It’s Friday POU Family and lurkers! Continuing on with the theme for this week, I am going to highlight African-American historical firsts in sports.
Automobile racer Rajo Jack DeSoto was born Dewey Gatson on July 28, 1905 in Tyler, Texas. Rajo Jack was barred from racing in many organized venues because of his African American heritage, but he had several notable wins and a number of historic crashes. He was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2003.
Dewey Gatson’s parents were Noah, a railroad employee, and Frances (Gee). He had three sisters and two brothers. Sometime in his teens, Gatson and his family moved from Texas to California. He began racing with moderate success in the early 1920s at the fairs that the Marcell family followed across the country. He raced under the name “Jack DeSoto”. He later moved down to Pasadena, California, and worked for the Marcells until their company failed during the Great Depression.In 1921 Gatson got a job with a traveling entertainment show, acquiring skills as a mechanic. He later worked as a mechanic for racing teams and began racing on his own in 1923 in a souped-up Model T Ford. Later that year he was hired by Rajo Motor Manufacturing to sell its after-market racing kits. Gatson’s sales skills earned him the nickname of “Rajo.” In 1936 he had a big victory at the Los Angeles Speedway in a stock Ford two-seater. He won by over two laps.
Gatson quickly became known among his peers for his talent with mechanical devices, especially anything with wheels and an engine. Gatson modified a truck into a house car for the Marcell family. He later was put in charge of the show’s fleet of twenty cars in St. Johns, Oregon.
Rajo Jack ran a match race against Francis Quinn in Vancouver, Washington in 1925. His seat fell out of the car as he took the green flag to start the event, and the event had to be canceled.
Gatson would soup up all of his own Model T Fords cars with Rajo cylinder heads. In the early 1930s, Rajo owner Joe Jagersberger named Gatson/Jack DeSoto his Los Angeles dealer and salesman, and the name “Rajo Jack” was born. Rajo Jack raced in many forms of motorsport and he used many kinds of engines. Rajo was a mechanic for Quinn at Legion Ascot Speedway. After Quinn died, Rajo was given his 225 cubic inch Miller engine.
In 1934 Rajo Jack won a 200-mile stock car race at Silvergate Speedway in San Diego. He won a 100 mile race at San Jose Speedway on March 17, 1935. Jack won a 200 mile stock car race at Mines Field in Los Angeles on October 25, 1936. He also won a 300 mile stock car race at Oakland Speedway on May 30, 1937.Other wins include a co-win as a relief driver for Tex Peterson in the 1939 500 mile race at Oakland Speedway, and several wins at Southern Ascot Speedway in South Gate, California. Among his wins at Southern Ascot were a 300 lap stock car race on October 1, 1939 and a 250 lap stock car race on June 16, 1940, both driving a Citroën.
On April 29, 1939 Rajo assessed his Miller engine which he had torn apart while repairing its main bearing. Parts were strewn around his garage. He needed to drive 400 miles to Oakland for a 100 mile race the next day. He called his wife Ruth to get ready for the drive to Oakland. She thought that he meant to get ready for the ride. She came outside to find him backing up their truck to the garage. They wheeled the car onto the truck. Rajo put the pieces onto the bed of the truck, grabbed the necessary tools, and said “You drive, I’m going to put this thing together on the road”. He put the engine together while she drove. He got it done just in time for qualifying. He qualified third and finished second in the race.
Rajo Jack raced in the American Racing Association (ARA). He finished third in the season points in 1941. While he raced mainly on the West Coast, he traveled as far east as Dayton, Ohio for a fair that year. On his drive back west, he stopped to race at the Steele County fair in Owatonna, Minnesota. He was badly injured along with Bayliss Levrett in an accident that claimed the life of Wayne “Boots” Pearson. Rajo received a compound fracture of his leg and a severe concussion.
He occasionally did stunts on motorcycles. He had an accident in one of his stunts, and he became blind in his right eye. While not racing he owned several businesses, including an automotive garage and a cleaning service.
He was barely able to bend his arm as the result of numerous racing injuries, and he had difficulty reaching the steering wheel. His last race apparently came when Northern California sprint cars made a visit to Honolulu Stadium in Hawaii in early 1954.
Rajo Jack died in California on February 27, 1956 from heart failure suffered while on Highway 395 near Inyokern. In 2003 he became the first black driver inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame.
In 1875, Oliver Lewis became the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, America’s longest continuous sporting event. Lewis was born in 1856 in Fayette Country, Kentucky, to his parents Goodson and Eleanor Lewis. Lewis was born free, but there is little known about his parents or family.
Lewis was only 19 years old when he entered the first Kentucky Derby. The race was held at what was then the Louisville Jockey Club on May 17, 1875, but is now known as Churchill Downs. Ten thousand spectators watched this first race. Lewis rode a horse named Aristide, which was one of two colts entered by their owner, H. Price McGrath of Jessamine, Kentucky. The other horse, Chesapeake, was ridden by William Henry. Although the same owner entered both horses, Chesapeake was favored to win the $2,850 purse, and Lewis was told that his job was to lead most of the race to tire out the other horses. Out of the fifteen jockeys in the field, at this first Kentucky Derby, thirteen of them were African American. Aristide’s trainer, Ansel Williamson, was also an African American.
Oliver Lewis followed his instructions and was pushing most of the field while trailing a horse named Volcano for most of the race. However, in the last stretch, Chesapeake was unexpectedly far back in the pack while Aristide and Volcano were running neck and neck for first place. Lewis and Aristide pulled away near the finish line and won the race by two lengths. With that victory Lewis became the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Later that season, Lewis came in second in the Belmont Stakes in New York and won three more races at the Louisville Jockey Club, riding Aristide in all of them. He would never ride in the Kentucky Derby again, however, and would retire after that racing season for unknown reasons.
After retiring, Lewis worked for a short time as a day laborer, but then began providing handicapping tables and racing forms to bookies. He later became a bookie himself which was legal in Kentucky at that time.
Lewis married although his wife’s name is unknown. The couple had six children including James who inherited his lucrative bookmaking business. Oliver Lewis died in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924 at the age of 68.
***All information courtesy of Wikipedia.org and Blackpast.org***