The Prince of Jockeys Read online

  By 1861, African American men were primed to challenge both the mythological and the legally endorsed notion of their so-called inherent inferiority.13 Although it was not the intention of the Lincoln administration to recruit enslaved black men, it became a necessity and then a strategy to unravel the rebel forces from behind enemy lines. Federal encampments and forts became the destiny of African American men and their families in pursuit of freedom and autonomy. Inspired by Douglass's appeal to every able-bodied black male to serve on his own behalf and for their posterity, African American communities rallied around his call to arms. In sending forth their fathers, brothers, and sons to serve in the Union army, African Americans maintained a vested interest in the positive outcome of the war for a unified nation. For black men like Jerry Skillman Burns, Isaac Burns Murphy's father, the ability to serve the Union cause on their own behalf and to control their own labor was central to the creation of a confident and empowered sense of manhood that was directly connected to the promises of freedom and democracy. Significant numbers of African American men from Kentucky did this with the knowledge that their commitment to the Union cause would be rewarded with honor, manhood, self-respect, and, above all, freedom for themselves and their families. This ennobling gift of self-sacrifice would be realized in future generations, which would not have to wear the fetters and feel the shame of slavery. However, the same institution that yoked their ancestors to the inhuman and immoral purposes of white supremacy would continue to have an impact on African Americans' quality of life long after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Although Kentucky was a slave state, its decision not to break from the Federal government (as did the seceding Southern states) affected the lives of blacks as well as whites throughout the Bluegrass region, where slave trading, horse racing, and hard labor for blacks continued during the war. The decision to recruit enslaved African American men for service as soldiers yielded a series of unintended consequences, many of which had social, cultural, political, and economic outcomes that are still very much a part of Kentucky today.

  To appreciate the scope of Isaac Burns Murphy's journey from slavery to freedom and his phenomenal rise to prominence and prosperity during the waning years of Reconstruction, one must understand the overlapping and intertwined narratives present in the Kentucky of his youth. By the time he turned fourteen, the horse industry had become an integral part of the developing confidence gained by African Americans in post–Civil War Kentucky, a state that saw tremendous growth in urban black communities for a variety of reasons. To be sure, not all Kentuckians embraced the newly freed people as citizens. The period of Reconstruction was a brutal proposition for African Americans caught in transition from rural to urban living. The violence unleashed by members of the white community in an attempt to resist the sea change brought about by the war, and to maintain social, economic, and political control over the freedmen, was met with equal resistance by African Americans seeking to claim all the rights and privileges the law provided.

  Recognizing Murphy's significant link to the past is an important aspect of the exploration of his life and its unique and influential role in African American social, political, cultural, and economic history of the late nineteenth century. In a much larger sense, Murphy can be understood as an integral member of a black renaissance initiated by what Douglass defined as Lincoln's “great movement” to lift the black masses “from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood.”14 This great movement inspired and empowered former slaves and their children to strive in all honest, noble endeavors that could provide them a future as well as prove their character to those who considered them inherently inferior. Indeed, through the successful public performance of one person's work, all members of the race could benefit. Although this understanding of an individual's value may have encouraged that portion of the African American community living free from systemic bondage and oppression to strive to become exemplars of the best of society, the reality of their perceived value was ever present in their dealings with white society.

  Murphy's work ethic, his relationships with both blacks and whites, his approach to racing horses, and his understanding of the entrenched racism in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky shaped the future of the boy born at the dawn of a new epoch in American history. Still, Murphy had to learn how to express his ideas and his desire for success.

  By the 1880s, Murphy was commanding salaries in the tens of thousands of dollars from wealthy breeders and horse-racing enthusiasts seeking the best jockey for their prized Thoroughbreds. Rarely did Murphy disappoint. As the most dominant jockey in America at the time, he epitomized the kind of success black men were capable of in post–Civil War America. Murphy's significance was not necessarily based on his ability to earn more money than politicians, teachers, and bankers. Race tends to complicate scenarios that would otherwise be clear. Murphy's accomplishments made him one of many people of African descent who proved themselves not only worthy of citizenship but also capable of representing the best of the human race. In the post–Civil War South, blacks were rising and outwardly challenging the myths that supported white supremacy and its machinations. Less recognizable than the historical challenges, personal decisions, and choices made by the “folk” was the development of a philosophy of resistance based on self-respect, a virtuous manhood, and a passionate desire for full citizenship. Inspired by the intelligent observations and philosophical writings of Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and later journalist Timothy Thomas Fortune, black people were quickly rising above their previous conditions, challenging the notion of white supremacy at its roots by forcing whites as a whole to rethink their self-defined, racially based superiority—a fact that many whites resisted and tried to turn back through reprehensible acts of violence.

  Like most biographers and researchers attempting to understand the nature of the people we find compelling, I wish there were more primary sources that clearly depicted Murphy's life experiences both as a child growing up in postbellum Kentucky and as a man of significant influence during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, I was at the mercy of whatever was available in the archives, repositories, and libraries throughout the country. What is more, I wish I could have produced a biography similar in nature to those by Ernest J. Simmons on Anton Chekhov, Henri Troyat on Leo Tolstoy, Hermione Lee on Virginia Woolf, and Larry Jackson and Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison. It is the biographer's job to write in a way that leaves no doubt in readers' minds how our hero would respond to life's changes, but the complexity of African American life and history during slavery does not allow such clarity. Absent Murphy's own account to deconstruct, it is impossible to know all of what he experienced during his lifetime. What I have done in this volume is pull together evidence from all available sources to re-create the social, political, and cultural environments that framed the bulk of Murphy's life.

  His is a familiar story that can be read as an example of modern African American masculinity among those of a similar background and life experience. His life was filled with high drama, success, and moments of bravery in the face of oppression and degradation. Somehow, he was able to negotiate the contours of a racist society that held African Americans in contempt as part of its national creed. All the same, to fully understand the significance of Murphy's life, his career as a jockey, and his importance as a black man, it is vital to explore the intersecting historical, social, political, cultural, and economic factors that shaped Murphy's nineteenth-century America, especially in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. It is important to examine the tangled roots below the surface of what is perceived to be knowable territory and therefore uncontested history.

  PART 1

  Roots

  1

  Into the Bluegrass

  Less than a century before Isaac Murphy was born, the institution of slavery was aggressively expanding beyond the borders of the Old Dominion of Virginia into what would eventually become the state of Kentucky. Prio
r to the Revolutionary War, explorers, frontier families, and land speculators pushed their way into the western boundaries in search of lush, fertile lands where they could cultivate crops, exploit the natural resources, and take advantage of the abundant wild game to feed themselves and their families. A decade after the war for independence, gentlemen farmers, the sons of planters and farmers, and former soldiers followed the trails opened by Native Americans and the first white men to see the world beyond the Appalachian Mountains, migrating to the fertile central Kentucky valley. Along with a desire for wealth and stability, these men and women brought their customs and traditions based on religion, politics, and economics. For the recently liberated colonists, whose American identities were still being shaped with every assertion of their newfound freedom, this westward movement did more than extend their grasp on North America and its natural resources. Westward expansion created a sense of divine right, especially among the upper classes; in Nietzschean terms, this “will to power” extended over everything as they sought to conquer the entire continent as an expression of their uniquely American identities. What is more, through the exploration of western lands, white Americans effectively extended the reach of the peculiar institution of slavery, firmly establishing race as one of the primary factors in the nation's future growth. Still, it would be the U.S. Constitution and its cloaked yet effective language that guaranteed slaveholders’ power, accelerating the growth of slavery and justifying its abuses. The impulse of discovery that excited the adventurous spirits of white American men thus affected the lives of those at the foundation of America's social, political, and economic infrastructure: Africans.

  Even as white men of the postcolonial period aspired to assert their notions of eminent domain and natural rights, enslaved and free African Americans had a direct impact on the development and expansion of the Republic. African slave labor had been key to the success of the colonies in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia, creating a surplus of capital that was used to acquire land and more slaves. Those who were financially capable of exploiting the institution of slavery did so with impunity. Decades before the Revolutionary War, African Americans understood that if they were ever going to achieve a real and sustainable sense of freedom, they too would have to fight for their so-called natural rights. Exercising various methods of dissent, Africans and African Americans protested, petitioned, and resorted to violence to challenge the philosophical position of their oppressors, who audaciously claimed and protected liberty for themselves but denied it to those held as human chattel. The 1739 Stono Rebellion near Stono, South Carolina, was one of numerous uprisings against slavery whereby enslaved Africans banded together to extract themselves from their brutal existence or die trying.1

  Even as the nation began expanding under the leadership President George Washington—whose main agenda was to secure and exercise white men's divine right to live free from tyranny and oppression—both enslaved and free African Americans actively participated in shaping the American discourse on freedom, equality, and citizenship. Although numerically few compared with whites, free blacks were able to take advantage of their positions as merchants, soldiers, guides, scouts, mercenaries, and laborers. These capable men and women envisioned a nation where they owned their own labor as well as their futures. Moreover, these men and women were capable of imagining a world where they controlled their own destinies. As we shall see, in places like Virginia and Kentucky, enslaved and legally free African Americans fought hard to claim their rights to freedom and citizenship, just as the colonists had fought to gain independence from England. In doing so, these men and women of African descent provided a legacy of resistance, dignity, and self-respect that their children and their children's children would draw on in their fight against slavery and their assertion of a right to full citizenship and all that designation entailed.

  Although Kentucky did not achieve statehood until 1792, as an undeveloped wilderness with bountiful natural resources, it played a significant role in the outcome of the Revolutionary War and in the overall development of the new nation. The land and its untapped resources were critical factors in the social, political, and economic imaginings of supporters of expansion and the institution of slavery at the end of the eighteenth century. One of the first coordinated explorations of the Ohio River Valley was conducted in 1751 by Christopher Gist, a representative of the Ohio Land Company of Virginia.2 Gist, along with a party of a few dozen men, traveled deep into the valley to survey the unexplored lands and identify prime locations for future settlements.3 Coming from Virginia, where enslaved African Americans were the major source of labor, Gist likely brought along one or more bondsmen on his expedition. Though evidence is scarce, there is enough to suggest that African Americans were employed on inland journeys to clear thick forests, to test the security and safety of various land and rock formations, to wade through chest-high waters pulling canoes and flat-bottomed boats, and to search in darkness for shelter and food for their companions and masters.

  The most famous of the westward explorations involving enslaved African Americans was led by two Virginians: Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark. After the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French on April 30, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore the area west of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Covering 8,000 miles between May 14, 1804, and September 23, 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition carved out a path from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Oregon coast. It did so with the assistance of Clark's personal slave, York, who had been born in Virginia and raised as part of George Rogers Clark's family. The party of more than thirty explorers left St. Louis and for close to two and a half years navigated the uncharted wilderness and negotiated with native peoples en route to the Northwest Territory.4 Lewis's and Clark's personal journals and military logs have been heralded by historians as invaluable sources of information about the land features of the Far West, the wildlife, the native peoples and their customs, and the potential growth of the new Republic prior to full-fledged expansion.

  The expedition also provided evidence of the capacity of African American men to meet the requirements and challenges of citizenship. Based on Clark's journals, York demonstrated an exceptional capacity for bravery and courage under fire, especially in encounters with native peoples. York's ability with a rifle and his willingness (albeit under his master's direction) to face the dangers of the unknown were important to the expedition's success, and on several occasions he used his sense of leadership to help the explorers achieve their mission of mapping the lands of the West. All this should have served as indisputable proof of his manhood, countering the supposed inherent inferiority of his blackness. It is easy to interpret or even misinterpret York's participation as an equal among the men under the command of Lewis and Clark. However, given the uniqueness of the situation and the expedition's purpose, York's performance should have been a clear indicator that he was deserving of freedom and full citizenship and all the rights and privileges that entailed.

  Clark's journals are incomplete in terms of York's experiences; York's voice is absent from the historical narrative.5 Surely, his encounters with the land and with the native peoples and his sense of his place in the world were different from those of his companions. His worldview must have been shattered and reconstituted based on his interactions with the attentive Arikaras and Mandan Indians, whose awe at his skin color, his strength, and his storytelling exposed him to the hearts and minds of a people who valued him as an individual and not solely as the property of a white man. Again, we can only speculate, because York did not document his experiences. However, traces of his impact are found throughout the accounts of others. The absence of York's own voice in the recorded narrative leaves us with questions: What were his thoughts about being enslaved? How did he perceive his role in discovering a passage to the Northwest? How did he feel about freedom? Did his faithful service prove detrimental to at
taining the freedom he might have thought he deserved? In other words, should he have escaped from slavery when he had the chance in the wilderness, and find shelter with one of the Indian tribes they encountered? Did he try to prove his value and therefore his manhood through his service to the expedition?

  By all accounts, York was one of the first African Americans to explore the interior of America, to live among the native peoples and mix his African blood with theirs, and to see the Pacific Ocean. Yet very few chronicles of the Lewis and Clark Expedition recognize him as an American hero, even though he epitomized early-nineteenth-century definitions of American manliness, with one exception: his blackness. York's story parallels that of other blacks in early America, many of whom were central to the nation's development but were relegated to the margins and erased from historical memory in an effort to protect the myth of white supremacy. This void in American history as it relates to the participation of enslaved African Americans in the exploration and settlement of the West is troublesome, to say the least.

  European and colonial explorers and surveyors used blacks as wilderness scouts and guides as they probed the western territories beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Cumberland Gap. These descendants of Africans imported as human chattel to work in the fields and industries of colonial America developed valuable skills in tracking and hunting animals over rugged terrain. Well before coordinated surveys and land speculation in the area west of Virginia and east of the Mississippi River, “long hunters” from the established colonies of Virginia and North Carolina tracked and hunted deer, buffalo, and wild turkey and fished rivers swollen with hundreds of varieties of fish.6 These black men were also utilized as flatboat pilots to navigate the sometimes troublesome waterways beyond the Allegheny Mountains as their owners searched for adventure and resources. Surely, these enslaved African Americans felt some sense of pride in their abilities and were able to extract snatches of freedom for themselves, as well as serve as examples to other blacks. Indeed, for most enslaved African Americans engaged in the drudgery of planting tobacco, rice, and indigo, the prospect of a life away from those patches of dirt and denigration by the overseer must have been appealing.