Oliver Lewis

You can listen to those segments online at esweku.org. At the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys were black.

Oliver Lewis from Lexington rode Aristides to victory, and black jockeys would win 15 of the first 28 derbies.

That history is at the center of an extraordinary collection of monumental quilts by Kentucky native Dr. Eugene Poole Jr. that can be seen right now at Headley Whitney Museum of Art on Old Frankfurt Pike in Lexington.

Poole is an architect who helped oversee the restoration of the U.S. Capitol Dome.

Tom, I was extraordinarily just fascinated with it.

Yeah, one of the jockeys that originally comes to mind is the first jockey who won the first Kentucky Derby on May 17th, 1875.

His name was Oliver Lewis.

And once I started to look into the history of the Black Jockeys, not just Oliver Lewis, but Isaac Murphy, Jimmy Wingfield, Babe Hurd, it just continued to unfold.