a clash between noble words and
Speaker 1: ideas like freedom and equality and opportunity and the reality
Speaker 1: of oppression or dominance or the lack of freedom. To me,
Speaker 1: the story of American history is the story of this tension,
Speaker 1: this tension between rhetoric and reality, between ideas and what
Speaker 1: actually happens. You know, sometimes the gap between rhetoric and
Speaker 1: reality is wide. Sometimes it's very thin, or or even nonexistent.
Speaker 1: But nowhere do we see this gap or this tension
Speaker 1: between rhetoric and reality more clearly than in the study
Speaker 1: of African American history in the nineteen forties a sociologist
Speaker 1: named Gunner Myrtle. He called this the glaring contradiction, a
Speaker 1: contradiction between claims that America is a free, egalitarian, and
Speaker 1: democratic society and the realities of racism, discrimination, and prejudice.
Speaker 1: There is a glaring contradiction, he said, between rhetoric and
Speaker 1: reality in the United States. Okay, fine, you say, African
Speaker 1: American history is important. But what can sports add to
Speaker 1: this conversation? You know, what can the study of sport
Speaker 1: tell us about this glaring contradiction. Well, the answer is
Speaker 1: a lot. I believe that there is no better arena
Speaker 1: in which to study this glaring contradiction, that this clash
Speaker 1: between rhetoric and reality, than in the world of sport.
Speaker 1: Look our sports as important as education or housing or
Speaker 1: incarceration rates. No, absolutely not. But they are symbolic and
Speaker 1: they are revealing. Think of it like this, America is
Speaker 1: supposed to be about fairness and equality of opportunity. Well,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what sports are supposed to be as well.
Speaker 1: We celebrate this country as a place of opportunity where
Speaker 1: people can rise and fall based on their merit, and
Speaker 1: we celebrate sport for an exactly the same reason you
Speaker 1: rise and fall based on your individual ability. In sports,
Speaker 1: the playing field is supposed to be leveled. Sporting arenas
Speaker 1: are supposed to be the fairest spaces in the land
Speaker 1: of the fair So, if you want to measure the
Speaker 1: degree to which Black Americans have enjoyed equality of opportunity
Speaker 1: and the extent to which they have been treated fairly
Speaker 1: in this country, I argue that there is no better
Speaker 1: place to look than the world of sport, where people
Speaker 1: are supposed to be treated fairly. Now, later in this
Speaker 1: course we're going to complicate this idea. We will question
Speaker 1: whether sports actually do provide an accurate barometer for race
Speaker 1: relations in this country. You know, we'll ask the question,
Speaker 1: do black successes in sports actually mean anything? But that's
Speaker 1: a story for a different time and era. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying to a is that for one hundred years, say,
Speaker 1: from eighteen sixty five, which was the end of the
Speaker 1: Civil War to nineteen right in the heart of the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights movement, if you wanted to gauge the extent
Speaker 1: to which Black Americans had access to the American dream,
Speaker 1: look no further than how black athletes were treated in
Speaker 1: the world of sports. So today we begin by discussing
Speaker 1: race and sport at the end of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and specifically we're going to explore sport and segregation. We
Speaker 1: will look at how sports were part of the larger
Speaker 1: story of white supremacy in this nation. So today it's
Speaker 1: about sport in Jim Crow. And just to be clear
Speaker 1: about terms here, when we speak of Jim Crow, we
Speaker 1: are talking about a culture of segregation or separation between
Speaker 1: black and white, though a little more generally, Jim Crow
Speaker 1: refers to a whole culture in which white Americans are
Speaker 1: afforded opportunities that black Americans are not. So let's look
Speaker 1: at how Jim Crow reared its head in sport. And
Speaker 1: I guess there are a couple of ways we could
Speaker 1: do this. But what I want to do today is
Speaker 1: a little biography as history. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: the story of two black athletes in two different sports,
Speaker 1: and I think their stories give life to the strange
Speaker 1: career of Jim Crow. All right, let me begin by
Speaker 1: telling you about Isaac Murphy. Isaac Murphy raised horses. He
Speaker 1: was a jockey, an African American jockey. Isaac Murphy was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen sixty one in Kentucky. This is the
Speaker 1: year that the Civil War began. Though Isaac Murphy was
Speaker 1: not born into slavery, his father and mother were free blacks.
Speaker 1: Isaac Murphy grew up on a farm and he was
Speaker 1: a stable hand. He cared for horses, He fed them,
Speaker 1: he rode them, and he as he got older, he
Speaker 1: raced them. In eighteen seventy five, when he was fourteen,
Speaker 1: years old, he made his professional riding debut. Coincidentally, eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. This is also the year of the very
Speaker 1: first Kentucky Derby. He wasn't in it, but that's the
Speaker 1: year eighteen seventy five, So there's a nice symmetry here.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, thirteen of the fifteen riders and
Speaker 1: that first Kentucky Derby were black, a sign that horse
Speaker 1: racing was dominated by black jockeys at that time. And
Speaker 1: it should not be totally surprising, you know, As you know,
Speaker 1: horse racing was a vestige of the era of Southern slavery.
Speaker 1: It had been the enslaved who took care of the horses.
Speaker 1: Slave masters would often race their horses against each other,
Speaker 1: and often it was their slaves who were the jockeys.
Speaker 1: And so after the Civil War African Americans gained their freedom.
Speaker 1: In the South, horse racing remained largely a black sport.
Speaker 1: That is, wealthy whites owned the horses and black men
Speaker 1: were their jockeys. So Isaac Murphy was one of many
Speaker 1: black jockeys in this era. But Isaac Murphy became the
Speaker 1: best of them all, and he certainly deserves consideration as
Speaker 1: one of the greatest jockeys of all time. I mean,
Speaker 1: if not the greatest, Isaac Murphy won three Kentucky Derby's.
Speaker 1: Isaac Murphy won forty four percent of his races. This
Speaker 1: is the highest percentage ever and a percentage that frankly,
Speaker 1: will never be equaled. You know, in eight Isaac Murphy
Speaker 1: earned twenty thousand dollars racing horses. Little comparative context, this
Speaker 1: was more than the entire payroll of the Chicago White
Speaker 1: Stockings baseball team to be about a half million dollars today.
Speaker 1: And so from his humble beginnings as a stable boy
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, Isaac Murphy became one of the most famous
Speaker 1: and wealthiest athletes in the United States. He used sport
Speaker 1: for social mobility, and through sport, Isaac Murphy became rich.
Speaker 1: He was a star, and in the decades immediately after
Speaker 1: the Civil War, this was possible for the black athlete.
Speaker 1: Nine was the year of Murphy's most famous race. It
Speaker 1: took place at the Coney Island Racetrack in New York,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the more highly anticipated horse
Speaker 1: races in American history. And it was highly anticipated not
Speaker 1: because it was one of those North South races that
Speaker 1: we talked about. It was highly anticipated because there was
Speaker 1: racial tension. This was a race between Isaac Murphy riding
Speaker 1: a horse named Salvatore, and a white jockey named Snapper Garrison,
Speaker 1: who was riding a horse named Tenny. Isaac Murphy was
Speaker 1: horse racing's top gun, a big time winner in big
Speaker 1: time races, but Garrison was the young rising star. He
Speaker 1: was the best of a group of young white jockeys
Speaker 1: who were challenging the long standing dominance of black jockeys
Speaker 1: in the sport. And the press absolutely understood this, and
Speaker 1: so they described this race not as one between fast horses,
Speaker 1: but they described this race as a race war. They
Speaker 1: described it as a battle for racial supremacy between the
Speaker 1: black and white jockeys. You know, all of this racial
Speaker 1: symbolism aside, Isaac Murphy and Snapper Garrison actually had way
Speaker 1: more in common than they had indifference. They were both
Speaker 1: brash and cocky. They both had a flair for the dramatic.
Speaker 1: I mean, both riders loved to win up by a mile,
Speaker 1: but by an eyelash. To me, these two fleets were
Speaker 1: much more similar than they were different. But they were
Speaker 1: presented as being opposites because of the color of their skin.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all very similar, I think, to the
Speaker 1: way two basketball players in the nineteen eighties, Larry Bird
Speaker 1: and Magic Johnson, the way they were understood. They were
Speaker 1: remarkably similar players who were consistently portrayed as being opposites
Speaker 1: solely because of skin color. And we will discuss this
Speaker 1: when we get to the nineteen eighties. But back to
Speaker 1: the scene was set, Isaac Murphy versus Snapper Garrison, or
Speaker 1: as the press explained it, black versus white. It sounded
Speaker 1: like a great race. The distance was a mile and
Speaker 1: a quarter and Isaac Murphy and Salvatore they got out fast.
Speaker 1: They covered the first mile in record time, and with
Speaker 1: only a quarter of a mile left to go, Snapper
Speaker 1: Garrison and his horse Tenny, they were hopelessly behind, or
Speaker 1: so it seemed. The finish to this race is one
Speaker 1: of these moments that horse racing fanatics still like to
Speaker 1: talk about today, although no one alive today was actually there. Garrison,
Speaker 1: the white jockey. He began frantically whipping his horse Tenny,
Speaker 1: and Tenny surged and as the thousands of spectators they
Speaker 1: were screaming deliriously, Isaac Murphy calmly stood up in the
Speaker 1: saddle and started coasting Salvatore toward the finish while Garrison
Speaker 1: writing Tenny. He sprinted and he closed the gap and
Speaker 1: then seemed to pass Isaac Murphy and Salvatore at the
Speaker 1: finish line, or did he Both riders claimed they had one,
Speaker 1: fans argued over who had one, but using a brand
Speaker 1: new technology the photographed finish, it was determined that Isaac
Speaker 1: Murphy had beaten Snapper Garrison. So in June at Coney Island,
Speaker 1: Isaac Murphy stood tall in the saddle, and I guess
Speaker 1: I mean that both literally and figuratively. He was at
Speaker 1: the top of his sport. What he did not know, however,
Speaker 1: was that the professional black jockey was about to become extinct.
Speaker 1: The black jockeys were about to disappear. Black jockeys disappeared
Speaker 1: because white jockeys ganged up on them, and they did
Speaker 1: this in a couple of ways. Resenting the dominance of
Speaker 1: black jockeys, White jockeys worked together to gang up against
Speaker 1: the black jockeys on the track. White jockeys conspired to
Speaker 1: box in black jockeys as they raced, or they used
Speaker 1: their whips not on their horses. But on the black
Speaker 1: jockeys while racing. So they used violence, but much more effectively,
Speaker 1: they ganged up on the black jockeys off the track.
Speaker 1: In the white jockeys banded together and formed a labor
Speaker 1: union known as the Jockey Association, and the white jockeys
Speaker 1: refused to let the black jockeys join the Jockey Association. Look,
Speaker 1: white jockeys resented the accomplishments of black jockeys. They resented
Speaker 1: the money that black jockeys like Isaac Murphy were making,
Speaker 1: and so they banded together and they refused to race
Speaker 1: against black jockeys. The men who owned the horse racing
Speaker 1: tracks in the South, and you know, up and down
Speaker 1: the Atlantic coast, in places like Kentucky and Maryland, they
Speaker 1: followed suit, you know, hoping to lure more paying customers
Speaker 1: to their tracks. They gave in to the demands of
Speaker 1: the white jockeys. Although giving in is the wrong way
Speaker 1: to put it. They went along with this scheme. They
Speaker 1: thought they could make the claim that they're gambling sport.
Speaker 1: Horse race sing was more respectable if it was a
Speaker 1: sport for whites only. And again, let me emphasize the
Speaker 1: year here is a very important year in the history
Speaker 1: of race in this country is the year that the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruled in Plessy Versus. Ferguson. And though this
Speaker 1: case is not about sports, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: know what this case is about, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: do this very briefly. Plessy versus. Ferguson was a case
Speaker 1: about a black man, Homer Plessy, who broke a new
Speaker 1: Louisiana state law that said that all railroad cars had
Speaker 1: to be segregated by race. Plessy rode on a train,
Speaker 1: but he refused to sit in a jim crow what
Speaker 1: we're called back then colored car. He was arrested for
Speaker 1: breaking state law, and he sued, and his lawyers argued
Speaker 1: that this Louisiana law forcefully segre gating railroad cars. They said,
Speaker 1: this violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the amendment
Speaker 1: that says that all American citizens are entitled to equal
Speaker 1: protection of the law. People are to be treated equally
Speaker 1: with regard to the law. And Plus, these lawyers said,
Speaker 1: by segregating Plessy by not allowing him to sit in
Speaker 1: the train car of his choice, the state of Louisiana
Speaker 1: had violated the Constitution. Well, the Supreme Court came back
Speaker 1: with the decision that said the state of Louisiana can
Speaker 1: indeed segregate its railroad cars. Specifically, the court said racial
Speaker 1: segregation is constitutional as long as facilities are separate but equal.
Speaker 1: That's where that famous phrase comes from, separate but equal.
Speaker 1: This was the legal basis for racial segregation in the
Speaker 1: United States. This in was Supreme Court approval for Jim Crow. Though,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, separate was almost never equal. So the
Speaker 1: creation of the All White Jockey Association is part of
Speaker 1: a larger movement at this time in which Black Americans
Speaker 1: are being segregated in many aspects of life, in schools,
Speaker 1: public transportation, and hotels and restaurants, and in sports. Now,
Speaker 1: this was most definitely the end for Isaac Murphy. That
Speaker 1: same year, Murphy contracted pneumonia and he died that year
Speaker 1: in Lexington, Kentucky, but marks the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: for black jockeys much more generally. A few managed to,
Speaker 1: somehow stubbornly hang around. For example, again named Jimmy Winkfield,
Speaker 1: he won the Kentucky Derby in nine o two. But
Speaker 1: Winkfield is the last black jockey to do so, the
Speaker 1: very last barred from full membership in the Jockey Association.
Speaker 1: Black jockeys were all but e raced from professional horse
Speaker 1: racing a few years later, and they really did not
Speaker 1: return until after the civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: after the break the story of the greatest American cyclist
Speaker 1: you've never heard of. So the white jockeys didn't fight
Speaker 1: fair to use a sports term, and neither did the
Speaker 1: white wheelmen or bicyclists. Now, let me tell you about
Speaker 1: someone named Martial Major Taylor. Major Taylor was the greatest
Speaker 1: cyclist of his era. And this was an era when
Speaker 1: cycling was huge in the United States. You know, if
Speaker 1: we compare how famous someone was in his era with
Speaker 1: how unknown he is today, Major Taylor, at least with
Speaker 1: regards to sports, might be at the absolute top of
Speaker 1: that list. In the eight nineties, cycling, oh, it was
Speaker 1: a fat of epidemic proportions, a fad fueled by the
Speaker 1: invention of a new type of bicycle, the rover or
Speaker 1: safety bicycle, which is the type of bicycle we are
Speaker 1: familiar with now. Americans were cycling crazy in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about this when we get to early
Speaker 1: women's sports and athleticism. Part of the boom in the
Speaker 1: interest in cycling was the rise of bicycle racing as
Speaker 1: a spectator sport um vella dromes or or cycling race tracks.
Speaker 1: They were built throughout the United States and large, massive
Speaker 1: crowds would come out to watch the scorchers, as the
Speaker 1: cyclists were often called scorchers. You know, these scorchers were
Speaker 1: the daredevil speedster heroes of the day, kind of like
Speaker 1: stock card drivers after World War Two. Well, one of
Speaker 1: these scorchers was Major Taylor. He was born in Indianapolis
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight and he grew up working at
Speaker 1: a bicycle shop in Indianapolis. In two when he was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, he entered his first race, ten miler.
Speaker 1: He was competing against grown men and he won. And
Speaker 1: over the course of the next decade, Major Taylor just
Speaker 1: kept winning and Major Taylor became the American national champion
Speaker 1: and he was the greatest cyclist in the United States.
Speaker 1: Major Taylor was the most recognizable black athlete in the
Speaker 1: United States. He was one of the most recognizable athletes period.
Speaker 1: Cycling was an integrated sport and Major Taylor was on top.
Speaker 1: He was on top of a sport, though that more
Speaker 1: and more was starting to be advertised in terms of
Speaker 1: a race war. Like in horse racing, promoters were using
Speaker 1: the rising racial tensions of the era and promoting these
Speaker 1: races as black versus white on the velodrome. And then,
Speaker 1: just like it had happened to the black jockeys, Major
Speaker 1: Taylor was chased from the sport, at least here in
Speaker 1: the United States, state by state, white cyclists they banded
Speaker 1: together and they began to refuse to race against black
Speaker 1: cyclist like Taylor. Like with horse racing, the belodrome owners
Speaker 1: and the race organizers they allowed this to happen. The
Speaker 1: white scorchers could not beat Major Taylor on the track,
Speaker 1: so they got rid of him. They they segregated him
Speaker 1: out of their sport. American cycling became all white in
Speaker 1: the same era the eight nineties, just as American horse
Speaker 1: racing had, and so Major Taylor had no choice. He
Speaker 1: had to go to Europe to race, which he did,
Speaker 1: and where he dominated. He became one of the all
Speaker 1: time greats. But that happened in Europe, not in the
Speaker 1: United States. But there's a really interesting paradox to this story.
Speaker 1: A tremendous irony I suppose because with the removal of
Speaker 1: Major Taylor from American cycling, the sport actually became way
Speaker 1: less popular. Part of it has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that the automobile came along and auto racing started
Speaker 1: to supplant bicycle racing in the American imagination. But part
Speaker 1: of it has to do with the fact that the
Speaker 1: racial drama in the sport was now gone. Even though
Speaker 1: many white Americans were becoming increasingly uneasy with interracial sport,
Speaker 1: and even though many white cyclists they resented the success
Speaker 1: of guys like Major Taylor, the fact is racial tension
Speaker 1: brought intrigue and excitement to the sport of cycling. That
Speaker 1: the issue of race made the bicycle races more interesting
Speaker 1: to Americans, And so once the white cyclists succeeded in
Speaker 1: segregating Major Taylor out of their sport, cycling was suddenly
Speaker 1: less interesting to the American public. Yeah. With with Taylor gone,
Speaker 1: the white wheel men could win more when more races, Yes,
Speaker 1: but their sport quickly became less popular and less lucrative.
Speaker 1: Here is a straightforward truism about the history of American sport.
Speaker 1: Racial tension sells tickets. We will see this over and
Speaker 1: over and over in this course. Okay, let me end
Speaker 1: today by pointing toward next time, when we're going to
Speaker 1: return to boxing. Another of the sports at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century that saw black athletes do increasingly well
Speaker 1: was prize fighting. For example, there was Canada's George Dixon.
Speaker 1: Dixon was the first black man to win a world
Speaker 1: title in boxing. He won the world featherweight title in eight.
Speaker 1: There was Joe Gans from Baltimore, the first African American
Speaker 1: to win a boxing title. Gans won the lightweight title
Speaker 1: in two. A recent retrospective of American boxing just called
Speaker 1: Joe Gans the greatest lightweight boxer of all time. So,
Speaker 1: George Dixon and Joe Gans, they are evidence that at
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, more and more black
Speaker 1: boxers were rising to the top. Well, just like we
Speaker 1: saw with horse racing, just like we saw with cycling.
Speaker 1: This rise of the black boxers, it was causing anxiety
Speaker 1: among white Americans. In the editor of the New York Sun,
Speaker 1: man named Charles Dana, who was white. He issued the
Speaker 1: following morning to his white readers. He wrote, we are
Speaker 1: in the midst of a growing menace. The black man
Speaker 1: is rapidly forging to the front of athletics, especially in
Speaker 1: the field of fisticuffs that is boxing. We are in
Speaker 1: the midst of a black rise against white supremacy. Wake up,
Speaker 1: you pugilists of the white race. That's off for now.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Untold History of Sports in America
Speaker 1: presented by One Day University. The first black heavyweight champ
Speaker 1: in turns American sports upside down. M m hm.