The Murphys threw such parties from time to time. For instance, in 1893 Isaac and Lucy celebrated their ten years together by renewing their vows in front of a select number of friends and family invited to the special occasion. The January 31 issue of the Kentucky Leader described the occasion:
Isaac Murphy, the premier jockey, probably entertains more elaborately than any other colored man in the South, if not the whole country, and the hospitality he dispenses is regarded as almost princely among his people, with whom he and his wife are very popular. On the occasion of his tenth wedding anniversary he exceeded all formal bounds, and favored his friends with a most lavish entertainment.
Murphy has by his deeds of prowess in the saddle won for himself the highest rank among jockies, a handsome fortune and the esteem of his race. As there is but one Isaac Murphy, and his fame extends wherever the thoroughbred horse is known, a description of this anniversary celebration will be of interest to many.
Murphy's comfortable home on East Third street was gaily lighted and decorated for the occasion. At 9 o'clock the famous jockey and his wife entered the parlor in wedding fashion, and in the presence of a large gathering of friends renewed their marriage vows before Rev. S. P. Young, pastor of the First Colored Baptist Church.
At the conclusion of the ceremony the company sat down to enjoy the following elaborate menu:
Quails, with Champignons and Claret
Roman Punch
Salted Almonds
Olives
Buldons, with Saratoga Chips
Oyster Patties
Turkey, with Chestnut Dressing
Coffee
Croquettes, with French Peas
Champagne
Chicken Salad
Ices and Cakes
Fruit
During supper Waxey's band played sweet music, and later the company danced merrily for several hours.
Mrs. Murphy, the hostess, was dressed in white silk, trimmed with pearls and white lace, and wore ornaments of diamonds and gold. She carried a bouquet of Marchiel Niel roses and lilies. She was assisted by Mrs. Sallie Brown and Mrs. Lizzie Anderson and Katie Hardin and Maria Williams.
At this late day The Leader cannot give space to a complete list of those who attended or of the numerous presents in tin presented to the famous jockey and his wife.83
Such elegance was unprecedented, but it seemed that each celebration of success and achievement brought the couple closer.
After the reception for Hamilton and his fiancée, Isaac stayed in bed for a week. In fact, his continued debilitated state prevented him from traveling to St. Louis to act as best man at Hamilton's January 22 wedding. Jockey Isaac Lewis stood in for him, and Isaac and Lucy sent their gift of a silver fruit stand. By the end of January 1891, several newspapers were still claiming that Isaac was “seriously ill” and might not survive to the spring. According to the Cleveland Plaindealer, the prognosis was bleak: “Isaac Murphy, the celebrated jockey is seriously ill in Louisville. The doctors fear that his disease will develop into pneumonia and express little hope of his recoup.”84 Similarly, Harry Smith's Cleveland Gazette described Isaac as “seriously ill at this home having taken a violent cold while skating Saturday. He has never been a well man since the peculiar sickness the day he rode the notorious Firenzi race.”85 And the Grand Forks Herald reported, “The account of the present condition of Isaac Murphy is extremely bad. Reports speak of him looking like a man who is going to die and that before long.”86 With the exception of an occasional interview with the man himself, most of these accounts about Isaac's illness were recycled from previously published articles that were days if not weeks old and embellished with unsubstantiated but tantalizing elements.
By the end of February, Isaac had reportedly recovered from his sickness, “barring a little rheumatism” resulting from lying in bed for long periods.87 Though well enough to begin preparations for the upcoming racing season, Isaac began training slowly, not wanting to damage his chances of being healthy come spring. Yet he must have felt somewhat insecure, not knowing how much the August incident had damaged his reputation. It seemed to Isaac that the only way to stop the firestorm of negative publicity was to get back into the arena to disprove the lies. But could he, in fact, still be confident about his calling and his abilities, given what had happened to him? How did he feel, knowing that people he worked intimately with may have plotted his downfall or even his demise? He may have experienced a range of emotions from fear and anguish to resentment and a sense of betrayal. Even if he were reinstated and an apology were extended, Isaac's character had been sullied by the mere implication that he had been drunk in the saddle during an important race. The media had reduced the once honored and revered Murphy into a caricature of black manhood: effete, scheming, uncouth, brutal.
For the 1891 horse-racing season, the new National Jockey Club hoped to increase attendance at courses throughout the country, which would increase the amount of money to be made by owners and investors. But if the 1891 season could match the previous season's 6,000-plus races with an average of 15,000 spectators, racetracks as a whole would be profitable. The Dallas Morning News estimated that the horse-racing industry employed upward of 500,000 men and boys in the stables, tracks, fields, betting rings, and poolrooms where legal betting was allowed.88 Millions of dollars were wagered.
One of the new rules was that each trainer and jockey had to apply for a license annually. Primarily, the intent was to create a uniform set of rules throughout the national racing circuit. Always the consummate professional, Isaac registered with the National Jockey Club and paid his license fee sometime before the beginning of the Kentucky Association meeting on April 28. By then, Isaac had secured a number of horses to ride during the meeting. He had also found a kindred spirit in one of the few African American trainer-owners who shared his sense of independence and racial pride: fellow Lexingtonian Dudley Allen of Jacobin Stables. Allen's choice to connect his business venture in a white-dominated industry with black destiny was truly revolutionary. That Allen named his stable after French revolutionaries is intriguing and illustrates his knowledge of the world. It is possible that he and his fellow African Americans living in Lexington had knowledge of the African Diaspora and of Haitian revolutionary Toussaint-Louverture, the black Jacobin who defeated Napoleon. Allen was making a statement about who he was and what he intended to do. To have Isaac in the saddle completed the cabal of talented individuals who knew horses and knew how to win races. Clearly, if a horse from Jacobin Stables could win, black identity would be the beneficiary. For the 1891 season, Jacobin's premier horse would be Kingman, of which Allen was part owner.
By April 28, Isaac was fit and ready to begin the season, having trained virtually in his own backyard at the Kentucky Association track, where he stabled his horses. To lose weight, Isaac would continue the regimen that had been successful in the past: layering himself with sweaters and taking three- to five-mile walks each morning. As Isaac well knew, a jockey's hunger pains were rarely satisfied. He ate very little food in the morning and even smaller portions at dinner. But if he wanted to get back to where he had been before the incident at Monmouth Park, there could be no shortcuts. In addition to Kingman, Isaac rode Ed Corrigan's Riley, W. E. Applegate's Prince of Darkness, and Fleetwood's Missal. He even rode Estelle, one of the horses owned by his own firm, Murphy and Holloway, to a second-place finish in a purse race. However, Kingman would make the season an early success for Isaac.
At the Kentucky Association meeting, Isaac and Kingman began one of the most impressive runs of the season. With his riding weight down to 114 pounds, Isaac won two races on Kingman, including the Phoenix Hotel Stakes for a purse of more than $3,000. From Lexington, the Jacobin Stables traveled to Louisville, where Isaac and Kingman were scheduled to participate in the seventeenth running of the Kentucky Derby against a field of three other horses: T. J. Clay's Balgowan, Eastin and Larable's High Tariff, and Bashford Manor's Hart Wallace. On the m
orning of May 13, Derby Day, the skies were cloudy and hazy, but by early afternoon, a pleasant spring breeze and warm temperatures brightened the day considerably. At the start of the race, “Kingman came out first, ridden by Isaac Murphy, and the recognition of the horse and rider was followed by cheers that the surrounding knobs and hill tops took up and echoed back again.”89 Clearly, Isaac had not lost his appeal among Derby fans, who declared their support with rousing applause and cheers. In front of the estimated 40,000 in attendance—including Lucy, somewhere in the grandstand—Isaac was riding for pride as well as a paycheck. On the slow, dusty track, Isaac elevated his star when he took control of the race, turning a “big exercising gallop” into a real race and riding “Kingman hard to win by a length” over the great Monk Overton.90 In what would be known as the “Funeral Procession Derby” (because of the slow pace), Isaac became the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbies, and Dudley Allen became the first black owner of a Derby winner. With his back-to-back victories in major stakes races, Isaac was diluting the stain on his name, but he had not yet traveled back to the East, where the dirty deed had happened and major challenges to his career and his well-being still awaited him.
From Louisville, Jacobin Stables went to Covington, Kentucky, and the Latonia racecourse. The day of the race dawned cloudy and cool, with a threat of rain. The previous evening's rain had made the track heavy and slow, but Murphy and Allen knew that Kingman, the favorite, was at home in the mud. As expected, Isaac and the magnificent Kingman took the Latonia Derby; the win earned Isaac an additional $1,000 and the top spot among the year's stakes winners. A lesser known incident at Latonia involved Isaac the businessman. He was racing a number of horses from his own stable, including his brown filly Estelle, who was entered in a selling race for $600. There was some sort of disagreement about the price of the horse with the buyers, the Scroggan brothers out of Louisville, and a “row” had to be averted.91 Whether Isaac was directly involved is not known, but it is interesting to imagine he was ready to throw a punch if necessary.
Back east, Isaac started out at Morris Park, winning a tough race on Empire Stables' Lyceum in which he outrode the phenomenal Willie Simms and veteran James McLaughlin. According to the New York Times, the betting pools supported Murphy: “The handicappers and the players of sure things had all decided that Uno Grande of the McLewee string with Jimmy McLaughlin in the saddle must surely win the dash. The Monmouth contingent thought differently, however, and they played Lyceum, who was trained at the Branch, and on whom Isaac Murphy had the mount.”92 Isaac won the six-furlong race for maiden three-year-olds by a neck, hugging the rail and edging out Simms on J.B. Interestingly, although the spectators recognized Simms and McLaughlin as quality jockeys, they still trusted Murphy in the clutch. More important, Isaac's victory on Lyceum would influence his future in ways he did not expect.
The New York Times reported on June 12 that “Isaac Murphy is to ride for F. C. McLewee during the remainder of the season in place of McLaughlin.”93 Apparently, J. A. and A. H. Morris were dissatisfied with McLaughlin's performance and sought to be released from their $3,000 contract, offering the veteran rider $500. McLaughlin refused to settle for less than $1,000, which closed the matter, but it led to his release by McLewee, who was also dissatisfied with his riding. The press did not report how Isaac felt about replacing his rival, but surely he could understand his colleague's shock at not being appreciated. This incident demonstrates the changing culture of horse racing and how owners dealt with jockeys. The confrontations between labor and capital, which were so much a part of American mining and building practices, had filtered into the once genteel sport of kings.
Gentlemen with tremendous wealth and a desire to invest in the leisure activities of their friends were no longer at the center of America's pastime. The new masters of the turf were capitalists whose clear objective was to invest a minimal amount of capital in a horse's ability to win and turn a profit. As a consequence, nonwinning jockeys became a liability that could not be afforded or, in the case of McLaughlin and others, tolerated. It was not good enough to win second- and third-place prize money. The new men of the turf sought to maximize profits and profitability, period. The culture cultivated and nurtured by gentlemen of the turf over the preceding 100 years was all but gone in the East. Whatever vestiges remained would soon be dissolved or absorbed into the well-dressed cesspools called racetracks, which would spawn organized crime in the early twentieth century.94
For Isaac, this kind of treatment by owners would eventually become the tipping point. But at the time, although his winning percentage had dipped significantly from previous years, he was still a dependable rider in stakes races. On August 18 at the crowded Morris Park, eleven of the country's top three-year-olds were waiting for Mr. Caldwell to start the Omnibus Stakes. At the flash of the red flag, the field was off to a thunderous start. Taking a page from the past, Isaac rode a waiting race on the bay colt Rey del Rey (son of Norfolk), getting a feel for the other horses and the skills of the other jockeys. The veteran jockey watched as horse after horse fell off, waiting patiently for someone to make a mistake. Then, at the last furlong pole, there it was: a gap opened up between the two leaders, and Isaac shot through it and into the rail. “So swift did he come that people looked at him for an instant as if thunder struck,” wrote the New York Times.95 In what could be considered a victory of wisdom and artistry over youthful daring and vigor, Isaac won on Rey del Rey and claimed the $28,000 in prize money for McLewee. This answered any lingering questions about his ability to ride and win in spectacular fashion. He was as sharp as ever.
In the Nursery Stakes on October 10 at Morris Park, Murphy would prove himself again, guiding McLewee's Yorkville Belle across the finish line for a first prize of $14,000.96 By the end of the 1891 season, Isaac would record 32 wins in 114 races, for a winning percentage of 28.1—his second lowest in his seventeen years as a jockey (his winning percentage in 1878 had been 22.6). Despite his expertise, proven ability, and overall success in the saddle, Isaac's relevance in horse racing was slowly diminishing.
For Isaac, horse racing and jockeyship, especially in the East, had become less about skill and mastery and more about winning at all costs. For the first time in his adult life, he felt that his control of his own destiny was slipping away. But there was no way to stop the winds of change in American society. The best solution for Isaac, it seemed, was to navigate the rough patches and seek shelter if the gusts got too strong. Yet even in the comfort and shelter of his beloved Lexington, he could no longer avoid what was becoming an inevitable reality.
Wade in the Water
With an annual salary ranging from $15,000 to $25,000, Isaac Murphy enjoyed a degree of independence and social mobility that was uncommon among black Americans and, for that matter, white Kentuckians. Isaac's early experiences with white men such as J. W. Hunt-Reynolds, Ed Corrigan, and E. J. Baldwin, and later with his lawyer L. P. Tarleton, helped shape and validate his feelings of masculine power: These men recognized his unique abilities on a horse and paid him well for his services. But for a majority of white men, this was not the case.
In Kentucky and throughout the country, a successful black man was a slap in the face to a majority of whites. In this peculiar country, the last thing white working-class men wanted to see was an educated, hardworking, well-to-do Negro living a comfortable, honest life. Black success was perceived as a detriment to white identity in general and to white manhood in particular, especially when the white yeoman farmer and his city-dwelling cousins were struggling just to secure a crust of bread for their dinner or shoes for their children's feet. More precisely, if a black man could raise himself from the depths of slavery into a position where he had gained a significant foothold in American society, what did that say about an impoverished white man who had never been enslaved or methodically abused? One could only conclude that something must be wrong with the white man. In essence, the white man was not the black man's eq
ual; there was no viable excuse for his failures or inability to provide for his family.
As a result, Isaac Murphy and other black men had to contend with white men whose sense of self-worth came not from their ability to work and be productive but from what they had failed to achieve. To combat the insecurity and anxiety created by the success of African Americans, whites used various means to bar any and all expressions of black achievement. Further, through social clubs, unions, and trade organizations, white men attempted to limit black access to well-paying jobs, which translated into male power in a patriarchal society. Notwithstanding the hurdles, traps, and coercions intended to devalue public displays of manliness by African American men, questions related to maintaining an ideal manhood continued to trouble white men. This tension would, in fact, feed fears related to the blackening of America through miscegenation and lead to the attempt to control white women's sexuality. The ultimate question was, who would be the representative of American manhood and masculinity?
By January 1892, Isaac and Lucy had settled into their usual routines in Lexington, having spent the last three months reacquainting themselves with their surroundings, their neighbors, and their circle of friends. To facilitate his projected transition from jockey to owner-trainer, Isaac spent the winter visiting stables throughout the Bluegrass in search of horses to purchase. Believing he had found a good prospect on John T. Clay's stud farm, Isaac paid $2,000 for the chestnut colt The Hero, foaled in 1889, hoping to win stakes races worth ten times the purchase price.97
At the nearby Kentucky Association stables, where Isaac housed his string of horses, the master jockey would have worked with his assistant trainer, grooms, and stable boys to keep all his horses in top condition through the winter in preparation for the spring races. Horses were a pricey investment, so the gentleman jockey had to be hoping he had a potential champion among his Thoroughbreds. He also began to receive offers for contract work for the next season from Frank Ehret's Hellgate Stable, F. C. McLewee, James Bradley, and R. T. Holloway. Additionally, Hellgate Stable commissioned him to “purchase one or two good colts in Kentucky, that promise to do well this year in their three year old form.”98 With this commission, Isaac could add horse trader to his growing list of occupations.
The Prince of Jockeys Page 42
