“The most exciting two minutes in sports” is known for fancy hats, mint juleps, and lightning-fast thoroughbreds. The illustrious horse race is not so well known for Black equestrians, but the Kentucky Derby Museum hopes to change that with its new Black Heritage in Racing tour on Saturdays that covers the galleries and the adjacent Churchill Downs racetrack.
Kentucky’s thoroughbred racing industry has a long history of world-class Black jockeys and trainers, but the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South pushed them out of the sport. On the tour, this history comes alive from the grandstand overlooking the track as a guide tells captivating stories of Black jockeys’ history-making victories. It also takes in the Churchill Downs clubhouse and the Peb Murals, named for Pierre “Peb” Bellocq, the cartoonist that created them. The former features fun caricatures of Derby-winning jockeys and the latter is a tribute to the unsung trainers who helped them get to the Winner’s Ci