I spend a lot of time these days thinking about Gene Carter. I was fortunate enough to meet the 'last man to ride Man o' War,' as he was billed by myself and others, before his death last fall. Carter had an undeniable magic with horses, which was still evident when I spoke to him just after his 93rd birthday. He was working his retirement gig, showing the likes of Funny Cide, Point Given, Go For Gin, and others at the Kentucky Horse Park's Hall of Champions.
I had the impression that Carter's only real regret about his long career as an exercise rider and groom in Central Kentucky was that he was never able to get a jockey's license. He won his lone start, an amateur race on a farm. The margin wasn't close. From what he told me, it was helped that he knew his horse like the back of his hand because they'd spent many mornings together.
I knew that horse racing's early history had included many black jockeys (though I didn't realize just how many until I researched Edward Brown, who eventually became one of several successful black trainers also). I also knew that I didn't see so many in the saddle these days and couldn't remember reading about many after about the 1920s. I had never been too sure why that was, so I timidly asked Gene about it.
Carter told me that in the days he was longing to enter the starting gates in a race, Jim Crow was alive and well. Black riders could not get licenses in the 1950s and 1960s in some places. Successful jockeys could make real money, and he suspected that wasn't something the sport's white gatekeepers were comfortable with, especially in the South. He did have a trainer who, impressed with his work in the mornings, pledged to take him to New York and vouch for him to be licensed there. Unfortunately, the trainer died of a heart attack the week before they were scheduled to make the trip, and there went his opportunity.
So many of us want to believe we are horse whisperers, but too often we're not as good as we wish at either speaking or listening to them. The best most of us can hope for is to sharpen our skills with practice, but we can never quite match someone with the natural gift. I've only ever seen a handful of horsemen who possess an innate aura of calm authority that instantly softens a horse's eye and relaxes them. Those are the people who can, seemingly without trying, soothe the nervous horse and coax out the cautious. I didn't see Carter ride, but he did tell me about how he figured out the key to difficult horses very early – by speaking to them, and assuming they could understand him. Not a popular concept at the time, and one that enabled him to get on the barn's tougher horses with success. If his ground work is anything to go by, he would have been one of those riders I envy and one horses love.
That Carter wasn't allowed to get his jockey's license for something as arbitrary as the color of his skin was and is outrageously wrong and unfair to him. It was also a great loss for the sport, and more importantly, a great loss for the horses who could have benefitted from having a partner like him in a race. Horses, after all, care about what's in your heart and what's in your brain, and not your race or ethnicity.
Since the time when Carter was refused a license, most people say there are fewer and fewer black jockeys and trainers (though they are by no means absent). Through the years, newspaper and magazine writers have questioned why that may be, and whether black horsemen have felt excluded by the sport.
As with any complex question, there is no single answer. Some interview subjects told stories of their experiences with overt racism in the Thoroughbred industry, while others said they never felt singled out or treated differently.
The children of Will Harbut (who would become Gene Carter's father-in-law) remember how famous Harbut's connection with Man o' War was. But, in a Lexington Herald-Leader feature from 2001, one of them also remembered that Harbut was asked not to attend Man o' War's 21st birthday party.
“They said, 'Will, you eat first,' [separately from others attending the dinner]” Tom Harbut told writer Maryjean Wall. “Well, it's embarrassing. That shows, 'I can tell hello to you but I don't want to sit down with you. My mother wouldn't go. In those days, the only time they wanted to see you was when you were working. Otherwise you hide yourself.”
Tom followed his father into the horse business, working as a groom and exercise rider and eventually serving as stallion manager at Spendthrift Farm.
Wall also interviewed Dick Spiller, who worked as a groom and got his trainer's license in California while working for Cy White. Although Spiller remembered how harrowing it was to ship horses around the country in a time of segregation, he felt respected by the horsemen he worked with.
“To tell you the truth about it, I wasn't bothered about segregation too much because the people I came under, like Cy White, I never did feel like a segregated person,” Spiller told Wall. “And he didn't consider me segregated. He was a wonderful man to be around.”
A report from the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2000 highlighted the career of William Skiles Sr just before his retirement from Churchill Downs, where he started as a waiter in 1946. Kentucky tracks didn't hire black mutuel tellers for another two decades, and according to the article, Skiles was the first. Still, he didn't consider himself a pioneer.
“I was treated no differently than any other clerks,” he told writer Mark Coomes. “If [white co-workers] felt different about me, they didn't show it.”
According to a report in the Daily Racing Form, the first black head starter wasn't hired in America until Rick Walker was named to the position at Thistledown in 2004. The track also saw the country's first black racing official in 1982, and its first black steward in 1986.
That wasn't so long ago.
Recent comments from well-known bloodstock agent Tom VanMeter have sparked a new discussion about race in horse racing. They're proof that racist sentiments are still present in our sport, as they are in the greater world. Jim Crow may be gone, black riders can be licensed as jockeys, but that doesn't mean our sport has resolved its issues with race. I can't pretend to understand all the reasons why there are fewer black horsemen in our sport than there once were, but I would venture to guess racing may not feel like a comfortable environment for some. There were likely children who grew up hearing about their parents' experiences as trainers, grooms, exercise riders and justifiably thought, 'That doesn't seem like a space where I'd be valued.'
First and foremost, those in power in horse racing (who are almost uniformly white men) should care about this because they should want people to be treated with respect and kindness in our little corner of the world. They should recognize that diverse viewpoints and experiences at all levels can only make our sport better. Besides basic human decency, we should also want to do the best we can for the horse, who is supposed to be at the center of everything. It does the horse no good for generational knowledge to be lost or for good horsemen not to be given opportunities to rise through the ranks to become trainers, owners, board members, track management.
Everyone can play a part in making our sport a more welcoming place for all. For us at the Paulick Report, that means continuing to tell the stories of BIPOC (black/indigenous/people of color) in our industry, bringing their forgotten history to light, and seeking to amplify BIPOC voices when we look for contributors to our publication. We have done some good work on these points, but we can and should do more. I challenge others to think about what they can do to increase diversity in their segment of the sport. Do it for your fellow human, and do it for the horse.
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