Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers
324
Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers
324Paperback
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Overview
While the accomplishments and influence of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali are doubtless impressive solely on their merits, these luminaries of the black sporting experience did not emerge spontaneously. Their rise was part of a gradual evolution in social and power relations in American culture between the 1890s and 1940s that included athletes such as jockey Isaac Murphy, barnstorming pilot Bessie Coleman, and golfer Teddy Rhodes. The contributions of these early athletes to our broader collective history, and their heroic confrontations with the entrenched racism of their times, helped bring about the incremental changes that after 1945 allowed for sports to be more fully integrated.
Before Jackie Robinson details and analyzes the lives of these lesser-known but important athletes within the broader history of black liberation. These figures not only excelled in their given sports but also transcended class and racial divides in making inroads into popular culture despite the societal restrictions placed on them. They were also among the first athletes to blur the line between athletics, entertainment, and celebrity culture. This volume presents a more nuanced account of early African American athletes’ lives and their ongoing struggle for acceptance, relevance, and personal and group identity.
Gerald R. Gems is a professor in the Kinesiology Department at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and vice president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport. He is the author of several books, including Boxing: A Concise History of the Sweet Science and The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism (Nebraska, 2006).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803266797 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2017 |
| Pages: | 324 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Gerald R. Gems is a professor in the Kinesiology Department at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, and vice president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport. He is the author of several books, including Boxing: A Concise History of the Sweet Science and The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism (Nebraska, 2006).
Read an Excerpt
Before Jackie Robinson
The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers
By Gerald R. Gems
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-9668-8
CHAPTER 1
Like a Comet across the Heavens
Isaac Burns Murphy, Horseracing, and the Age of American Exceptionalism
Pellom McDaniels III
In 1879, when Isaac Burns Murphy was just eighteen years old and quickly becoming known as a dependable jockey and a master of the art of pace — the ability to know how fast a horse was running on the track at all times — he traveled from Frankfort, Kentucky, to Saratoga, New York, to compete on one of horseracing's most lucrative racetracks. Already a veteran of the turf, the polished jockey began his career at the age of thirteen as an apprentice jockey for Owings and Williams Stables in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. Murphy's success on the racetrack had elevated his importance to racing fans, gamblers, and the owners of some of the country's most important thoroughbreds. Indeed men of the turf from California to New York, seeking to win lucrative big-stakes races, found in the East and West, vied for the opportunity to have the little jockey pilot one of their horses of distinguished pedigree.
When he arrived in Saratoga in the summer of 1879, Murphy was greeted by the dashing J. W. Hunt-Reynolds, the owner of Fleetwood Farms. A grandson of John Wesley Hunt, the first millionaire west of the Alleghany Mountains, Hunt-Reynolds was one of the founders of the Louisville Jockey Club and maintained as one of his firm objectives the improvement of the breed of horse developed in Kentucky. His farm outside of Frankfort, Kentucky, was proving to be one of the most important studs in the country. Hunt-Reynolds's head trainer, Eli Jordan, was more than a familiar face to Murphy; he was a family friend with whom he shared his victories and disappointments. When Murphy's mother, America, settled in Lexington at the end of the Civil War and needed support, Jordan and his wife Cora took her and the family in. The death of Murphy's father, Jerry Burns, a veteran of the Civil War, left a void in the boy's life that Jordan and other community members helped to fill. The races at Saratoga provided another opportunity for them to bond.
On Saturday, July 19, 1879, the racetrack at Saratoga Springs was in good condition, and the weather was perfect for racing. The sixteenth renewal of the Travers Stakes for three-year-olds, a race of a mile and three-quarters, featured Murphy on Hunt-Reynolds's Falsetto. The call to post elicited an "applause which greeted Spendthrift [which] made the great colt prick his ears"; all the while Murphy trotted his charge out onto the track in a manner that exuded confidence and reassurance to the Kentuckians watching in the stands. In a July 26, 1879, Spirit of the Times interview Murphy recalled the race and the details of the decisions he made in the saddle. In the interview the eighteen-year-old's thoughtfulness, intellect, and confidence come shining through. No doubt, it was admirable for his day.
"How did you get between Harold [horse] and the pole on the turn?"
"I didn't intend to go upon the turn, but when we started toward the stretch Harold was tired and unsteady, and he leaned away from the pole and gave me room to go in. I thought it better to run for the position than to have to run around him, so I jumped at the chance and went up between him and the rail. I steadied my horse here a moment to compel Harold to cover more ground on the turn, and beat him good, for he was very tired, and just before we got to the stretch I left him and went off after Spendthrift."
"Where did you catch him?"
"Just after we got straight into the stretch."
"Did you have to punish Falsetto?"
"As I tell, when I went up to Harold at the half mile, I hit him one with the spur. Then when I ran between Harold and the pole I gave it to him again. When I got to Harold, I laid there a little while, and kept touching my colt with the right spur, to keep him from bearing out to Harold, and also to make him hug the pole. He is a long strider, and is inclined to lean out on the turns. I kept the spurs pretty busy in him until I got to Spendthrift. Here Feakes drew his whip, and Spendthrift refused to respond to it. So I stopped and let Falsetto come along, but I kept urging him with the reigns. He moved so strong that I did not have to punish him any more."
In spite of his youth, through the interview Murphy's knowledge and skill related to running races, and his intelligence and politeness come across as unimpeachable. The once timid and precocious boy had matured into a full-fledged man capable of defining his purpose in the world and laying claim to his accomplishments as the result of his hard work and discipline. Murphy's success would continue throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s. He became one of the great black jockeys whose ability and intelligence was unique among jockeys, placing him in a class all his own. While his success in the saddle appeared to most as a natural phenomenon, it was Murphy's upbringing in Lexington, Kentucky, during Reconstruction, and the quality of his manhood, which was influenced by his mother and the progressive black community, that helped give shape to his character, work ethic, and purpose in life.
In the saddle, Murphy's professional approach to racing was cultivated from training his mind as well as his body to take advantage of every aspect of each horse he rode, every course on which he raced, and the competition he faced. Unfortunately his well-documented achievements led many to plot against him, including resentful whites, some newly arrived immigrants who could not appreciate his success, and some white horse owners and jockeys who refused to accept the reality that African Americans could rise above their previous condition as slaves to become exceptional individuals. Furthermore, changing economic, social, and political factors, brought on by the overpopulation of some urban environments and a scarcity of jobs, not only accelerated the indignant attacks by whites on the gains made by African Americans during the years of Reconstruction and beyond but also served to justify the savage violence unleashed against African Americans throughout the 1890s. Supported by Jim Crow policies of exclusion and fearing black economic, social, and political power, white Americans were emboldened to terrorize their black neighbors with impunity. Within this convergence of contexts Isaac Burns Murphy became the top jockey of his day. He was an exemplar for American manhood, masculinity, and citizenship for all, as well as a threat to the stability of white masculinity.
Becoming Exceptional
Murphy's development as a jockey and individual of exceptional ability began with his birth during slavery. Born Isaac Burns in 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War in Clark County, Kentucky, and raised by his mother in Lexington during the early years of Reconstruction, his childhood was filled with numerous opportunities to learn lessons from the men and women of his community. As noted, after the death of his father, Isaac's mother migrated with him to a firmly entrenched African American community in Lexington, comprised of former slaves and freeborn people of African descent who represented a range of occupations, including carpenters, barbers, mattress makers, educators, ministers, and laborers. Each supported the development of the community's children through moral training, rudimentary education, and the pursuit of excellence based on a future orientation, whereby the basis of their freedom was secured by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and their ability to become orderly and productive would make them citizens.
As early as 1865, long before the Freedmen's Bureau, the American Missionary Association, and other benevolent societies began assisting former slaves in securing their freedom through education, schools across the state of Kentucky were established in and by African American communities with the necessary resolve to teach adults and children to read and write. In Lexington, schools were opened in the most important centers of African American social, political, and economic activity: the black churches. In most instances where children were allowed to learn, they "manifested the same dogged commitment to their education" as adults did to their commitment to being recognized as human beings on par with white men. Black children like Isaac provided the most readily available reason for African American leadership to continue to fight to secure the franchise, no matter how dangerous the consequences or the means by which whites would attempt to deter the progress of the race.
Under the tutelage of his mother and capable teachers, by 1870 nine-year-old Isaac Burns was able to read and write. America must have been extremely happy with his progress and his taking full advantage of the opportunity to exercise his freedom in terms that at first glance seemed to guarantee his life would be filled with marvelous rewards for hard work. An exemplar of the qualities needed to succeed in a post-slavery society, America Burns purchased a new home on Pine Street, began acquiring property throughout the city of Lexington, and in April 1873 opened a savings account with the local branch of the Freedmen's Bank. In an effort to secure her and her son's future, she routinely deposited monies she earned from her work as a washerwoman and laundress and the pension she received from the federal government for Jerry Burns's service as a soldier. In turn Isaac was free to spend his youth developing his mind, free from the pressures of toiling and scraping by to live. All was well in the world for America and Isaac until the Freedmen's Bank collapsed. Within two months of opening her account, she had lost almost everything she owned.
America soon became sick with tuberculosis and no doubt began to fear for her son's future. Should she die, what would happen to her boy? In an attempt to secure his future, America asked her employer, Richard Owings, a partner in the Owings and Williams Stable, if he would consider taking her son as an apprentice jockey. In fact it may have been Eli Jordan who suggested Isaac become an apprentice jockey when he was employed as a trainer for the stable. Owings and Williams gave Isaac a chance to secure his future in one of the occupations African American men and boys in the Bluegrass region had long been accustomed to filling. Before the United States became an independent nation and developed its particular style of democracy, both free and enslaved African Americans participated in the development of the agricultural and industrial prosperity of the colonies. As with the development of livestock on the hundreds of farms in the South and into the western reaches of the new nation beyond the eastern seaboard, horseracing depended upon the labor, skill, and expertise of African American men and boys, whose hands-on experience made them invaluable to the future of the horse industry.
In the spring of 1874 thirteen-year-old Isaac embarked on a path that few could have imagined would prove fortunate to horseracing. That the little boy from Lexington had the potential to become the greatest representative of the sport that the state of Kentucky — maybe even the country — would produce was not foreseeable. But Isaac first had to prove his ability in the stable and then graduate to exercise boy before becoming a rider. Years after Isaac developed into an extraordinary jockey, Eli Jordan recalled how the quiet boy was "always in his place" and how Eli could always put his "hands on him any time, day or night." Jordan would say that Isaac "was one of the first up in the morning, ready to do anything he was told to do or help others. He was ever in good humor and liked to play, but he never neglected his work, but worked hard summer and winter."
Being a part of the daily routine supporting the development of the horses and their abilities, Isaac watched and learned from the grooms as they brushed and combed the horses to put them at ease, recognizing the proper techniques of those skilled at the craft. As exciting as it seemed, the life of a nineteenth-century jockey was filled with danger, but the rewards, both real and imagined, compelled a few brave souls to choose the saddle and reins, the post and paddock, as a way of life. Learning through trial and error to be fearless, Isaac received the best instruction available from Jordan and James Williams, one of the co-owners of the stable. By the spring of 1875 Isaac began competing on the statewide circuit of horse tracks from Lexington to Bowling Green, Kentucky, just north of the Tennessee border.
Early that May, Isaac secured his first official win in his first official race at the Crab Orchard track aboard the filly Glentina. The oldest circular track in the state, Crab Orchard was a great testing ground for potential stakes-winning horses and reliable talented jockeys. At seventy-four pounds, the impish yet resilient boy rode the filly to victory again on his home track in front of his community of supporters, only this time he was riding under the name of Murphy instead of Burns. It seems that America wanted her son to take his grandfather's, Green Murphy's, last name to honor him. However, he was still untested in races for big stakes. For the inaugural Louisville Jockey Club meeting, he was well on his way to learning all that horseracing had to offer a serious, honest, and hardworking jockey able to focus on one objective: winning. He had also learned from his mother about honesty, disciplined work, and perseverance, all of which would carry him further than any horse could.
Although he would not have a mount in the first Kentucky Derby, Isaac was there to observe the horses and jockeys take the track in preparation for the start of the race. And because African American jockeys were common throughout the South as a result of their role on horse farms during slavery, it would not have been odd for him to notice that thirteen of the fifteen jockeys on the track that day were black. The fourteen-year-old Isaac was no doubt smitten by what he saw and felt. Over the next fifteen years he would compete in eleven Kentucky Derbies, winning three (1884, 1890, 1891) and finishing in the money in three others.
A World of Changing Possibilities
By 1877 the hard-fought gains as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction legislation were left unprotected by the federal government after the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as the nation's nineteenth president. In an effort to reconcile with the South, Hayes removed federal troops from the region, providing no protection for the freedmen from their former masters and white men intent on restoring the balance of power in their favor. The reign of terror began first in the rural areas, where African American farmers were forcibly removed from their lands at gunpoint, losing not only their property but also their livestock, surplus, and investment in their families' futures. Others were killed and their property destroyed by fire in an effort to purge the land of the impudence of former slaves — a blood sacrifice to be sure.
Isaac and other black jockeys were still somewhat safe in horseracing. Southern whites still saw jockeys or work in the stalls with animals as "nigger work," and they gladly let the African American men and boys occupy most such positions. Still Isaac would have a major role in the development of jockeyship as a middle-class occupation as it became highly lucrative and therefore highly sought after by whites, who viewed the high salaries of black jockeys as obscene and an affront to "their own" boys who could ride horses too, and Irish immigrant boys fighting hard to claim all the rights and privileges of whiteness in America.
In early May 1877, at the beginning of his third racing season, Isaac journeyed to Nashville with James Williams, now sole proprietor of the Lexington stable, in preparation for the annual Nashville Association meeting. Still working as an apprentice, the youthful jockey rode for several other owners besides Williams. His lone victory came on day three on Williams's Vera Cruz in the Cumberland Stakes for three-year-olds. Each time he took to the track, he learned a little more about his new occupation as a desperate profession that rewarded jockeys for winning and showing well. A few weeks later at the third running of the Kentucky Derby, in a stellar field of eleven capable three-year-olds, Isaac's only advantage was his understanding of his horse and how to ride him. Vera Cruz had been his steed on numerous occasions, and he no doubt thought he knew the horse's temperament. Unfortunately a poor start hurt his chances at success in the premiere race of the day. Isaac finished fourth and out of the money.
By 1877 horseracing in the East had been around longer than the country. Tracks at Saratoga Springs, Jerome Park in Westchester County, New York, and Monmouth Park at Long Branch, New Jersey, were developed as an outgrowth of the need for class affiliation and social status. At Saratoga on August 1, riding atop Williams's Vera Cruz in a dash race of a mile and three-quarters for a $600 purse, Isaac had an excellent start in a race that was slow and steady. It was not until the very end of the race that Isaac let Vera Cruz go to the lead and with the very last jump defeated Big Tom" by a head at the finish line. The sixteen-year-old master in the saddle had captured the attention of everyone at the Saratoga Springs course. He was now making a name for himself by beating the best in the East. Most important, Isaac began riding for J. W. Hunt-Reynolds's Fleetwood Stud Farm. Reynolds would become one of the most important influences in Murphy's career between 1877 and 1880.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Before Jackie Robinson by Gerald R. Gems. Copyright © 2017 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Introduction Gerald R. Gems 1. Like a Comet across the Heavens: Isaac Burns Murphy, Horseracing, and the Age of American Exceptionalism Pellom McDaniels III 2. John M. Shippen Jr.: Testing the Front Nine of American Golf Sarah Jane Eikleberry 3. When Great Wasn’t Good Enough: Sam Ransom’s Journey from Athlete to Activist Gerald R. Gems 4. A League of Their Own: Rube Foster’s “Pitfalls of Baseball” Revisited Michael E. Lomax 5. Bessie Coleman: “The Only Race Aviatrix in the World” Bieke Gils 6. Sol Butler: The Fleeting Fame of a World-Class Black Athlete James E. Odenkirk 7. Robert L. “Bob” Douglas: “Aristocracy on the Court, an Architect of Men” Susan J. Rayl 8. Isadore Channels: The Recovered Life of a Great African American Sports Star Robert Pruter 9. Tommy Brookins: Pioneer in Two Worlds Murry Nelson 10. Tidye Pickett: The Unfulfilled Aspirations of America’s Pioneering African American Female Track Star Robert Pruter 11. Harold “Killer” Johnson: Making a Career in the Popular Culture James Coates 12. Continuing the Struggle: Teddy Rhodes and Professional Golf Raymond Schmidt Contributors Index