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Three Black Women Firsts in Thoroughbred Horse Racing
Because the sport of kings – thoroughbred horse-racing – has been male dominated with the exception of a few white women jockeys and owners, no Black woman is included in the Kentucky Derby’s history in any capacity. However, that does not mean Black women have not made history in the sport in other parts of the country. Eliza Carpenter, Sylvia Rideoutt Bishop and Cheryl White are three Black women have been firsts in their own right.
Eliza Carpenter (1851 – December 16, 1924) was a race horse owner and jockey who was born into slavery and achieved success as the only African-American horse racer in early Oklahoma. For more than thirty years she owned and raced a number of Thoroughbred horses in country circuits, winning many races and considerable money.
Born in Virginia some 10 years prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, at 6 years of age Carpenter was sold to a slave owner in Madison County, Kentucky. Two years later, at age 8, she was sold to a planter in Missouri. Gaining her freedom at the end of the Civil War, she returned to Madisonville, Kentucky, where she learned the business of buying, training, and riding race horses. She then moved to Kansas where she purchased several horses.
When the Cherokee Outlet was opened for settlement in 1893, she joined in the race for new land. A $1,000 prize was offered to the first person to reach the site of Ponca City, generating a heated race with Carpenter as one of the competitors. She rode her horse like a man and covered twelve miles in forty-five minutes. Some sources say that she was the first to stake a claim, while other sources say that she did not win the race.[4] She reportedly staked out a good farm, but lost it due to describing its metes and bounds inaccurately at the land office.
By 1900 she was living at 491 Grand Avenue in Ponca City, Oklahoma where her occupation was given in that year’s United States census as a “trader [of] live stock.” The same record shows her to be a single woman, born in December 1851.
In Ponca City, she trained Thoroughbreds, quarter horses, and other horses for racing, becoming one of the few African-American stable owners in the West.[4] When dissatisfied with the way a race was going, she sometimes would ride her own horses as a jockey, winning some races. Recorded names of her horses include “Irish Maid”, “Blue Bird”, “Jimmy Rain”, “Sam Carpenter”, and “Little Brown Jug”, the last of which she reportedly raced at Tijuana, Baja California.
In a September 1920 recreation of the 1893 Cherokee Outlet land rush, she won the race, driving two fast ponies hitched to a buggy while standing erect like a Roman charioteer.
On a visit to family in Kentucky in 1924, she was thrown from a buggy when her Thoroughbred horse spooked, suffering a fractured skull. She returned to Ponca City in August 1924 where she suffered a stroke resulting in paralysis, and died on Tuesday, December 16, 1924.
Sylvia Rideoutt was one of 17 children born to James and Bertha Rideoutt in Charles Town, West Virginia, seven miles east of Harpers Ferry, in 1919. By the time she was a teenager, Sylvia was an excellent rider who would be at the track early to exercise horses and groom them. In 1954, she became the first Black woman licensed to train horses at the Charles Town Race Track, in the state of West Virginia, and the entire United States of America. The December 1961 edition of Ebony magazine features an interview with Sylvia.
Rideoutt had winning horses all along the Eastern Seaboard throughout her career as a trainer. Like many Pioneers, it appears that for most of her professional lifetime Sylvia Bishop did not receive acclaim as a groundbreaker in the thoroughbred racing industry. For example, the January 11, 1961 issue of the Baltimore Sun reported that “Mrs. Sylvia Bishop’s Irish Dash” won the first race at Charles Town. The title Mrs. was a reference to her gender but gave no indication that she was the FIRST Mrs. to train thoroughbreds.
Finally, as her training career began to wind down, Bishop received acclaim. In February 1991, Bishop was acknowledged as the “nation’s first black woman trainer” at the second Annual African-American Heritage Society’s tribute to African American horsemen and horsewomen held at the Pimlico Sports Palace in Baltimore. Other tributes would come after her death in 2005. In 2008, Sylvia Bishop was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Charles Town Races. Four years later the Sylvia Bishop Memorial, a seven-furlong race for fillies three years old and older, was added to the Stakes Races scheduled at Charles Town. Each is a fitting tribute to a woman who spent over 60 years in the thoroughbred racing game hoping that someday she would “hit the jackpot.”
Cheryl White (1953-2019)
Months before her 18th birthday, Cheryl White rode her first race as the first Black woman licensed to jockey in the nation. She did not win the race at Cleveland, Ohio’s Thistledown track, but she secured her place in history. White came from a horse racing family. Her father was a Black jockey turned groomer and trainer, while her white mother was a breeder and owner of thoroughbreds.
She earned her first win as a jockey on September 3, 1971, riding Jetolara to victory at Waterford Park in Chester, West Virginia. After moving west to California, thoroughbred opportunities lessened and she turned her attention to riding Appaloosas, adding another 500-plus wins to her name. She retired from racing in 1992 with a record of over 225 wins as a thoroughbred jockey, and earnings nearing a million dollars. Ultimately, White would become the first woman to serve as a California horse racing steward or racetrack official. She died in 2019 in Youngstown, Ohio. Thistledown hosted a memorial in her honor.