Forgotten Black Pioneers

1 - Tiger Woods of Yesteryear

Isaac Burns Murphy cased the track like Muhammad Ali did the ring, read thoroughbreds like Hank Aaron read pitchers and dominated Churchill Downs like Tiger Woods dominated Augusta National. Simply put, when it comes to the sport of horse racing, he was the most idolized and scrutinized athlete of his time, worshipped by Black and white fans alike.

2 - Born a Slave

Murphy remains obscured, however, whitewashed by a sport that wasn’t ready for his celebrity or his blackness. That’s because, unlike his peers in the athletic pantheon, Murphy was born into slavery, in January 1861, two months before the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln.

3 - Unconventional Approach

Most jockeys dug into their mounts with a whip and a crouched, bullying stance, but the teen Murphy urged his charge forward with calming words. As others galloped ahead, he conserved his horse’s stamina, only to press forward at the end of races to snatch victory over his competitors’ exhausted steeds. The unconventional tactics led to victory. He would win the Kentucky Derby for the first time in 1884, along with the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap that same year — a trifecta he’s still the sole jockey to accomplish.

4 - Record-Breaking Career

According to one tally, he won 530 of 1,538 races, a 34 percent rate that still dwarfs the greatest all-time official tallies in horse-racing record books. He would win his last Kentucky Derby in 1891 — before retiring as the first person to ever win it three times. He died of heart failure, in February 1896, at age 35. Three months later, the Supreme Court upheld Plessy v. Ferguson, which confirmed the constitutionality of a Jim Crow law in Louisiana, paving the way for segregation efforts across the South.

1 - Elevator Operator

You never know who you’re sharing an elevator with — and back when Rockefeller Center still had elevator operators, it was easy to ignore the elderly Black man in the corner. Eugene Bullard had been a boxer, World War I fighter pilot, Paris nightclub owner and World War II resistance fighter. He escaped the Gestapo and was beaten by police at a civil rights demonstration. But even many years after his death, his legacy remained that of an overlooked elevator operator.

2 - Stowaway

Bullard was born in rural Georgia to a large, poor Black family. A lynch mob killed his older brother, and Eugene nearly lost his life on more than one occasion to racist attacks. But in 1912, when he was a teenager, he stowed away on a ship bound for the U.K. and ended up in Liverpool, where he launched his career as a formidable boxer.

3 - Fighter Pilot and Spy

He later moved to France, where he joined the French Foreign Legion, becoming a World War I fighter pilot. Still, even though Bullard had been a brave, reliable flyer for France, the U.S. Army ignored his transfer application, and he remained in his adopted land, managing one of the most fashionable jazz clubs in Paris. During World War II, he served as a spy for the French Resistance — and was wounded fighting again for the French cause.

4 - Retiree

After the war, Bullard and his family settled in a tiny apartment in Harlem packed with World War I model airplanes, and he took up his least glamorous job yet, as a Rockefeller Center elevator operator, where he remained — largely anonymous — for the rest of his life.

1 - An Innovative Treatise

It’s somewhat hard today to appreciate just what an accomplishment the 145-page treatise A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts represents. Even the title of the 1883 work is misleadingly modest. One of the first American medical guides to offer advice for women and children, the book deals with treating everything from infant bowel complaints to hemorrhoids and diphtheria.

2 - Medical Pioneer

Dedicated “to mothers, nurses, and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race,” Medical Discourses is the masterwork of Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first Black woman in America to earn a medical degree. She managed to blaze a path through the medical profession at a time when few African Americans were able to attend medical school, let alone publish books about their work.

3 - Civil War Nurse

After serving as a nurse for eight years, Crumpler was accepted to New England Female Medical College, where she became the school’s first and only Black graduate (it closed in 1873). During the Civil War, she served as one of the few Black women employed by the Freedmen’s Bureau, where she helped minister to the medical needs of as many of the freed slaves as she could.

4 - America’s Florence Nightingale

The Civil War experience gave her the opportunity to treat an unprecedented number of patients, and like Florence Nightingale, who wrote at length about sanitation and medicine following her wartime service in the Crimean War, Crumpler composed a work that was not only historic but also invariably useful.

1 - An Unimaginable Life

In the spring of 1842, several thousand Philadelphians poured into the streets for one of the largest funerals in the city’s history. It was a remarkable sight: an interracial procession that included everyone from poor Black laborers to wealthy white merchants to sea captains and shippers. The funeral was for James Forten, who had lived a life in early America that was hard for many in his time to imagine.

2 - Wealthy Sailmaker

In an era in which Black people in America were oppressed and many enslaved, Forten managed to beat the odds to become a rich sailmaker and amass a large personal fortune. But Forten’s story is not just one of a Black man who rose to be one of the wealthiest in Philadelphia, but of a devoted patriot who used his great wealth and privilege to help fuel a movement that would alter the course of his country’s future.

3 - Teenage Soldier

Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1766 to modest circumstances, but legally free. And when the American colonies went to war with the British, he enlisted to fight, at age 14, for a prospective country that did not even consider him one of its citizens. After several years of combat, including a stint as a prisoner of war aboard a British vessel, Forten returned to Philadelphia, where he would become one of the most successful Black businessmen in the new nation, building a thriving business.

4 - Civil Rights Backer

Forten also pumped his time and his money into the twin causes of abolitionism and civil rights. And when a 25-year-old abolitionist named William Lloyd Garrison approached Forten for help in starting an anti-slavery newspaper called The Liberator in 1830, Forten didn’t hesitate to back the effort, providing Garrison with not only money but also introductions to Philadelphia’s Black leaders and a steady stream of inside information. The Liberator would become the most important anti-slavery publication in America, helping to galvanize the abolitionist cause in the years before the Civil War.

Quiz Time!

Take our quiz and see what you've learned about these heroes! Who are your heroes? Send your suggestions to: ozycommunity@ozy.com and we'll feature your answers next week!

Future Kentucky Derby winner Isaac Burns Murphy was born into slavery two months before the inauguration of which president?

How many horse races is jockey Isaac Burns Murphy estimated to have won in his career?

What country did Georgia-born Eugene Bullard fly for as a fighter pilot in World War I?

What sort of business did Eugene Ballard run after he served in the first World War?

In what New York City landmark did Eugene Bullard work as an elevator operator?

Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman in America to earn what?

Dr. Crumpler’s experience caring for patients in what war influenced her writings?

James Forten enlisted to fight in the Revolutionary War at what age?

Which abolitionist newspaper did James Forten help found?

Who was the famous abolitionist editor of that newspaper?

Answers:

Go Deeper

READ THIS BOOK: In Burns, The Prince of Jockeys, Emory University professor Pellom McDaniels III provides the biography of the Black man who triumphed three times at Churchill Downs.

LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST: Episode 6 of season 3 of the history podcast The Thread tells the story the pivotal role James Forten played in the early nonviolent movement, whose heirs would include everyone from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.

WATCH THIS VIDEO: All Blood Runs Red. Director Paul Mignot showcases the epic life of the first African American fighter pilot in history, Eugene Bullard.

Whether he’s avoiding tacklers on the field or winning you your fantasy football game, its likely you have been impressed by Austin Ekeler. The undersized back for the L.A. Chargers joins Carlos to share his journey from undrafted free agent to star runner for the NFL. Tune in to hear him discuss the culture shock he experienced from small town Colorado to the NFL locker room, his takes on football’s greatest athletes, and why adversity in life has left him fearless to 250-pound defenders running at him at full speed.