Courtesy of Huffington Post Black Voices
Kevin Krigger stands to make history this weekend. For the first time since 2000, and for only the second time since 1921, a black jockey will ride in one of the nation’s most popular horse races – the Kentucky Derby.
In a segment for HuffPost Live, Thomas Tolliver of the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Gallery, Maryjean Wall, author of “How Kentucky Became Southern and Pellom McDaniels III, Faculty Curator of African American Collections at Emory University joined host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin to discuss the historical context and impact of Krigger’s forthcoming ride.
Black Jockeys are an important part of the derby’s history, having won fifteen of the race’s first 28 runnings, but the past century has seen a dramatic decrease in African American participation in the race.
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