Murphy, Isaac

By: Robert Fikes

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Murphy, Isaac

1861–1896
African American jockey.

Isaac Murphy was born Isaac Burns on a farm near Frankfort, Kentucky, the son of James Burns, a bricklayer, and a mother (name unknown) who worked as a laundrywoman. During the Civil War his father, a free black, joined the Union army and died in a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. Upon the death of his father, his widowed mother moved with her family to Lexington, Kentucky, to live with her father, Green Murphy, a bell ringer and auction crier. Accompanying his mother to work at the Richard and Owings Racing Stable, the diminutive Isaac was noticed by the black trainer Eli Jordan, who had him suited up for his first race at age fourteen. His first winning race was aboard the two-year-old filly Glentina on September 15, 1875, at the Lexington Crab Orchard. Standing five feet tall and weighing only seventy-four pounds, Murphy had by the end of 1876 ridden eleven horses to victory at Lexington's Kentucky Association track.

Since colonial times, African Americans had been involved in the care and training of horses, particularly on antebellum and post–Civil War farms and plantations in the South. They had also ridden them as jockeys, an occupation once considered beneath the dignity of white men. At the inaugural Kentucky Derby in 1875, fourteen of the fifteen jockeys were black. Blacks triumphed in fifteen of the first twenty-eight derbies. In his first Kentucky Derby in 1877, Murphy (who had adopted his grandfather's surname as a tribute) placed fourth aboard Vera Cruz. He later rode the same horse to victory in another major stakes race and tallied nineteen first-place finishes that year. Two years later, Murphy signed with J. W. Hunt Reynolds and came in second in the Kentucky Derby with the moneymaker Falsetto. Among Murphy's numerous victories between 1879 and 1884 (the year he signed with Ed Corrigan of New York) were the Clark Handicap in Louisville, Kentucky; the Distillers Stakes in Lexington, Kentucky; the Saratoga Cup in New York; the Brewers Cup in St. Louis, Missouri; and the first American Derby in Chicago, Illinois. Incredibly, he posted wins in forty-nine of the fifty-one races he entered at Saratoga in 1882. His first Kentucky Derby win at Churchill Downs, on May 27, 1884, aboard Modesty, was clocked at 2 minutes, 40.25 seconds, two lengths ahead of his nearest rival. It was the first of three such conquests there; the other two occurred successively in 1890 and 1891, with the mounts Riley and Kingman, respectively.

Renowned for his adept manipulation of his mounts via intuitive, precise pacing, Murphy rarely used stirrups or the whip, except to please the crowd, and his trademark come-from-behind finishes became known as “Murfinishes.” It was his habit to lay on the horse's neck to coax it to the finish line. At a time when jockeys customarily wagered on the outcome of races, Murphy, a devout Baptist, enjoyed a reputation for scrupulous honesty and integrity. A mild-mannered, gracious man who never swore, he married Lucy Osborn in 1882; they had no children. Murphy and his wife resided in a mansion at 143 North Eastern Avenue in Lexington, overlooking the backstretch of a nearby racetrack. At the peek of his career, his yearly salary ranged from $10,000 to $20,000 excluding bonuses, making him the highest-paid jockey in the nation. His income befitted a man who rode nearly every premier horse of the era to victory at all the major racing events except the Futurity. It is believed that Murphy was the first black American to own a racehorse—he owned several, in fact—and he invested his winnings in racehorses and real estate. He spent extravagantly on clothes and soirees at his home and was attended to at the track by his personal valet.

Several writers have asserted that Murphy's most memorable and exciting race occurred at Sheepshead Bay in New York on June 25, 1890. It matched him against the heralded white jockey Ed “Snapper” Garrison and attempted to settle the long-standing debate as to who was the better professional. The event had pronounced racial overtones that in certain respects prefigured the Jack Johnson versus Jim Jeffries boxing match twenty years later. Murphy, riding Salvador, edged out Garrison, aboard Tenny, by half a head in one of the most publicized races of the century.

Ironically, just two months later Murphy's popularity was tarnished and his career began to unravel when he fell off of his mount at the end of the running of the Monmouth Handicap. He maintained that he suffered from chronic dieting and that he may even have been drugged. Nonetheless, he was charged with drunkenness and suspended. The press, including the New York Times (August 27, 1890), was quite baffled by such uncharacteristic behavior from the gentlemanly Murphy and roundly chastised him. Although he continued to rack up victories at the track the following year (1891), his penchant for champagne and the struggle to hold down his weight, which had risen to 140 pounds, eventually took their toll. In 1892 he won six races, the next year four races, and in 1894, the year he was suspended for a second time for being drunk at the track, he failed to win a race. Retirement was forced upon him in November 1895. Within three months Murphy died in Lexington, the ravages of alcohol and dieting having weakened his resistance to pneumonia. He left $30,000 to his wife, but this sum was hardly enough to satisfy his creditors, and she died a pauper.

Murphy, arguably the most influential and widely respected African American athlete of the nineteenth century, was curiously ignored for many years by historians and journalists. Half a century after his death, an article filled with anecdotes and quotations pertaining to his career appeared in the Negro Digest (November 1950). Its title bemoaned, “No Memorial for Isaac Murphy.” In 1967, through the efforts of Lexington sportswriter Frank Borries Jr., Murphy's remains were transported from their ignominious location in the city's decrepit No. 2 Cemetery and reinterred in Man o' War Park. In 1977 the remains of both the jockey and the famed thoroughbred (whom Murphy never rode) were moved to hallowed ground near one another at the Kentucky Horse Park outside of Lexington. In 1955 he was the first jockey inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame, and in 1956 he was also enshrined in the National Jockey's Hall of Fame at Pimlico, Maryland.

Murphy's three Kentucky Derby wins were later exceeded by Eddie Arcaro (five), Bill Hartack (five), and Bill Shoemaker (four); his back-to-back Kentucky Derby wins were later equaled by African American Jimmy Winkfield (1901 and 1902), Ron Tucotte (1972 and 1973), and Eddie Delahoussaye (1982 and 1983). To his recollection, he was victorious in 44 percent of his contests, winning 628 of 1,412 mounts; but according to other sources, Murphy's winning percentage was closer to 33 percent. In any event, 33 percent represented the best winning record of any jockey in American turf history. The annual Isaac Murphy Award was established in 1993 by the National Turf Writers' Association to honor the jockey with the best win-loss record. The Isaac Murphy Stakes (formerly the American Derby, which Murphy won on four occasions) was initiated in 1997 at Chicago's Arlington International Racecourse.

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