A team of Black women horse owners made history after their first Kentucky Oaks Day win.
The group of five has been celebrating their victory, which their horse “Seven Scents” helped to secure, as Living the Dream’s first all-Black women team.
“We’re not only owners. We’re winners. We’re showing up at the tracks, we’re representing, and we’re taking home prizes,” horse owner Dr. Tiffany Daniels said.
“The first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby was an African American male. We’re in 2022 right now, and we don’t see a lot of us,” horse owner Coya Robinson added.
The African American male she referred to was thoroughbred horse racing jockey Oliver Lewis. Lewis won the very first Kentucky Derby on May 17, 1875, as his 37-minute and 75-seconds-long ride set an American record over the mile and a half distance.
He was trained by African American thoroughbred horse racing trainer Ansel Williamson. Williamson, born a slave in 1806, began his career in the 1850s while still enslaved and later became a member of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. He trained horses who won the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, Travers Stakes, Phoenix Stakes, Jerome Handicap, and Withers Stakes.
Robinson said that she joined the group of recent Kentucky Derby winners to make sure Black women were represented at the famed sporting event.
“It was a chance for me to live a legacy for my four daughters, for my goddaughters, so I thought it was a good opportunity as a woman,” she said.
Her fellow team member noted that she and her groupmates followed the footsteps of a historical Black woman figure who was also a horse jockey during slavery.
“Us specifically, we’re following in the footsteps of Eliza Carpenter, who was a slave who became a horse owner and an actual jockey,” Daniels said.
Known as Aunt Eliza, Carpenter was the only Black racehorse owner in Oklahoma. For over thirty years, she raced and owned numerous Thoroughbred horses in country circuits, winning many races and lots of money.
Daniels also mentioned that the Ed Brown Society–an organization that recruits minority college students and introduces them to high-level horse industry jobs–would help increase Black representation in horse racing.
The organization recently teamed up with the Kentucky horse racing complex Churchill Downs to create a scholarship for minority students.
“Churchill Downs is proud to have joined the Ed Brown Society at the Ed Brown partnership level. Today, we are making a donation of $50,000 to join their efforts and their mission to achieve more diversity in the industry of horse racing,” said Churchill Downs’ vice president of communications, Tonya Abeln.
