The Kentucky Derby: How the Run for the Roses Became America’s Premier Sporting Event

Chapter 5. A Stage for Social Protest and a Site of National Healing: 1960-1980

5 A Stage for Social Protest and a Site of National Healing 1960–1980 By the 1960s the Derby’s status as an important piece of Americana , combined with the glut of media attention focused on Louisville during the first week of May each year, had transformed the event into a national stage. As baby boomers came of age and challenged the conventional wisdom of their parents’ generation, many of the American cultural and social battles of the 1960s and 1970s would be waged on that stage, including the clash between youth and the “establishment,” and the struggle for black civil rights. The first of these conflicts to appear at Churchill Downs accompanied the young people who made Louisville an important date on their social calendar beginning in the early 1960s, in hindsight a relatively simple and innocent time as compared to the social and political environment at the Derby and around the world that would emerge just a few years later. These teenagers and collegians invaded the infield at Churchill Downs in unprecedented numbers, creating a visible “generation gap,” between the youth in the infield and the older folks across the track in the grandstand and clubhouse. In the 1950s the infield had been a place where adults could enjoy a “picnic” atmosphere, but by the mid-1960s the infield began to embody the “spring break” envi-  143 The Kentucky Derby 144 ronment that it retains today, populated by a young crowd and dominated by college-aged revelers. A Louisville reporter stationed in the Derby infield in 1965 spoke with some of the spectators, questioning them about their Derby experience as if they were members of an exotic species. “I’m out of my gourd,” shouted “a barefooted young blonde woman wearing the ‘omnipresent’ madras skirt.” Another collegeaged reveler bristled at the large presence of law enforcement in the infield. “What makes this place so great is all the authority around,” the young man sarcastically explained. “I mean everywhere you look there’s fuzz or National Guard, or even Army. You know we can’t have fun unless there’s authority around.”1 Those who were paying any attention to the nominal reason for the party saw Lucky Debonair and Bill Shoemaker just outlast a hard-charging Dapper Dan to win the big race, the third Derby score for the popular rider. Group from Frankfort relaxes in the infield, 1950s. The picnic atmosphere in the Derby infield of the 1950s turned much more rambunctious in the 1960s. (Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort.) A Stage for Social Protest and a Site of National Healing 145 By the mid-1960s young people, especially college students, were doing their best to create an environment of contained debauchery in the infield that contrasted with the stuffier setting across the track in the clubhouse. They were engaged in a mild form of social protest that was part fraternity party and part carnival right in front of their parents’ eyes. Not everyone understood what the teenagers and college students were doing at the Derby, but everyone knew that the party atmosphere helped attract people to Louisville for Derby Week. Even the Roman Catholic Church relaxed its rules and regulations; in recognition of the Derby’s status as an important civic holiday, in 1965 the Church announced that Louisville Catholics—natives and visitors alike—would be granted a Derby Eve dispensation from the rule against eating meat on Fridays. But, as is the case with each new generation, the baby boomers were unaware of the fact that the ground they were treading upon was not entirely new territory. The Derby had possessed a certain antiestablishment air since the 1910s and 1920s, when vestiges of Victorian morality codes still lingered and activities like drinking and gambling were frowned upon by conservative segments of society. But the Derby had since become an American institution; this institutional status, combined with the national attention focused on Churchill Downs at Derby time, made it an ideal location for displays of protest and antiauthoritarianism. In an environment of conflict over the direction of American society, politics, and culture, the Kentucky Derby became a stage upon which various groups attempted to define America in a period of political and social unrest. The fact that the Derby was also a site of celebration of vestiges of the Old South only...