Race Horse Men How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack by Katherine C. Mooney

Horse racing proved an exception when compared to the changing face of most American pastimes. As the majority of sports became more inclusive over time to African Americans, horse racing steered in the opposite direction due to a number of complex reasons. In her book, Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack, Katherine C. Mooney examines the history of the sport through both the African American and white perspectives, from the Jacksonian period to the eve of the First World War. As Mooney notes in the prologue, the focus of Race Horse Men is less “an attempt to answer a set of analytical questions…than a portrait that seeks to reveal some complex and difficult realities in the lives of people living in the past” (3). The struggle for equality permeated countless arenas of American life. American racetracks revealed their own stories of triumph and oppression.

In the Antebellum South, racetracks depended on the labor and abilities of African American men. The talent of these men subordinated to the system of slavery proved integral to the sport of horse racing. For many Southerners, the race track became a showcase for power of Jacksonian slaveholding society. Jackson himself was a lion of the horse racing scene in Tennessee before occupying the White House. During this period, slave horsemen presented a paradox. Although still legally bound as slaves, these men possessed more opportunities than their contemporaries to earn their own money. African American trainers and jockeys earned money through a share of the purse if his owners were feeling generous and picked up small tokens of gratitude from winning bettors. In addition, black jockeys and trainers could gain mobility, autonomy, and opportunity.

The author utilizes the story of Abe, a renowned slave jockey of the 1850s, to narrate these points of fame and opportunity.As the jockey of the treasured racehorse Lecompte, Abe lived as both a slave and a high-priced professional. For decades, racing summaries listed only the horse and owner. However, when Abe rode, the national papers listed his name next to that of his winning mount. Abe became a national figure with the Spirit of the Times referring to him as “the Famous Abe” in 1855 and “the world-renowned Abe” the following year (97). Surprisingly, Southern turfmen remained undisturbed by Abe’s recognition. To the turfmen, the fame of one of their slaves reaffirmed the power of their horses as well as their political convictions. Wealthy Southerners believed the prominence of their race horses and slave jockeys could potentially bolster national support for their vision of hierarchal order and slavery’s spread. When African American men reached the professional heights Abe and a few others attained, white men’s dependency on them afforded them additional privileges. Slave jockeys proved too valuable and well known to be treated with the same harshness as most other slaves. Wealthy owners “were not accustomed,” Mooney explains, “to disciplining prominent slave horsemen with anything but the subtlest pressures of privilege extended or withheld, with the weight of expectations made clear” (100). Although celebrated and admired, African American jockeys could not escape the confines of the Antebellum system.

Mooney presents prominent Kentuckian and Whig politician Henry Clay in the patchwork of horse racing as well. Southern Whigs embraced the world of Thoroughbred racing as a stage on which they could enact their most valued political beliefs. In Clay’s “American System,” the country ran best with a protected, diversified, and well-integrated economy (82). At his Ashland estate, Clay saw the proper workings of the American economy at the micro level. Racing men of the 1830s and 1840s admired Clay’s sportsmanship and his involvement in horseracing flourished.

Decades of recognition and fame for African American men in the Thoroughbred world effectively ended in the Jim Crow era. Many of the men could not accept the bleak adjustment. “Buried in...