Anastasia Curwood
Anastasia Curwood: ‘We Need to Change the Idea That Horse Sports Are Not for Black People’
Until I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, I had no idea just how intertwined Black Americans’ roots are with the history of horses in this country.
It is not a surprise that enslaved people fed, watered, mucked, groomed, and did all of the other care that horses need in the years before Emancipation in 1865. And nor is it a surprise that Black people have done the same jobs since. However, I did not know that Black Americans were the talent in the horse business, too. We were the expertise: the trainers, the riders, the stallion managers, the pedigree experts, and sometimes the owners. The first Kentucky Derby (1875) was won by Aristides, a horse trained by a Black man (Ansel Williamson) and ridden by a Black jockey, Oliver Lewis. The horse would go on to be the three-year-old national champion. This was not a fluke, especially regarding jockeys; fully half of the winners in the first three decades of the Derby’s existence were Black. Horse racing was the blockbuster sport in the late 1800s, and while we often remember the horses, and perhaps their famous and wealthy owners, most do not know that Black athletes were the sport’s human stars.
