Oliver Lewis made history on May 17, 1875, when he rode Aristides to victory in the inaugural Kentucky Derby. The race, held at the newly opened Louisville Jockey Club track—later officially named Churchill Downs—was contested over 1½ miles. Lewis and Aristides finished in 2:37¾, then reported as the fastest time on record by a three-year-old at that distance. The Derby was shortened to 1¼ miles in 1896.
Lewis was one of 13 Black jockeys in a field of 15. He rode for H. Price McGrath, whose trainer, Ansel Williamson, was also Black. Black horsemen were central to American racing in the decades after emancipation, winning 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies, while Black trainers also shaped the race’s early history.
Born in Kentucky in 1856, Lewis was about 18 years old when he entered the first Derby. Surviving biographical information about his life remains limited. Later records identify his parents as Goodson Lewis and Elnora Keys Lewis; accounts also describe him as a husband and father of six children.
McGrath entered two colts in the first Derby: Aristides and Chesapeake, ridden by William Henry. Chesapeake was the stable’s more highly regarded prospect. Lewis was reportedly instructed to use Aristides to press the pace and prepare the race for Chesapeake’s expected late run. Yet Chesapeake broke poorly and never became a serious contender, ultimately finishing eighth.
The race unfolded differently from McGrath’s plan. Aristides remained prominently placed, and, as the field entered the stretch, Lewis received the signal to ride for victory. Aristides held off determined challenges from Volcano and Verdigris before crossing the finish line two lengths ahead of Volcano; Verdigris finished third. The Courier-Journal celebrated Aristides as the “game and speedy son of Leamington and Sarong,” who “dashed under the wire the winner of one of the fastest and hardest run races ever seen on a track.”
Later that season, Lewis rode Aristides to second place in the Belmont Stakes and won three additional races at the Louisville track. He never again rode in the Kentucky Derby, although he reportedly attended the thirty-third running in 1907.
Lewis’s racing career was brief. After working as a day laborer, he supplied racing information and handicapping tables to bookmakers before becoming a bookmaker himself, when bookmaking was legal in Kentucky. Accounts credit him with developing detailed racing and handicapping charts, and state that his son James later inherited the business. Because the evidence for these later activities is largely biographical rather than archival, it is best to present them cautiously.
The racial exclusion that overtook American racing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries pushed Black jockeys out of the Derby. James “Jimmy” Winkfield, who won in 1901 and 1902, remained the last Black Derby-winning jockey. After Henry King rode in the 1921 Derby, no Black jockey appeared in the race until Marlon St. Julien finished seventh in 2000.
Oliver Lewis died on January 30, 1924, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was buried in African Cemetery No. 2 in Lexington, Kentucky. His victory aboard Aristides secured his place in history as the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby and as a representative of the Black riders, trainers, and stable workers who made the early sport of Thoroughbred racing possible.
Sources:
http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2969/Lewis-Oliver.html#ixzz48rI5zaFU
https://goodblacknews.org/tag/oliver-lewis/
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/lewis-oliver-1856-1924
