By Linda Blackford
Jockey Isaac Murphy won the Kentucky Derby three times in the late 1800s. Keeneland Library
Over the past few years, (click here) historians have gradually unveiled the rich history of black jockeys in the 19th-century United States.
At the International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park, director Bill Cooke has been working on a permanent exhibit of this important — but long ignored — part of equine history. “Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf” is scheduled to open in 2018.
“But it just kept turning into a much bigger story than I thought it was,” Cooke said in a recent interview. “There were so many major points that needed to be addressed to even understand what happened around Lexington, not to mention the rest of the country.”
And those points went beyond the Kentucky Derby-winning jockeys Isaac Murphy and Jimmy Winkfield, who dominated 19th-century racing....
