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Weighing In InBy By EVAN SHIPMAN SHIPMANBELMONT BELMONT PARK Elmont L I N Y May 10 I am ashamed of my sport With your permission there will be a departure today from the colum ists conventional we the first person singu ¬ lar will be adopted for a subject that demands direct expression Here it is Where are the Negro trainers and Negro jockeys who in normal course of events you would ex ¬ pect to see at our race tracks It is widely recognized that the Negro has always possessed outstanding talent as a horseman and the early rec ¬ ords of American racing are filled with their feats both as conditioners of thor ¬ oughbreds and as riders and yet during the last 40 or 50 years not one name has earned headlines or achieved the slightest prominence Isaac Murphy scored in three Kentucky Derbys and Jim Winkfield who is still around won the Kentucky Derby two years in a rovr but the cruel fact is there those men had no successors Dis ¬ crimination rarely voiced openly but always present acted to boycott the Negro from a profession where he might have gained not only selfrespect but distinc ¬ tion We asked rhetorically where Negroes are today They are exercise boys and sec ¬ ond trainers or grooms The most ambi ¬ tious can hope for no position at the track higher than the ones named and I believe that it is high time horsemen with a liberal turn of mind spoke out against this ugly stupid prejudice prejudiceWorking Working unobstrusively in the right direction certain sportsmen such as the late Thomas Hitchcock have attempted to give Negro riders a fair chance The trend of vulgar opinion hardly touched Hitchcock Despite the authority of his example however this great horseman did little to persuade his fellow owners and trainers In addition to Hitchcock the late Joseph E Widener was notably exempt from prejudice and Sam Bush another Negro horseman who is still with us rode brilliantly in the red and white stripes black cap both in this country and in France Hitchcock and Widener were exceptions and there have been a few owners in Maryland who would put up a Negro on the flat but the hard fact of the matter is that in general the ranks are closed to anybody with a black skin Nor can the harness sport escape the same indictment we have seen de ¬ cisions deliberately pointed against the Negro hardy enough to defy the ban and we recall very well that well known trainers once initiated a strike against an Ohio association that gave a Negro trainer stall room roomMisled Misled by a false conception of progress we are apt to congratulate ourselves on an enlightenment that we deny our fathers and yet it occurs to me that we only ob ¬ scure issues that once were plain During the Civil War Kentucky was a border state torn with fierce rivalries and at the end of the war wounds were not healed It so happened thatan excolonel in the Union Army a native of Lexington raced a stable of horses trained and driven by a Negro At the fall meeting over the KTHBA track this drivers participation in a stake race was protested by the other horsemen and by the crowd Our Colonel sauntered down the quarter stretch with a revolver in each hand and from under the tip of his sombrero his words came clear enough Gentlemen I am here to see that my entry gets a fair start and a clean decision at the wire They did not crowd the Colonels horse into the rail no spokes were flying on the backstretch and if he won by a neck you can be sure that the bets were paid off But that Colonel has been dead a long time timeLet Let me make myself plain This is not nor has it ever been a North South issue Neither prejudice nor humane sympathies know sectional lines and I am aware that the cold unvoiced arrogance of the Northerner can be just as humiliating and twice as effective in starving the Negro out of possible employment as the more warmly phrased condescension he encounters below the MasonDixon line Baseball covered its eyes for a long time to the fact that Negroes could pitch field and hit a ball as well as a white man but when Jackie Robinson joined the Brook ¬ lyn club it was not long after that the admission was general I remember very well when Jack Johnson was heavyweight champion of the United States and my boyhood was not imperilled and all of us lived quite comfortably through the long reign of Joe Louis No the foundations of the racing structure will not totter if we should return to the broad minded days when the century was young and when Jim Winkfield rode AlanADale to vic ¬ tory in the Run for the Roses RosesAdmiral Admiral Rous great handicapper for the English Jockey Club once said All men menContinued Continued on Page ThirtyOne WEIGHING IN INBy By EVAN SHIPMAN Continued from Page Four Fourare are equal on the turf and under it That by people who never gave the slightest statement has been mouthed ad infinitum by people who never gave the slightest thought to anything beyond the comfort ¬ able ring of the phrase It is too easy to pass off our obligations with handy maxims and the next time anybody quotes Admiral Rous to me I am going to ask our friend what he has ever done to live up to those highflown sentiments Am I personally can do is write saying to my friends who are horsemen Look around you Find the talent to ride and train wherever it may be and give that talent the chance it merits My guess is that most jockeys most train ¬ ers and most owners would agree with the point of view I have expressed in this columnr which has been a long time on my conscience They would agree I mean if they could be interrogated individually and in an atmosphere where reason had a chance Collectively perhaps the answer would be different but there are times when any man must escape the crowd In order to question himself and deliver an honest answer to the gnawing doubt that injustice is bound to create
