On the heels of the reintroduction of the pari-mutuel machines in 1908, Matt Winn again took a page from the book of M. L. Clark and returned the free infield policy to Churchill Downs on Derby Day in 1910. It was a fitting start to what would be the most important two decades of growth in the Derby’s history. The “free field” had been an important part of the Derby’s charm and identity in the early years but had been discontinued by the turn of the century in a shortsighted attempt to increase revenue. In the early years, the infield possessed a country fair atmosphere on Derby Day. Spectators could drive their buggies and wagons right into the middle of the racecourse and be part of a gathering that the Courier-Journal had described as “a regular Fifteenth-amendment crowd, for everybody was there, without regard to age, color, sex, or previous condition of servitude.”1
Though the crowds in the free infield were small and tame by modern standards, they were a precursor to the unique infield environment that would begin to take its modern shape and feel in the 1960s, eventually earning a reputation as a world-class site of unbridled revelry. Winn himself would put the free infield policy on permanent hiatus in 1920 (a decision announced the year before), when the Derby’s status as a major sporting extravaganza was more secure and demand for tickets was too high to justify free admission. But during the 1910s crowds filled the free infield on Derby Day, creating a festival atmosphere that connoted a significance of the race that transcended the world of horse racing. The 1910 crowd witnessed a front-running victory by lukewarm favorite Donau for his owner William Gerst of Nashville. Besides his win in the Derby, Donau was best known for making a scarcely fathomable forty-one starts as a two-year-old and for a disagreeable temperament that once manifested itself in a starting line tantrum that ended with Donau lying in the dirt, refusing to budge.
In 1912, with American racing decimated by antigambling laws, the Daily Racing Form declared that “there is no disputing the preeminence of the Kentucky Derby.”2 The Kentucky New Era proclaimed that the Derby stood “virtually alone as the sole survivor of the great classics of the American turf.”3 The following year its position would be further strengthened when the English Jockey Club passed the Jersey Act, named for its sponsor Victor Child Villiers, seventh Earl of Jersey, that effectively disqualified horses bred in the United States from being recognized as “pure” Thoroughbreds.4
In the early 1900s England had become a popular destination for wealthy American racehorse owners like James Ben Ali Haggin as racing and gambling became increasingly unwelcome in a growing number of American jurisdictions. The English did not appreciate the influx of new horses, which caused the supply of racehorses to outpace demand and led to a drop in the prices of English bloodstock. English authorities addressed the issue by raising questions about the American horses’ purity of blood. The condescension toward American stock in England, combined with the onset of World War I soon thereafter, made European racing an unattractive option for most American owners. The Kentucky Derby was an indirect beneficiary of this turn of events as it was one of the few high-profile races in America that had survived the reform movements aimed at eliminating gambling and horse racing across the country. The Jersey Act would be modified in 1949 to recognize American Thoroughbreds. But by that time, American racing in general—and the Kentucky Derby specifically—were on much firmer footing than they had been in 1913.
Derby postcard, ca. 1913. (Postcard Collection, KUAV2008MS016-08-0139, University of Kentucky Archives, Lexington.)
As the Jersey Act was being finalized in England, long-shot Donerail won the Kentucky Derby in track-record time. Parimutuel wagering was still something of a novelty at that time, having been reintroduced to Churchill Downs only five years earlier. A $2 win ticket on Donerail paid the princely sum of $184.90, a figure that made headlines around the country and is still a record payout for the Derby. One of the thousands in attendance that day for the first time was August Belmont Jr., who watched the race with Kentucky governor James B. McCreary. Among his many accomplishments, Belmont was the chairman of the powerful Jockey Club, a founder of Belmont Park in New York, a primary financier of the construction of the New York City subway system, and a major Thoroughbred owner and breeder. Belmont’s presence helped to resurrect and reaffirm the status of the race, which had still not yet completely recovered from its decline in the 1890s despite the significant signs of improvement and a brighter outlook in the face of serious decline in competition from other racing jurisdictions. Eastern racing’s elite had long been skeptical about the quality of racing west of the Hudson River, but many joined Belmont in attendance the following year.
In 1914 the track record was again lowered at the Derby, this time by a gelding named Old Rosebud. The winning owner that year was Hamilton Applegate, the son of principal Churchill Downs stockholder W. E. Applegate and himself a Churchill Downs board member and director. The record-breaking colt was named after a brand of whiskey produced by Applegate and Sons distillery, which was also owned by the Applegate family. Old Rosebud paid only $3.40 for a $2 bet, but he proved to be a very talented runner over the course of his long career, winning half of his eighty lifetime starts. His victory was well covered by the national press, increasing the national exposure for Louisville’s race. The New York Times reported that the 1914 Derby “was witnessed by one of the largest crowds that ever attended the event, including many society folk from neighboring cities, and leaders in turf circles from all over the country.”5 The Daily Racing Form observed that the “visiting easterners” were “especially numerous.”6
The “leaders in turf circles” who were part of the 1914 Derby crowd returned to Louisville in 1915, some choosing to begin their racing seasons in Louisville for the first time. That year a talented filly named Regret became the first female to win the Derby, beating a top field of three-year-olds in wire-to-wire fashion for leading owner and multimillionaire Harry P. Whitney. “I do not care if she never wins another race, nor if she never starts in another race. She has won the greatest race in America and I am satisfied,” Whitney told reporters and well-wishers after the race.7 “The glory of winning this event is big enough, and Regret can retire to the New Jersey farm any time now.”8 Whitney, the dashing eldest son of wealthy former secretary of the navy William C. Whitney, had inherited fabulous amounts of money from both his father and his uncle, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne. Whitney was married to artist and socialite Gertrude Vanderbilt and was an avid sportsman and a noted philanthropist. Because of his high national profile and celebrity status, Whitney’s victory in the Derby only added to the national publicity that the race had received during the two previous years.
Regret, the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby, ridden by jockey Joe Notter. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Harry P. Whitney (left) twice owned the winner of the Derby: Regret (1915) and Whiskery (1927). (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
The year after Regret’s historic win, Churchill Downs directors announced that they would raise the purse of the track’s signature race to $15,000 for the 1917 running. This move was partially facilitated by renewed support of the Derby by eastern horsemen. The first group of owners and horses to compete for the richer purse was the most geographically diverse the event had ever attracted. With an interruption of European racing during the Great War, many American and European owners returned their stock to the United States, and some found their way to Churchill Downs in the spring. One of the international horses at the 1917 Derby was Omar Khayyam, named after an eleventh-century Persian poet and mathematician. Foaled in England and shipped to the United States as a yearling, Omar Khayyam rallied from well off the pace to catch favored Ticket in the homestretch, becoming the first foreign-born horse to wear the Derby roses.
Prior to the 1918 Derby, as the United States was in its second year of involvement in World War I, there was some question of the propriety of conducting a race meeting in a time of war. Colonel Winn was friendly with President Woodrow Wilson’s personal physician, Admiral Cary Travers Grayson, who assured Winn that the president supported the continuance of racing. Armed with that information, Winn was emboldened to stand up to antiracing journalists and Kentucky governor Augustus Owsley Stanley, who had voiced his own concerns about wartime racing. In an attempt to gain some positive press, Colonel Winn promised to donate 10 percent of the proceeds from the 1918 meeting to the Red Cross. That spring Churchill Downs harvested one thousand bushels of potatoes in the infield to donate to the American war effort.
Exterminator, with jockey Albert Johnson. Known as “Old Bones” to his fans, Exterminator won 1918 Kentucky Derby. Matt Winn called him the greatest Thoroughbred he ever saw. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Previews of the 1918 Derby appeared in newspapers across the country, many of which assured readers that patriotic displays would be part of the Derby event that year. “Patriotism will be the keynote of the opening of the meeting, and a number of exercises of a military and patriotic nature have been arranged that will be in keeping with the times,” the Thoroughbred Record reported.9 That afternoon a chestnut gelding named Exterminator put on a masterful performance in the muddy going. Exterminator, later affectionately known as Old Bones by his many followers, went on to win fifty of his ninety-nine career starts.10 He was successful at distances from five and a half furlongs to two and one-fourth miles (a furlong is one-eighth of a mile), and became one of the most popular racehorses ever to compete in the United States. Some of Exterminator’s popularity may be attributed to his humble origins and surprising rise to prominence in the 1918 Derby.
Exterminator’s owner, Willis Kilmer, made his fortune in the patent medicine industry as head of marketing and sales for a company that manufactured Kilmer’s uncle’s invention, “Swamp Root,” a concoction of alcohol and the extracts of leaves and herbs that purportedly promotes kidney and liver function and is still manufactured today. Kilmer was looked down upon at first by many in the elite circles of American racing but soon became more accepted, in part because of his willingness to throw lavish parties. Exterminator, however, very nearly did not run in the Derby at all. In the months leading up to the 1918 Derby, Kilmer’s best hope for victory seemed to lie with Sun Briar, champion two-year-old of 1917 and early favorite for the Kentucky Derby in 1918. But Kilmer’s confidence in Sun Briar dropped after a poor showing at the Kentucky Association track in Lexington in the spring of 1918. Kilmer then bought Exterminator, a long shot for the Derby who had a propensity for fast morning workouts, to serve as a sparring partner for Sun Briar. Sun Briar failed to progress to Kilmer’s satisfaction as the big race neared, and it looked like his Derby hopes would not be realized. But Matt Winn encouraged Kilmer to instead enter Exterminator, the workhorse. Exterminator was the longest shot in the field but won convincingly. Colonel Winn never hesitated to call Exterminator the best horse he had ever seen, nor was he shy in reminding people of his involvement in Exterminator’s career.
In the summer after Exterminator’s Derby victory, Winn issued a statement declaring that geldings (like Exterminator) would no longer be eligible to compete in the Derby.11 Though the military role of horses had significantly declined with the advent of modern warfare, one purported justification of horse racing was to help determine superior genes that could be used to strengthen the breed and thereby improve a nation’s military capability. Two months after the announcement, however, the Armistice was signed, ending the fighting in Europe, and the antigelding policy was never actually implemented at the Derby.
Willis Sharpe Kilmer, owner of Exterminator and promoter of the patent medicine Swamp Root. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Commander J. K. L. Ross (right) and H. G. Bedwell, the owner and trainer, respectively, of Sir Barton, at Saratoga Race Course, ca. 1918. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
The following year, 1919, Sir Barton became the first horse to capture both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, then went on to win the Belmont Stakes to complete what would later be called the American Triple Crown (the modern order and distances of the three races would not be firmly established until the 1930s). Sir Barton’s owner, Commander J. K. L. Ross from Canada, had inherited millions of dollars from his father, who had founded the Canadian Pacific Railway in partnership. Ross was well known for his large wagers, including one on the outcome of the 1919 Derby for $50,000 with Arnold Rothstein, himself notorious for his role in the infamous Black Sox scandal, in which Chicago players were alleged to have accepted money to “throw” the World Series, that took place later that fall.12 The 1919 Derby was run before what the New York Times (yet again) called the largest crowd ever assembled at Churchill Downs, estimated at fifty thousand. Estimates of the 1916 Derby had run as high as sixty thousand, but Churchill Downs brass never shied away from the term “record crowd.” As national interest in the Derby continued to grow, the crowds would continue to set records.
Sir Barton, the first horse to capture the American Triple Crown, with jockey Earl Sande. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Sir Barton was the fourth future Hall of Famer to win the Derby in six years, topping a remarkable string of successes for Winn and Churchill Downs. Sir Barton was inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in 1957 along with Regret and Exterminator. They would be joined by Old Rosebud the following year. These victories by top-class horses in the 1910s helped to raise the Derby’s stature within American racing and American sport.
In reviewing Sir Barton’s 1919 Derby, journalists employed poetic imagery and flowery language that had been absent during wartime. The Derby was fortunate to be hitting its stride at a time when the craft of professional sportswriting was coming into its own. Journalists were eager to celebrate a new culture of leisure that stood in marked contrast to the most destructive war in the history of humankind. They declared the dawn of a golden age of American sports. One particularly verbose reporter for the Chicago Tribune described the Derby that year as “a gay festival upon a fair Kentucky landscape after a blithe renewal of an epic tradition which is sacred to this picturesque soil of Daniel Boone, pretty women, and Henry Watterson.” The host city of Louisville, the writer rhapsodized, had “wide old historic streets, a monument to its Confederate dead, habits strange and pleasant to the invader from the north, and men and women who sacrifice their comfort to make you happy.”13 A Lexington journalist reported, “The Kentucky Derby, all the romance, the rich flavor of tradition and the far-famed glamour the name implies, were more than realized today when the biggest crowd on record appeared at Churchill Downs. It was Kentucky’s big day and the Kentuckians were there to demonstrate their state pride. And from every section of the country the clans had gathered to become Kentuckians temporarily.”14 By the end of the 1910s Kentucky and the Derby had become something that Americans wished to experience, and patrons of the Derby were more than mere witnesses to a sporting event. They “became” Kentuckians for a day.
A crowd of sixty thousand was on hand at Churchill Downs for the forty-sixth running of the Kentucky Derby on May 8, 1920. The “mass of humanity” in the stands saw an undersized brown gelding named Paul Jones break sharply from post position 2 and take an early lead as the field passed by the grandstand for the first time on a racetrack still slow and drying out from the previous day’s rain. Held under restraint by jockey Ted Rice down the backstretch, Paul Jones was turned loose as the pair came out of the final turn toward the finish line, gamely holding off a determined rally by Harry P. Whitney’s Upset in the homestretch to win by a head in a dramatic finish. It was a record-setting day at Churchill Downs: new Derby marks were established for field size, attendance, purse (prize money), and wagering handle. The New York Times called the race “the greatest Derby ever run.”15 After the trophy presentation, winning owner Ral Parr declared, “It is a grand and glorious feeling to be able to say that your horse won the Kentucky Derby, the most famous race in America, and I am certainly feeling that way right now. We found plenty of Southern hospitality during our stay and I shall always cherish the memories of this visit to Louisville.”16
The city of Louisville had been inundated with racing fans all week. As many as twelve special Derby trains arrived from Chicago alone. The visitors overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure of accommodations; many people had to sleep as best they could in hotel hallways and lobbies. Some hired taxies to drive them around all night, and some decided to forego sleep altogether in favor of establishing a place at the front of the admission line at the racetrack. This scramble to find a bed in Louisville during Derby Week would soon become as much a part of the tradition as roses and mint juleps.
Man o’ War working out. Widely considered to be the best American racehorse of the twentieth century, Man o’ War famously bypassed the 1920 Kentucky Derby. (Cook Collection, Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
One person who was not in Louisville that week, however, was Samuel D. Riddle, owner of Man o’ War, the most celebrated three-year-old colt in America. Man o’ War would eventually join the pantheon of 1920s American sports icons that included Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, Bill Tilden, and Bobby Jones, but he would do so without running in the Kentucky Derby. Riddle chose to begin Man o’ War’s racing season in the Preakness Stakes in Maryland, held that year ten days after the Derby and run over a distance of one and one-eighth miles. Riddle’s decision to avoid the Derby that year was partially based on his belief that May was too early to ask a three-year-old to travel the Derby’s one and one-fourth mile distance. Also, the horse was stabled in Maryland for the winter, requiring a long and possibly dangerous train trip to Louisville. Sir Barton had won the Preakness only four days after winning the Kentucky Derby, but Riddle had his sights set on prestigious New York races later in the summer and wanted to make sure his horse would be fresh for a full campaign.
Man o’ War won the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes on his way to an undefeated three-year-old season in 1920. He is generally accepted among racing historians as the greatest American Thoroughbred of the twentieth century, and among the most outstanding equine athletes of any time or place. After his retirement from racing, he attracted over fifty thousand visitors each year to Faraway Farm outside Lexington, Kentucky. Man o’ War’s twenty-first birthday party was broadcast to a national radio audience, and his funeral drew a crowd of thousands. Riddle’s decision not to run a top-class three-year-old in the Kentucky Derby was newsworthy in 1920, but by the 1930s that decision would be unfathomable; seventeen years later, when Riddle owned a top-class three-year-old son of Man o’ War named War Admiral, the decision to run him in the Kentucky Derby would be an easy one.
By 1920 the Derby had made great strides from relatively humble beginnings. The large crowds and journalistic fanfare that the Kentucky Derby attracted despite Man o’ War’s absence were testament to the fact that it was already more than just a horse race—it was a celebration of Kentucky, a place and an idea with deeply rooted historical and cultural meaning for Americans. But the fact that it was possible for the owner of America’s greatest racehorse to choose not to run in the Derby shows that the event was still growing in terms of popularity and cultural cachet on its way to becoming America’s greatest sports spectacle.
In the 1920s the rapidly moving and changing American cultural landscape included waves of restriction and rebellion in a conflicted atmosphere that produced jazz, flappers, women’s suffrage, and bathtub gin—as well as Prohibition, the Scopes Monkey Trial, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. In the Roaring Twenties, Kentucky was a destination of escape from the realities and complexities of modern life for an apprehensive population that elected Warren G. Harding president on his campaign promise of a “return to normalcy” after an internationally and domestically active Wilson administration and World War I.17 In an era of increasing commercialization and commodification in which President Coolidge famously declared that “the business of America is business,” the Derby itself was becoming a consumable commodity as an experience. A journalist’s description of the Derby as the “best advertisement [Kentucky] ever had” underscored that process.18
In 1921 “Colonel” Edward Riley Bradley won his first of four Derbies as an owner when his colt Behave Yourself caught another Bradley-owned colt, Black Servant, in the stretch, but because of a sizeable wager he had riding on Black Servant to win, Bradley had mixed emotions over the outcome.19 Colonel Bradley had been a successful bookmaker in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Memphis before opening a casino resort in Palm Beach, Florida, called the Beach Club. The club’s charter allowed Bradley to operate “such games of amusement as the managers and members may from time to time agree on,” which reportedly netted Bradley in excess of $1 million annually.20 Acting on his physician’s advice to work less and spend more time outdoors, in 1906 Bradley had purchased the tract of land outside Lexington, Kentucky, that would become Idle Hour Stock Farm, one of the most famous and successful American Thoroughbred breeding operations of the early twentieth century. The rolling hills, white fences, and grand mansion at Idle Hour embodied the archetypical Kentucky horse farm as imagined by outsiders.
While Behave Yourself and Black Servant were being lauded on the track, the black servants back at the farm were also celebrating. The New York Times reported that “every man and woman, white and colored, on Idle Hour Stock Farm received a bonus for ER Bradley’s success in [the] Derby.”21 The irony of a patronizing story about black employees celebrating the success of a pair of horses named Black Servant and Behave Yourself seems to have been lost on the press. The image of happy black workers back at the farm while the white owners were at the races reinforced the link between the Derby and the plantation-like horse farms of central Kentucky owned by goateed Kentucky colonels that evoked the romance of the Old South for many Americans. The appeal of these images was very much a part of the Derby popularity in its age of ascent.
Colonel Edward Riley Bradley, center, at Hialeah Race Track in south Florida, ca. 1928, won four Kentucky Derbies as an owner. (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
Because of its allusions to idyllic plantation scenes and simpler times, Stephen Collins Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” served as an appropriate anthem for the Derby as an antidote to the complicated, modern world of the 1920s. The first published reports of the playing of “My Old Kentucky Home” at the Kentucky Derby appeared in 1921.22 By the end of the decade, Colonel Winn had replaced “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “My Old Kentucky Home” as the song to be played as the Derby contestants made their way onto the racetrack. It soon became one of the most recognized traditions associated with the event, part of the emotional experience of the Kentucky Derby. As early as the 1930s, journalists covering the race were conveying an incorrect assumption that the song had been a part of Derby tradition since the very beginning.23
Idle Hour Farm, owned by E. R. Bradley, outside Lexington, Kentucky, ca. 1926. (Keeneland Library, Lexington, Kentucky.)
The Commonwealth of Kentucky was also involved in the creation and promotion of the Old South imagery that had become associated with the state and with the Derby. In 1921 the descendants of its antebellum owners sold Federal Hill, the mansion and property in Bardstown, Kentucky, that was purported to be the source of inspiration for Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. There is no real evidence that Foster ever actually laid eyes on his relatives’ estate, but Federal Hill was opened as a state historical shrine in 1923 before being taken over by the Kentucky Division of State Parks in 1936.24
The house and property that constitute “My Old Kentucky Home” in Bardstown quickly became a major tourist attraction, and Foster’s song by the same name has been Kentucky’s official state song since 1928.25 The adoption of the song and associated imagery by the Kentucky Derby and the Commonwealth reflects the attractiveness of the “good old days” to Kentuckians and to the tourists who continue to patronize the Derby and Federal Hill in Bardstown.26
“My Old Kentucky Home.” The Federal Hill mansion in Bardstown, Kentucky, was, according to legend, the inspiration for Stephen Foster’s ballad “My Old Kentucky Home.” The house and surrounding acreage became a state park in the 1920s, but there is no evidence that Foster ever visited Federal Hill, which was built and owned by his relatives. (Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort.)
The playing of Foster’s ode to bygone times as a prelude to the big race reminded spectators that they were witnesses to something special. Similarly, the long tradition of Kentucky governors’ attendance at the Derby and participation in postrace ceremonies added political gravity to the event and strengthened the bond between Kentucky and its Derby. In 1922 Governor Edwin P. Morrow presented winning owner Benjamin Block with a gold service tray after Block’s colt Morvich justified his support from the bettors that made him the post-time favorite, taking control of the race soon after the start and cruising to a length-and-a-half victory over E. R. Bradley’s Bet Mosie. Morrow took the opportunity at the trophy presentation to wax poetic about the Commonwealth: “Kentucky has always recognized and honored courage, courage in men and women, and courage in the Thoroughbred,” he declared. “Today before the beauty and chivalry of Kentucky, courage was the quality which won the Kentucky Derby.”27 (Morrow himself knew something about courage as he was a vocal opponent of lynching and violence against blacks. In 1920 he summoned the National Guard to protect Will Lockett, a black man on trial for the murder of a white child, from a large lynch mob in Lexington.) Block, a New Yorker, happily accepted the trophy, exclaiming, “Next to the thrill and satisfaction afforded me by winning the Derby, I feel gratification in having met and come to know Kentucky and Kentuckians. They have fully justified everything that I have always heard of southern hospitality.”28 Block then attempted to summarize the significance of his Derby win, declaring, “It is the greatest day of my life. I feel too deeply to talk about it. My horse has won other races, but there is only one Kentucky Derby. Morvich could bring to me, or to himself, no greater honor.”29 Block concluded his acceptance by acknowledging the particular kindness and hospitality of Colonel Winn, a professional dispenser of the stuff, whose “title” alone evoked images of the Old South with all its charm and allure.
That year the New York Times reported that the Derby Day migration toward the racetrack in Louisville began very early in the morning (“in large part the municipality overlooked entirely the little formality of retiring for the night”) as “old-time hacks with drivers of varying hues ranging between ebony and chrome yellow, were bustling and busy at what appeared [to be] uncanny hours.”30 In the face of increased urbanization, modernization, tensions between races, classes, and genders, and uncertainty on the international political stage, many Americans wished to experience what Kentucky seemed to have. The Derby and the festival atmosphere that surrounded it gave travelers an opportunity to escape by becoming Kentuckians for a day. In Kentucky, Americans could access, either personally or vicariously, a taste of the Old South without having to travel to the geographically and culturally distant Deep South. The Derby gave Americans a chance to experience a quasi–theme park version of a bygone era. In the 1920s the Derby was a destination where blacks were literally at the service of whites and women resembled the southern belles of yesteryear—at a time when traditional gender roles and racial hierarchies were being challenged in reality.
Colonel Matt Winn did his own part to maintain the connection between the Derby and the “good old days” in the minds of potential Derby patrons. Winn employed, in his words, a “long line of colored boys” as valets, who accompanied him on his travels around the country.31 Most of the attention Winn gives his servants in his memoirs comes in the form of derogatory or condescending anecdotes. In one story the colonel recalls a trip he made to a Miami racetrack in 1925. Winn and his traveling companion found themselves inconvenienced when the hotel wouldn’t allow their black servants to enter the premises. “The following day, when Butler’s Negro valet and mine tried to get to our quarters in the hotel to serve us, they were barred. This promised to handicap us; we had taken along some Kentucky ham, and other Kentucky products, and had expected the boys to cook in our quarters and act as waiters while we entertained for some friends. The colored boys were needed to fit into our plans, but the room clerk ruled them out.”32 All ended well for Winn and his companion when strings were pulled, allowing the “colored boys” to prepare and serve the meal as planned.
Though black jockeys had all but disappeared from racing by the 1910s, black grooms and stable hands were still quite common. Journalists regularly referred to the black stable crews in their coverage of the Derby, but the “help” did not receive the praise or accolades that white trainers and jockeys did. Stories of happy black employees celebrating Derby victories in the 1920s reinforced the image of the happy servile Negro of the Old South. Americans had long understood Kentucky to be more racially tolerant and less volatile than the “Deep” South, and these feel-good stories about black servants and employees at Derby time validated those assumptions for those who wanted to believe.
In Louisville, whites prided themselves on a “cordial” relationship between whites and blacks in their city. As evidence, whites in Louisville could point to the fact that in their city blacks were not denied the right to vote, streetcars were not segregated, and serious race-related violence was relatively rare.33 According to historian George C. Wright, these assertions were, strictly speaking, accurate, though the difference in oppression was only a matter of degree in comparison to what blacks faced in the deeper South.34 Despite the reality, the longtime perception of the existence of a harmonious relationship between whites and blacks in Louisville and Kentucky created a more attractive environment for people traveling to, or imagining, the Kentucky Derby. This perception allowed Americans to envision Kentucky as a romantic place that embodied the most appealing elements of the Old South, and to ignore the sinister realities and legacies of slavery.
The process by which Kentucky “became” a pseudo-Confederate state after the fact is neither short nor simple. But it is an integral element of the Derby’s growth in popularity in the first part of the twentieth century, so it must be explained. The explanation requires a brief abandonment of chronological narrative and a return to the nineteenth-century roots of Kentucky’s “southern turn.”
Historically, Kentucky was very much a “slave state,” as it was home to approximately 225,000 slaves at the dawn of the Civil War, and slavery remained legal there until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Kentucky remained in the Union, however, never joining the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Kentucky flaunted a position of “belligerent neutrality.”35 Kentucky sent two to three times as many men to fight in Union blue than in Confederate gray, but by the turn of the century Kentucky had become decidedly pro-Confederacy in its collective memory, and honored its Confederate dead with memorials and statues across the state.
One of the earliest indications of the desire on the part of prominent Louisvillians to pursue and embrace a southern identity for their city was the decision to organize and host the Great Southern Exposition, which opened in 1883. In August of that year the nation turned its attention to Louisville when President Chester A. Arthur addressed the crowd gathered for the exposition’s opening ceremony. The expo combined elements of trade shows, museums, and world’s fairs and contained over fifteen hundred exhibits, including a miniature southern plantation. In organizing the event, Louisville business leaders, including Louisville Jockey Club president M. L. Clark, hoped to promote their city’s industrial and commercial capabilities and achievements, thus placing Louisville among the world’s great cities.36
The fact that city leaders chose to call their event the Great Southern Exposition reflects Louisville’s wish to tie itself to a push for a “New South,” which advocates hoped would be part of a growing national economy based upon industrialization and commerce. One of the leading proponents of the New South was Henry Watterson, a former Confederate officer and editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal from 1868 to 1919.37 During this period Watterson was among the most nationally visible Kentuckians. Watterson’s impassioned and articulate advocacy for the New South helped to convince the rest of the nation that Kentucky was indeed a southern state. His criticism of racism and violence suggested that Kentucky was a relatively moderate and progressive southern state, and his championing of the idea of a New South helped to further sectional healing as businessmen from all regions united around a goal of economic prosperity. Watterson’s vision of a Louisville-led New South that would integrate itself into the growing national economy helped to reduce sectional tensions at the same time as it helped to raise Louisville’s national profile.
In an 1894 speech that reflected the budding desire of many Americans to put the Civil War behind them and unite behind a new spirit of nationalism and industrial strength, Watterson addressed the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal order whose membership consisted of ex-Union soldiers, at its annual encampment reunion in Pittsburgh. He spoke of sectional reconciliation and of a common bond among all who had fought in the Civil War in proposing that the group’s convention be held in Louisville the following year.
Candor compels me to say that there was a time when our people did not want to see you. There was a time, when, without any invitation whatever, either written or verbal, without so much as a suggestion of welcome, you insisted upon giving us the honor of your company, and, as it turned out, when we were but ill-prepared to receive you. It [would be] a pity, now that we are prepared, now that the lid is off the pot and the latch-string hangs outside the door, you should refuse us the happiness of entertaining you, of receiving you.
Whatever regrets may linger in any bosom, no one of us has any reason to blush for the events of the greatest combat known to human annals. There was never a war where there was so little of public wrong, so much of private generosity: never a war whose verdict was so decisive, whose consequences have been so beneficent. Thank God, the flag you will find there is our flag, as well as your flag: the flag of a united people and a glorious Republic, to freemen all over the world at once a symbol and a pledge.
Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.38
Watterson’s speech brought tears to his own eyes, and elicited cheers from his enthusiastic audience. More important, he was successful in convincing the GAR to come to Louisville; the following year’s encampment in 1895 remains the largest convention ever held in the city.39 Ironically, this meeting of ex-Union soldiers helped to solidify Louisville’s pseudo-Confederate identity as much as hosting the Southern Exposition had in the 1880s. Newspapers across the nation covered the encampment and lauded the southerners in Louisville who graciously welcomed their northern brothers in an environment of reconciliation and understanding. On the day before the festivities were set to begin, the New York Times reported that the “cherished plan of having the veterans of the Blue and the Gray meet for once in good fellowship on Southern soil, and together eat of the fruits of peace and good will that have ripened through three decades that have passed since the stirring days of the sixties, is on the eve of realization, and gorgeously has Louisville arrayed herself for the occasion.”40
The encampment had been held in Baltimore, a city with just as much claim to southern status as Louisville, in 1882. But the Times made no mention of the South in its coverage of the Baltimore encampment that year.41 This discrepancy reveals both a successful effort by Louisvillians and other Kentuckians to transform their city and state into one with a Confederate past, and the changing conditions in American culture and society taking shape by the 1890s.
In 1895 a large monument honoring Confederate soldiers was erected on Louisville’s busy Third Street. Though the Union cause was the “home team” and the “winning team,” no similar monument honoring the forces that fought for the United States of America in the Civil War Union would be built in the Falls City, once a center of Union sympathy and strength, for almost two decades. In 1902 the Kentucky state legislature established a Confederate Home for Southern Veterans and appropriated funds to create a monument commemorating the Confederate dead in the battlefield at Perryville. No monument to the Union dead would be built until 1928 after Congress appropriated money for the project. In 1910 Kentucky’s General Assembly gave the Daughters of the Confederacy money to finish a statue of General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate pillager and raider from the Bluegrass State. More than ten thousand people attended its unveiling the following year, and the statue remains in its place of prominence on Lexington’s old courthouse lawn.
By the early twentieth century the wounds of the Civil War were healing as (white) Americans were uniting behind visions of white supremacy, a growing national economy, and a fledgling American empire. They blamed “the race problem” for the Civil War and celebrated the memory of the Old South as a place where “American” attributes like republicanism and self-sufficiency were valued.42 The Derby was a beneficiary of this new interest in the South and in sectional reconciliation as Kentuckians embraced a new Confederate identity for their state, making Louisville and the Kentucky Derby more attractive to visitors. In the turn-of-the-century environment of Social Darwinism and the White Man’s Burden, southern sins no longer seemed so egregious to the rest of the nation as they had immediately after the Civil War. Southerners no longer felt the need to justify past action as the rest of the country began to celebrate the old Confederacy as a welcome part of a collective American national memory.
At the turn of the century two of the United States’ most popular writers, Kentucky natives James Lane Allen and John Fox Jr., were shifting their attention from the Kentucky highlands to the increasingly chic central Kentucky bluegrass region, where horse farms resembled the great southern plantations of yesteryear. In 1903 Fox’s The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, the story of an antebellum Kentucky mountain boy named Chad who enters a new world when he joins a party that floats down the Kentucky River and into the bluegrass, became an immediate best seller upon publication and would remain popular with American readers through the 1930s. It would be adapted for the stage and was made into a Hollywood motion picture at least three times. The novel essentially worked as an examination of Kentucky society on two fronts. Highland and lowland Kentucky are compared in the first half of the novel as the protagonist is caught between two worlds in his thoughts and sentiments. In the novel’s second part Fox examines Kentucky’s role as a border state in the Civil War, as Chad is forced to choose on which side he will fight.
Confederate monument in a Union city, Third Street, Louisville (Postcard Collection, KUKAV2008MS016-08-209, University of Kentucky Archives, Lexington.)
General John Hunt Morgan memorial, old courthouse lawn, Lexington. This statue, unveiled in 1911, exemplifies the Confederate identity Kentucky embraced in the early twentieth century. (Courtesy of Maryjean Wall.)
Fox portrays Kentucky as romantic, alluring, and unique—a land of contrast and contradiction. He describes mountain society as backward, isolated, and quaint while depicting the bluegrass as a land of refinement, social stratification, chivalry, horses, virtues, and vices. Chad’s two love interests, one a simple mountain girl and the other a Confederate officer’s daughter and bluegrass belle, represent these two societies. Ultimately Chad is unable to choose between them, but he does not return to the mountains. Instead he heads west, still the guardian (or shepherd) of a spirit of individualism and freedom that was his inheritance from his pioneer forefathers.
The novel, stage play, and film versions of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come were immensely popular in the early twentieth century. They captured much of the essence of Kentucky as it was perceived by outsiders at that time. Even though Louisville had no real connection to the mountainous region, and did not resemble the agrarian and genteel bluegrass region as described by Fox, it was home to the Kentucky Derby. As such, Louisville and the Derby inherited all the romance and mythology that had become associated with the state as a whole, particularly once Kentucky’s perceived connection to the Old South began to outshine its connection to backward, feud-prone mountaineers.
Another best-selling book that followed the trend toward a shift in attention from Appalachian Kentucky to the central Kentucky bluegrass region in American popular culture was In Old Kentucky, published in 1910. This was an adaptation of a wildly popular musical melodrama by the same title written by Charles T. Dazey. The story follows a mountain girl, Madge, who falls in love with a young bluegrass gentleman, Frank Layton, who is visiting the mountains to check on some property he owns there. The tale reaches its climax when Madge travels to Lexington to warn Layton that he is in danger of being killed by a rival for her affection. While there, Madge anonymously takes the place of a drunken jockey to ride Layton’s horse to victory in the big race of the Lexington meet. Along the way readers become familiar with Layton’s loyal black servant, Uncle Neb, who reverently refers to Layton as Marse Frank, and an older friend named Colonel Sandusky Doolittle, a caricature of a Kentucky gentleman who drinks mint juleps and smokes cigars all day. The musical version of the book, according to one review, featured “Negroes who can dance, a pickaninny band that can make considerable noise and a dusky little conductor who can swing the baton with the best of them.”43 Both the book and the play were hugely successful and further reinforced the notion that Kentucky was a timeless bastion of chivalry, manners, refinement, and benevolent black servitude.
Like The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, In Old Kentucky includes a main character who leaves the mountains for the central Kentucky lowlands. These characters mirrored the larger trend in American culture in the early 1900s, when Kentucky “became” southern, national attention moved away from “backward” Kentucky highlanders, and Americans embraced sectional reconciliation and celebrated Confederate memory. In this environment the idea of a place like the fictional lowland Kentucky, where there were charming and chivalrous Kentucky colonels, beautiful bluegrass belles, and singing black servants, was an attractive one as the Kentucky Derby became a destination for people who wanted to experience such a place for themselves.
Kentucky maintained its reputation as a place of romance, contradiction, and intrigue as the Derby’s popularity and reputation grew exponentially in the early twentieth century. As Churchill Downs and the city of Louisville prepared to celebrate the Golden Jubilee Derby in the spring of 1924, the entire state was readying for a two-week statewide homecoming celebration to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the first permanent settlement in Kentucky, at Harrodsburg. Enthusiasm and state pride were at an all-time high, and one hundred thousand expatriates were expected to return to the bluegrass for the celebration. A New York Times article explained the appeal: “Kentucky has personality. No other of these United States has such individuality. No other has the distinct savor, the racy flavor, of what was once the dark and bloody ground. Kentucky is the only state that is an entity aside from its climate, geography, products or population.”44 It was this belief that made the Derby an attractive destination for people, who by the 1920s were traveling to Louisville by plane, train, and automobile. A Chicago journalist’s description of that year’s event as a place where “colored boys with golden horseshoes about their necks gave advice to modish beauties with diamonds around their throats,” and where “arrogant feminists grew meek and humble” provides some insight into which elements of Kentucky’s “individuality” outsiders found attractive at the Derby.45
Attendance predictions for the fiftieth running of the Derby ran as high as 160,000. Though the actual number of attendees was less than half that, those in attendance saw favorite Black Gold put away his rivals in the final seventy yards, becoming the first recipient of a gold winner’s trophy, which has been awarded ever since. In the aftermath of Black Gold’s impressive Derby score, a fantastic (and factually improbable) backstory of the winning horse and owner circulated around the country and would eventually be made into a major Hollywood motion picture.46
Postcard advertising special Derby trains on the Illinois Central Railroad. By the 1920s dozens of special trains, particularly from the Midwest and Northeast, annually invaded Louisville at Derby time. (Postcard Collection, KUKAV2008MS016-08-0136, University of Kentucky Archives, Lexington.)
That story began with Oklahomans Al and Rosa Hoots (she an Osage Indian), who owned a mare named Useeit. On February 22, 1916, Useeit was entered in a selling race (the precursor to modern claiming races), in which the horses in the race could be purchased, in Juarez, Mexico. After the race Useeit was purchased, but Mr. Hoots decided that he was unwilling to part with his mare. Stories differ about how it was accomplished, but either under the cover of darkness or with the help of a rifle Hoots took his mare and went home to Oklahoma. Hoots was subsequently banned from the turf for life along with Useeit. But the mare was eventually reinstated to the Thoroughbred registry for breeding purposes, perhaps with the help of Colonel E. R. Bradley, who had been impressed by the mare on the racetrack and offered Hoots a breeding right to one of his top stallions, Black Toney. Hoots asked his wife on his deathbed to promise to someday breed Useeit to Black Toney. The mating took place in 1920, and the result was a colt that would be named Black Gold.47
A writer for the New Orleans States popularized this legend when he wrote that “before he died, old man Hoots whispered in Useeit’s ear, ‘A son of yours will perpetuate the name of the gamest pony that ever looked through a bridle, and I will ride him and I will look after him; I will pet him as I have petted you. The love I have given you will send him to the races, and everybody will say, “Useeit has sent a champion back on the turf.” ’ ”48
Though there is no more than anecdotal evidence to support any claims of supernatural phenomena surrounding the life of Hoots and Black Gold, this legend only enhanced the popularity of the Derby and the romance that surrounded it. With each running, the Derby was becoming more entrenched in the American popular culture and popular consciousness. As an increasing number of Americans found themselves with disposable income and the means to travel, the Derby was an increasingly alluring destination for American tourists and sports enthusiasts alike.
For the first fifty years, a person who did not travel to Louisville for the Derby could only read about the race. Thanks to the technology of radio, that would change in 1925, the year descriptions of the race were broadcast to a network radio audience for the first time. The excitement of the Derby now became more immediate. “We are radiocasting to you, for the first time in history, the running of the Kentucky Derby,” WHAS announcer Credo Harris blared across the airwaves. “And from this dizzying place [inside one of the cupolas atop the grandstand] we get a picture not only of the track and of the big race that is to come, but of the country for miles in every direction. We are going to see if, for a little while, we can let our eyes be your eyes, and translate the picture from here into your own imagination.”49
In a broadcast three years later, Harris invited his listeners to “wind up your imaginations and come with me in fancy. Close your eyes and try to think that you are now at my side; hearing what I hear, seeing what I see. . . . Close your eyes and step with me into a land of unreality.”50 His words were heard as far away as Toronto and Dallas, and reached as many as 6 million listeners.51 After laying three hundred miles of wire, Chicago station WGN began a four-hour broadcast from the Derby with a duo from the Pullman Porters’ Quartet singing “My Old Kentucky Home” as part of a “special program to lend atmosphere to the race.” The radiocast also included “an appropriate program of Southern songs and sidelights.”52 By 1929 the race would be broadcast nationwide by the National Broadcast Company, and two years later it would be picked up by the BBC in London. The popularity of the Kentucky Derby grew along with the technology that allowed audiences thousands of miles away from Churchill Downs to participate in the Derby experience.
Automobiles in Churchill Downs parking lot, Derby Day, 1927. By the 1920s Derby fans flocked to Churchill Downs in planes, trains, and automobiles. (Photographic Archive, 1994.18.0858, Special Collections, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.)
The fact that the announcer described the “country for miles in every direction”—not just the racetrack—is significant as it demonstrates that there was more to the experience of the Derby than just the horse race taking place. Listeners, it was assumed, wanted to imagine Kentucky (and not just the horse race) when they tuned in to a broadcast. Similarly, as continues to be the case today, coverage in newspaper reports of the Derby focused as much on the extracurricular goings-on at the Derby as on the equine athletes.
Colonel Matt Winn helped to fuel the enthusiasm of journalists, announcers, and spectators at the Derby every year. “All Kentucky Derby attendance records were surpassed today,” Winn would annually declare. “Churchill Downs never held as great a crowd. They came from the four corners of the earth, well-dressed, orderly, enthusiastic lovers of the Thoroughbred . . . bearing testimony by their presence that the Kentucky Derby is the outstanding sporting event of America.”53 Churchill Downs would not release official attendance figures until the 1970s, by which time the real number could substantiate the annual claim of “100,000” Derby spectators. Winn was never hesitant to exaggerate in his promotional efforts, but by the end of the 1920s the Derby had indeed transcended the realm of horse racing and the world of sport to become a part of the cultural fabric of the United States.
The final Derby of the Roaring Twenties was won by Clyde Van Dusen, a diminutive gelding named by his owner for the horse’s trainer (a former jockey). Clyde the horse was a son of the great Man o’ War, who had famously bypassed the Derby in 1920. Clyde took the lead early in the race from post position 20 and held on for the win on the rain-soaked track, becoming the seventh gelding to win Churchill Downs’s great race (and the last of the twentieth century).
There were plenty of attractive storylines for that year’s Derby, but one Louisville journalist chose to write about “four Negro servants and two little pickaninnies” back at the winning owners’ farm who listened to the coverage of the Derby on the radio while “all the white folks” were at Churchill Downs. “With a grin reaching from one of his black ears to the other,” the foreman described to the writer how the farm workers had prayed for rain that day because Clyde Van Dusen preferred a wet track. “Yes suh, yes suh,” the foreman explained to the reporter, “the boss called up this mawnin’ and I tole him that we was a prayin’ for that hoss, but mostly we wuz a prayin’ for rain because . . . the mo rain, the mo mud and the mo mud the mo fast dat hoss can travel.”54 The scene back at the farm was part of the press coverage of the event because it fit the image of Old Kentucky that had become part of the Derby’s identity. The idea that Kentucky was home to horse farms that resembled old southern plantations, complete with a black labor force and presided over by a Kentucky colonel, was part of the allure of the state and the Derby itself for national audiences.
The Kentucky Derby had become a celebration of the present and the past: at once an event that appealed to current tastes and one that leaned on a contrived set of past symbols and images for its relevance. In attending, reading about, or listening to the Derby, people were able to become a part of the history of the horse race and of a lifestyle and culture that seemed to be in danger of slipping away in the march toward modernity. During the early twentieth century the Kentucky Derby climbed to a place of prominence in American sport and American culture. This ascension was aided by a reservoir of myth, legend, and romance that had been associated with the state since the first reports of pioneers were published in the eighteenth century. By the time of the stock market crash that signaled the onset of the Great Depression, the Derby itself had become an important part of the state’s identity. But the depression and war that would engulf and dominate American society for the next decade and a half would change the cultural landscape of the nation and threaten the very survival of the Derby.
