THIS IS THE TRUE STORY of an American hero who rose to international renown at the turn of the last century and who, in his short twenty-three years of life, helped spur a significant shift in human consciousness. What made this individual different from other great men and women who change the course of history is that he was neither man nor woman. Beautiful Jim Key was a horse. An educated horse. Together with his owner/teacher/best friend “Dr.” William Key—an ex-slave from Shelbyville, Tennessee, a Civil War veteran, horse whisperer, self-taught veterinarian, entrepreneur, and one of the most recognized African-Americans of his day—Jim Key helped launch a worldwide animal rights movement through an international network of humane societies. His contribution was to transform what was once considered a radical fringe element into a mainstream concern and to make kindness toward animals a cornerstone of civilized existence.
Beautiful Jim Key was to the humane movement exactly what every important cause needs. He was a star. Years before horses like Dan Patch, Man O’War, Seabiscuit, and Secretariat became revered household names, Beautiful Jim Key trailblazed his way into stardom and set the standard for animal celebrities forever after. Yet unlike his fellow equine stars, Jim was famous not because of his speed or his beauty. He was, without a doubt, a paragon of physical grace, a heartthrob, and a matinee idol. At a press party on November 30, 1897, during a private exhibition at Field’s Stables at 156 East Twenty-fifth Street in Manhattan—assembled to announce Jim’s Broadway debut—a reporter for the New York Times was smitten with his “expressive eyes” and the “suggestive tosses of his finely formed head.” Indeed, it was the press who first dubbed the mahogany bay “Beautiful.” But his good looks didn’t make him an icon.
Jim was beloved because he was smart. During nine years of continuous exhibition, he demonstrated inexplicable abilities to read, write, spell, do math, tell time, sort mail, use a cash register and a telephone, cite Bible passages, and engage in political debate. Known as the “Marvel of the Twentieth Century” and “The Greatest Crowd Drawer in America,” he was seen by an estimated ten million Americans. The rest of the public settled for second best, following his comings and goings, as well as the controversies that swirled around him, in nonstop headlines in most major newspapers. Legions of fans bought his souvenir programs and buttons, publicity photographs, and postcards. They collected specially minted Beautiful Jim Key pennies, danced the “Beautiful Jim Key” two-step, wore Jim Key gold pinbacks in their collars, and competed in Beautiful Jim Key essay contests, while one million children signed the Jim Key Pledge: “I promise always to be kind to animals.” Meanwhile, the proceeds from his performances and merchandise funded scores of local, state, and national animal protection organizations, and also made Jim and his human associates wealthy beyond their dreams.
A hundred years later, this amazing saga has seemingly vanished from the pages of history. When a 1904 vintage promotional pamphlet relating elements of this story first crossed my radar, what confronted me was a mystery. Why had I never heard of it? Yet why did it seem remotely familiar, like a flash of déjà vu or a long-lost memory asking to be remembered? Where had the history gone? Why had it resurfaced now?
Initial research very quickly turned up a wealth of documentation that provided answers. But other questions emerged, questions that plagued Beautiful Jim Key even at the height of his career. Was his act a hoax? Were ten million Americans taken for a ride? On the other hand, if Bill and Jim were faking it, what kind of an elaborate system allowed them to pull it off?
These questions will be explored on the pages ahead. In order to both validate this story and allow readers to determine what processes were or weren’t at work, I have resisted my storytelling temptation to invent scenic details and dialogue as texture to this narrative. Dialogue in quotation marks is quoted from actual sources; scenes described in detail are likewise taken from detailed documents, except in those instances where I have added connective tissue between events when certain moments have been suggested by sources but can still be considered speculative.
Readers may come to different conclusions about whether Jim’s ability to nonchalantly subtract a $1.69 purchase from two dollar bills and deliver change in correct coins to the recipient was a function of performing a well-designed trick or whether he was capable of deductive reasoning and critical thinking. Clearly, there were reasons why Jim and his entourage seemed always to be in a race for their lives to overcome hurdles of prejudice, skepticism, and competition. There are other reasons why the notion of humanlike animal intelligence touches off a powerfully resistive public nerve—now as then. Yet what is evident, in any case, is that Beautiful Jim Key definitely appeared to be able to do all that was claimed of him.
That he appeared to have an I.Q. equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old human and to have mastered academics equivalent to a sixth-grade level was essential in his ability to open and change the public mind. This, more importantly, leads to the questions at the heart of what Dr. William Key and Jim Key accomplished. How were they able, in nine short years, to bring about a transformation of thinking, forging connections that transcended age, economic background, race, and species, all across the country, at a time when few were genuinely concerned about the welfare of animals? Moreover, what were the individual and cultural crosscurrents that shaped them as crusaders for a simple message: the power of kindness—toward our fellow human beings, toward all creatures, and toward the earth itself—trumps all others?
During the late 1800s, a time that called forth for a being like Beautiful Jim Key, animal rights activists—many of the same groups who promoted such outlandish ideas as women’s suffrage, racial equality, conservation, literacy, the humane reform of labor, welfare, schools, and prisons—were generally viewed as radicals and kooks. Troublemakers. In a kind of spooky rerun, current advocates for animal and environmental protection—in fact, most progressive organizations—are once again being labeled extremists and nuisances. “Special interest groups.”
In an age of terror, war, and plagues—by no means exclusive to our times—the values of nonviolence, tolerance, kindness, and the quest for peace on our fragile planet seem to have fallen into disrepute.
Maybe that’s why this story has resurfaced now. It’s possible that a horse and a man of color from Tennessee have as much to teach us today as they did at the turn of the last century. Maybe more.