The Kentucky Derby's First 50 Years

Although horse racing in general has been around much longer than the Kentucky Derby, including in the United States, the Derby itself has become the nation's most famous and prestigious horse racing event.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Lately, one
of the projects I've been working on for our podcast
is a huge this Day in History calendar of all

(00:24):
of our past shows uh in. An unexpected side effect
of this is that I keep adding people and events
to my short list of things to talk about as
I stumble upon things that happened on a particular day.
One of those tidbits is that on May three, n two,
that was the first time the Kentucky Derby was nationally televised.

(00:45):
That piece of knowledge set me down a Kentucky Derby
rabbit hole, and that has brought us to today's episode.
Although horse racing in general has been around much longer
than the Kentucky Derby has, including in the United States,
the Derby itself has become the nation's most famous and
prestigious horse race event, and sort of like Super Bowl

(01:05):
Sunday and some circles, the first Saturday in May has
become a huge production, even among people who don't normally
pay attention the horse racing at all. For the rest
of the year, more than a hundred and sixty thousand
people watched the derby in person at Churchill Downs, with
more than fifteen million watching it on the TV. Our
past host Sarah and Bublina talked us a little bit

(01:27):
about the overall Kentucky Derby history and their twenty eleven
episode on jockey Jimmy Winkfield. So today we're going to
talk about that in a lot more detail, and the
Saturday after this podcast comes out, the Kentucky Derby is
going to be run for the hundred and forty third time.
That is way too much history for thirty minutes. So
what we're really who are really going to focus on

(01:48):
is the races first fifty years, which really established the
things that have become the cultural hallmarks about it today.
Horse racing, of course, is one of mankind's oldest sports.
It's been around for so long that we actually can't
conclusively pinpoint its origins, but chariot races and races of
mounted riders were both part of the Olympic Games in

(02:11):
ancient Greece. In Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, cultures that
evalued horses and horsemanship have all had their own horse
racing traditions going back thousands of years. In the America's
horses became extinct somewhere between eight thousand and twelve thousand
years ago, but when Europeans reintroduced horses in the fifteenth century,

(02:32):
indigenous peoples, particularly in the plains, developed their own racing traditions.
The existence of horse racing has also led to the
development of racing specific breeds of horses. One of those
breeds is the Thoroughbred, which originated in England. Thoroughbreds can
be traced back to three stallions known as the Foundation sires.

(02:53):
These were imported into England in the seventeenth century and
are known as the Darly Arabian, the Go Dolphin arabia
In and the Byerley Turk. Once the Thoroughbred breed was established,
racist specifically, four thoroughbreds followed. Traditionally, a Derby is a
race for three year old thoroughbreds open to both colts
and phillies. Whether gilded horses are eligible can actually vary.

(03:15):
The first Derby was named for its host, the twelfth
Earl of Derby, and was run at Epsom in Surrey, England,
in seventy The Epsom Oaks, open only to phillies, actually
started the year prior, and it was named for the
Earl's nearby estate. As a side note, we do know
that the race is pronounced Derby in Britain. We are

(03:36):
not in Britain. It is pronounced Derby here. But now
I will think of the Kentucky Derby. Is the Kentucky Derby,
and it will crack me up every time, consistently. So.
Because of this connection to the aristocracy and all of
the expense involved with owning and caring for a race horse,

(03:57):
and often lavish celebrations that run alongside prist just horse racing,
racing horses has become known as the sport of kings,
although according to the Oxford Dictionary, hunting, surfing, and warfare
are all also the sport of kings. I suspect there's
some bias there, depending on which sport you participated in. Yep.

(04:18):
By the end of the seventeen hundreds, the race at
Epsom definitely was not just for kings, though it had
become a sprawling social event known as the Londoner's Day Out,
which attracted both the aristocracy and the working class. Tens
of thousands of people attended every year, some of them
ditching work to do so. Although the race itself was
a prestigious sporting event, many of the attendees were more

(04:40):
interested in gambling and carousing than in the race itself,
and the gambling wasn't just on the outcome of the race.
Tents popped up all along the downs where people lay
wagers on cards and dice. It was his experience at
EPSOM that inspired Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. To start a
similar race in the United States. Clark was the grandson

(05:00):
of William Clark, who explored North America and the Corps
of Discovery with Meriwether Lewis Clark, who was then twenty
six and newly married, traveled around Europe with his wife
in eighteen seventy two. In eighteen seventy three. On this trip,
he went to the at this point incredibly well established
races at EPSOM and elsewhere, and he made friends with

(05:21):
members of jockey clubs all around England and France. So
when Clark got back to the United States, he set
to work trying to found a derby near his family
home in Louisville, Kentucky. Horse racing was already an established
pastime in the United States in general and in Kentucky specifically.
In Louisville, the horse racing industry had started with races

(05:41):
down Market Street at least as far back as seventeen
eighty nine. As horse races on city streets became a problem,
tracks were built to accommodate those races. Commercial horse breeding
was already part of the Louisville area and Kentucky as
a whole, although the track that had been hosting the
thoroughbred races had closed down in the years prior to
Clark's trip abroad. First, Clark needed a place to start

(06:05):
a track, and he got this from his uncle's John
and Henry Churchill, who leased him the land that would
later become known as Churchill Downs. But the land by
itself was not enough. He also needed enough money to
fund the construction of an actual race track, a grand stand,
and the like, and this came from selling subscription memberships,
three hundred and twenty of them for the price of

(06:26):
a hundred dollars each. This was enough to let him
build six stables, the clubhouse, the grand stand, and the
porter's lodge. All this became home to the Louisville Jockey
Club and Driving Park, which held its first Kentucky Derby
on May, with four races being run that day. Three
continued to be an annual tradition, the Kentucky Derby run

(06:48):
on the first Saturday in May, the Kentucky Oaks run
the day before, and the Clark Handicap run in November
or December. In that first Kentucky Derby, fifteen three year
old Throwbread, thirteen Colts and two Phillies ran a mile
and a half are roughly two point four kilometers in
front of a crowd of about ten thousand people. People

(07:09):
of means were in the clubhouse or the grandstand, and
the race and the racetracks in field was open to
anyone who wanted to come for free. That very first
race set a lot of the standards that the Kentucky
Derby is still known for today, and we're going to
talk about those after we first pause for a little
sponsor break. The idea that Derby Day was something special

(07:35):
and specific to Kentucky was present right from the very
first one. On May seventy five, the Louisville Courier Journal proclaimed,
quote today will be historic in Kentucky annals as the
first Derby Day of what promises to be a long
series of annual turf festivities of which we confidently expect

(07:56):
our grandchildren a hundred years hence to sell great inglorious rejoicings,
so they get points for accuracy of prediction. That was right. Uh.
The infield had a lot of the same day out
atmosphere Clark had seen at EPSOM and it attracted an
array of locals from various walks of life. But in

(08:16):
the grand stand and clubhouse, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. Wanted
the event to be a classy and prestigious affair, so
full morning dress was required and the ladies were encouraged
to attend, although they were barred from the betting shed
because it was an unsuitable place for them. That means
that the hats that have become a Derby tradition where
they are from the very beginning for the sake of propriety,

(08:39):
fashion and the very practical protection from the sun. Although
it would be a while before Kentucky Derby hats took
the more extravagant turn that they had today. That really
came along with the loosening of social expectations in the
nineteen sixties, and then it got a further boost with
the eleven Royal wedding that seems to have set off
some hat one upping of minds have more strange and

(09:02):
unique hat than the ones at the Royal wedding. Clark's
effort to class up the place applied on the racetrack
as well. Sport of kings or no racetracks often had
seed reputations and connections to sometimes dishonest gamblers. Clark, on
the other hand, was scrupulously attentive to the rules, and
he had no tolerance at all for cheating, dishonesty, poor sportsmanship,

(09:24):
or gambler's attempts to rig the race. He would not
abide anything that seemed shabby or underhanded, and there were
people who personally didn't like him. He was known to
have a temper, and some people found him arrogant and ostentatious,
but even people who didn't get along with him would
vouch for his unfailing integrity when it came to the race.

(09:44):
Within a decade, the Kentucky Derby had built a solid
reputation as both a race and a social event, earning
praise in the New York Times and attracting huge crowds
of spectators who weren't necessarily interested in racing in their
everyday lives. It still had that divi side of an
everyman experience in the infield and an upper class one
in the grand stand and especially the clubhouse. But after

(10:07):
a strong start, though, the Derby's success started to wane
a bit in the late eighteen eighties, Angry disputes overbetting
led some of the industry's most prominent owners to take
their horses elsewhere, while also damaging the race's reputation. Reform
movements were trying to put a stop to racing, gambling,
and drinking, and the Kentucky Derby was also competing with

(10:28):
newly launched Derby's elsewhere in the United States, including the
American Derby in Chicago. By the middle of the eighteen nineties,
the Kentucky Derby was really struggling. Other races were offering
bigger purses, and that made it hard to attract the
best horses and the most prominent owners. The lack of
interest trickled down to the race course falling into some disrepair.

(10:50):
The Derby did manage to keep going as a social event,
especially among locals but as a race, it just wasn't
breaking even or carrying the level of prestige that really wanted.
In eighteen ninety four, the Louisville Jockey Club, which was
by then deeply in debt, was sold to new owners.
While the prior owners had been focused on putting on

(11:10):
a good race for its own sake, the new owners
were mainly businessmen and bookies, and their focus was to
make sure that the race made money. They were able
to pay off all of the club's creditors except for
one Merywether Lewis Clark Jr. Who they convinced to stay
on board as the races presiding judge, and this was
a strategic pr move. Horse racing and especially gambling were

(11:33):
under increasing social scrutiny, so they were banking on Clark's
stand up reputation to help fend off some of the critics.
It was this new ownership that financed the building of
a new grand stand with its distinctive twin spires, which
was completed in eight This was larger, it once again
had separate seating for ladies to maintain some distance between

(11:55):
them and the betting stand, and it faced a different
direction from the previous structure, so that people watching the
race didn't also have the afternoon sun shining in their eyes.
It's nice. Nobody wants to stare into a glare. I
really don't. I hate it Super eight. It's responding to
complaints from the horses owners and trainers. The new Derby

(12:16):
management also built new stables and in shortened the race's
length by a quarter of a mile. That was also
the first year that the winning horse, ben Brush, was
draped in a garland of roses, although they were pink
and white rather than the red that is normally used today.
The red rose garland tradition started in ninety two with
winter Burgu king. In spite of, or perhaps because of,

(12:41):
their extensive connections to gambling and bookmaking, the Kentucky Derby
really started to turn around financially under this new ownership.
But in Clark, who had been diagnosed with what was
called then melancolia, died by suicide. Apart from the personal tragedy,
this meant that the Kentucky Derby lost its founder, its

(13:01):
chief promoter, and its most tireless advocate. He was also
the person who had set the stage for it to
become such a social and sporting spectacle. Three years later,
in nineteen o two, the Derby once again changed hands,
this time moving away from bookies and back to people
who were prominent parts of Louisville society. This included the mayor,

(13:22):
Charles Granger, and Martin J. Matt Wynn, who was better
known as Colonel Wynn, and it was when who took
up the mantle of the Derby's public face and the
person who really shaped the standard for the Derby's reputation
and tone. He, to be clear, was not a military
colonel's apparently a tradition in Kentucky of giving people colonel
as kind of an honorary title. The prior the prior

(13:48):
upgrade to the grand Stand hadn't touched the original clubhouse,
which had previously been the place for the Derby's most
exclusive and affluent spectators to gather and socialize. Really, the
new grands Fan had made that old clubhouse basically inaccessible
because the gambling focused ownership was a lot more into
making it easier to gamble than to provide a luxurious

(14:09):
vantage point for the most rich patrons. When Granger and
the rest of the third generation of Derby owners reversed
that position, they opened a new clubhouse in nineteen o three,
and today the clubhouse is really a whole complex of
buildings includes including the exclusive Millionaires Row. And When, who
had a larger than life personality, poured himself into refining

(14:32):
the Kentucky Derby's image, which was in some ways patterned
after his own. Together When In the Derby spun out
a narrative that the place in the event were deeply
in innately Southern and specifically Kentucky in and rich with
both culture and bourbon. It threw back to a romanticized
ideal of the Old South as a genteel place where

(14:53):
people of refinement and taste looked out from their verandahs
over green lawns and rolling hills, sipping mint julips, which
was by then a traditional Derby drink made with Kentucky
bourbon whiskey. At the same time, this refinement of the
Derby's public image was also shifting the rest of the
nation's perception of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as a whole,

(15:15):
and many parts of the nation. Kentucky had long had
a reputation as being mostly a very lawless, violent and
unrefined place full of hillbillies, particularly in its more mountainous portions.
This romantic era of the Kentucky Derby started to shift
that stereotype to make it also a place that could
be home to a prestigious, fashionable annual event that can

(15:36):
that catered to the rich and famous and the working
class alike. Aside from his own personal influence on the Derby,
Colonel Winn also made a series of astute decisions that
helped bring the Derby more prestige and good press. He
convinced wealthy and prominent owners to enter their horses, and
one of these was a Philly named Regret, who became
the first Philly to win the Derby in nineteen which

(15:59):
attracted a huge amount of press. When was also one
of the first proponents of conceiving of the Derby and
to other races, the Preakness in the Belmont as a
set of races which are known today as the Triple Crown.
The first horse to win all three of these races
was Sir Barton in nineteen nineteen, although the term Triple

(16:19):
Crown wasn't officially coined until nineteen thirty. By the nineteen thirties,
all the things people most readily associate with the Kentucky Derby,
the hats, the roses, the julips, the atmosphere were solidly
part of the annual event. It's not clear when the
eighteen fifty three Stephen Foster song My Old Kentucky Home
became a Derby staple, but it was definitely in use

(16:41):
by n and the slogan run for the Roses was
coined by sports columnist Bill Corum in the same year.
The Derby was broadcast on network radio for the first time.
By the thirties, you could buy a souvenir glass for
your mint julip, an innovation in part in the hope
that people would stop stealing the drink wear. At the

(17:03):
same time, the Kentucky Derby looks very much different today
than it did in its first fifty years, and we're
going to talk about how after another quick sponsor break.
At various points during its history, which really add up
to basically all of its history, the Kentucky Derby has

(17:25):
been criticized for a whole range of issues. In addition
to the campaigns to end gambling and drinking and racing
that we already discussed. In more recent years, the Derby
has faced allegations of animal abuses, both during training and
in the race itself. This has been especially true after
accidents and injuries have happened during or after the race.

(17:47):
In two thousand and eight, for example, Philly eight Bells
collapsed after the race, having broken both of her front ankles,
and she had to be euthanized. Although women were specifically
invited to attend the Kentucky Derby from the very getting,
with separate seating away from the bedding falling out of
favor in the years after World War One, the Derby
has in a lot of ways always been a man's world.

(18:09):
Diane Crump was the first woman to ride in the
Derby in nineteen seventy, and she's one of only six
women jockeys in the Kentucky Derby. As often, women have
been involved in other roles at the Kentucky Derby further
back in history, in nineteen o five, Elwood took the
prize and was the first Kentucky Derby winner owned by

(18:29):
a woman. Alaska Durnell Ellwood was also the first Derby
winner bred by a woman, who is cited everywhere as
Mrs J. B. Prather. I don't know what her actual
first name is, but as of twenty sixteen, no woman
trainer or jockey had ever won the Kentucky Derby, and
men out number women by far in all of these roles.

(18:53):
So today men and in particular white men, dominate the
Kentucky Derby scene all the way from most of the
Churchill Down Incorporated board of directors to the jockeys riding
in the race. But that wasn't the case when the
Derby started. Although marywether Lewis Clark Jr. And his associates
and investors were white, the majority of the jockeys and
trainers were not. In eighteen seventy five, thirteen out of

(19:18):
the Derby's fifteen jockeys and that first race were black,
as were many of the trainers. When the Kentucky Derby began,
the people who had the most experience caring for and
training horses, particularly in the South, were black. And since
the first Derby took place only about a decade after
the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment

(19:38):
abolishing slavery, and Kentucky had been a slave state, many
of the men who had trained and cared for and
rode in the first Kentucky Derby were either previously enslaved,
or were the children of people who had been enslaved.
In that first eighteen seventy five Kentucky Derby, the winning
horse was Aristides, who set a record for speed in

(19:59):
three year old horses. Aristides trainer Ansel Williamson and his jockey,
nineteen year old Oliver Lewis, were both black. Williamson was
enslaved from birth and sold from one owner to another
until being emancipated following the Civil War. Between that first
Derby in nineteen o two, when Jimmy Winkfield rode allan
a Dale to the win, which was Winkfield's second consecutive win.

(20:22):
Fifteen of the twenty eight winning horses were ridden by
black jockeys, and those years between Oliver Lewis and Jimmy Winkfield,
other black jockeys rose to prominence at the Derby and
eventually became the era's version of the sports superstar. Isaac
Burns Murphy was the first jockey to win the Derby
three times, which he did in eighteen eighty four, eighteen

(20:45):
nine and eighteen ninety one. He became a colossally well
respected jockey, winning forty four percent of the races he
rode in which is a record no other jockey has topped.
The post Civil War reconstruction officially ended in eighteen seventy six,
the year after the first Kentucky Derby, racist Jim Crow

(21:05):
laws enforcing segregation soon followed. In eighteen ninety six, the U. S.
Supreme Court ruled in plus e versus Ferguson that this
segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities were equal,
and by that point a lot of other sports had
already implemented their own systems of segregation. However, it was
not possible to quickly segregate the sport of horse racing

(21:28):
when so much of the knowledge of how to care
for a horse and ride it to a win rested
with black people. As long as training and riding a
horse had been regarded as labor and not as a
job that could turn someone into a celebrity, it hadn't
mattered as much to the white racing community to do
anything about it. But when black jockeys started to become

(21:48):
famous for their work and respected for it, that success
became a threat. For a while, the mythology of the
Kentucky Derby maintained that the shift to primarily white trainers
and jockeys. Had been a quote natural one that all
the old jockeys and trainers had moved north during the
Great Migration which began in the nineteen teams, or that
the black men had lost their taste of agricultural work

(22:10):
and had gone to work in factories instead, but this
was absolutely untrue. By the late eighteen eighties and early
eighteen nineties, the white racing community was making a dedicated
and deliberate effort to force black jockeys and trainers out
of the industry. Black jockeys started experiencing harassment both on

(22:30):
and off the track, with white jockeys forcing them into
the rails during the race or actually striking them with
their horse whips. This last one was not only physically painful,
but was also humiliating because it harkened back to whips
being used to punish slaves. By the turn of the
twentieth century, black jockeys were having trouble finding contracts to

(22:52):
ride horses, and black trainers were finding themselves out of work,
with owners seeking out white jockeys and trainers. The tracks
played their part as well, with many explicitly banning black
jockeys by nineteen o four. So it was under intentional
systemic racism that black jockeys were forced out of the
Kentucky Derby and of the racing industry in general. There

(23:15):
were no black jockeys at all in the Kentucky Derby
between ninety one and two thousand. That year Marlon st
Julian Road and placed seventh. It would be more than
another decade after Hero that the Derby would see another
black jockey, and that was Kevin Krieger from who was
originally from St. Croix, who rolled Golden Sense in Derby.

(23:38):
All of this, of course, complicates the Kentucky Derby's romanticized
presentation of life in the South. It's a lot of
the same tropes that are used to romanticize plantations in
Antebellum life, which while it looks very romantic on the surface,
when you're really taking andre at it, it's very problematic. Yes,
the even the term plantation, how with this aura of

(24:01):
like beautiful magnolia trees and sipping sweet tea on your
on your front porch. But it was effectively a slave
labor camp, which does not have that same romanticized ideas.
So um, there are definitely parallels between the overall narrative

(24:21):
that tries to like shift the perception of what slave
states in the South were like and the perception of
what the Kentucky Derby was like and why there was
such a shift in the demographics of who was training
and riding and taking care of the horses. What you
got in the listener mail bag, I have something completely different. Uh.

(24:46):
It is about Lafayette's tour the United States that came
up in our recent podcast about Walt Whitman. It is
from Mallory and Mallory says, Hello there, Tracy and Holly. Firstly,
thank you so much for providing such an informative and
fun podcast that is a great assistance on my commute
home and during my chores, etcetera. I love the variety

(25:07):
of topics and fresh perspective you provide. While doing the
dishes this morning and listening to your recent episode on
Walt Whitman, I grew rather excited when you mentioned young
woman's involvement with the American tour of the market to
Lafayette because of a historical and literary coincidence. Forgive me
if you already know this or have indeed already mentioned
it on a previous podcast that I missed, but I

(25:29):
wanted to get in touch about another American writers involvement
with this tour. Edgar Allan Poe, as a young teen,
was a member of the Richmond Junior Volunteers, which accompanied
Lafayette daring phases of his eighteen twenty four tour in Richmond, Virginia.
My sources a book called Richmond The Story of a
City by Virginia's Dabney. Yes, this book about Richmond history

(25:52):
is indeed written by a Virginia's. Our copy for me
used bookstore is signed and dedicated with quote the most
cordial good Wishes, which I find to like. However, I
believe this fact about the tour is common knowledge among
po historians and enthusiasts. Anyway, I thought it was very
interesting that both Whitman and Poe were present in person
to see Lafayette on this tour, although in separate cities.

(26:12):
I'm not sure what influence Lafayette had on Poe as
opposed to the legendary way it seemed to strike young Whitman,
but I still thought it fascinating. Thanks for all you do,
best regards, Mallory. Thank you so much, Mallory. I did
not know that. Me and I Holly. Yeah, you and
I Holly have definitely not ever mentioned that on the show.
It's possible that prior hosts have because I know there
are some things about PO and the archive, but yeah,

(26:35):
I had no idea that that whole tour that Lafayette
went on is really pretty fascinating. Uh. There's part of
me that like, would like to do an episode about it,
and then there is part of me that, uh, if
we're going to do yet another episode that has something
to do with Hamilton's, should not be another episode about

(26:56):
a dude, because so far, in terms of the episodes
we have done, the Hamilton's episodes have all been about
dudes for the most part. So uh, it might be
nice to talk about some of the ladies who were
connected to Hamilton's, is what I'm saying. Yeah, I feel
like Eddie Zard mentioned Lafayette's tour in one of his shows. Yeah,

(27:19):
it would not surprise me, No, he's big on history.
But it immediately called that to mind because I remember
him calling out to the audience. This was of course
before Hamilton's became a big thing, and him going, you
guys know who Lafayette is and just getting like sort
of blank stars. He's like, you know your own history,
don't you? And in fact most people did not, So

(27:40):
um there are So there is a library here that
is called the Boston acneum Um that I love to
go to and they have some really old books in
their collection that are chronicles of this tour. Um. It's
all super interesting. So anyway, Lafayette, I just wanted to

(28:04):
say his nabien. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast or history podcasts
at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook
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also where we are on Instagram. You can come to

(28:25):
our parent companies website, which is how stuff Works dot com.
You can find all kinds of stuff about horses and
races and sports. You can come to our website which
is missing history dot com, where you will find show
notes of all the episodes Holly and I have done together,
an archive of every single episode ever, some videos that
we made after a trip around the Boston area last year.

(28:46):
You can do all that in a whole lot more
at how stuff works dot com or miss in history
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. The d in
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