Black Jockeys Won 15 Derbies—Then Got Beaten Off The Track In 1875, 13 of 15 Kentucky Derby jockeys were Black, and they dominated American horse racing for decades. Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies and were the highest-paid athletes in America. Isaac Murphy won three times and is considered one of the greatest jockeys ever. But by the early 1900s, white jockeys began violently attacking their Black competitors—boxing them into rails, hitting them with crops, causing injurie