Isaac Burns Murphy (1861–1896) was one of the most dynamic jockeys of his era. Still considered one of the finest riders of all time, Murphy was the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby three times, and his 44 percent win record remains unmatched. Despite his success, Murphy was pushed out of Thoroughbred racing when African American jockeys were forced off the track, and he died in obscurity. In The Prince of Jockeys: The Life of Isaac Burns Murphy, author Pellom McDaniels III offers the first definitive biography of this celebrated athlete, whose life spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the adoption of Jim Crow legislation. Despite the obstacles he faced, Murphy became an important figure—not just in sports, but in the social, political, and cultural consciousness of African Americans. Drawing from legal documents, census data, and newspapers, this comprehensive profile explores how Murphy epitomized the rise of the black middle class and contributed to the construction of popular notions about African American identity, community, and citizenship during his lifetime.

With stunningly vibrant illustrations by Coretta Scott King Awardwinner Jerome Lagarrigue, Perfect Timing tells the story of Isaac Murphy, the grandson of slaves who escaped a life of labor and poverty by turning a chance offer to ride a horse into one of the most successful jockey careers in the history of racing. Many of Isaac's records remain unbroken today. Filled with paintings that capture the excitement, tension, and movement of a horse race, Perfect Timing is a winning combination of sports, biography, and the inspiring story of an African American who made racing history.

The conflicts of the Civil War continued long after the conclusion of the war: jockeys and Thoroughbreds took up the fight on the racetrack. A border state with a shifting identity, Kentucky was scorned for its violence and lawlessness and struggled to keep up with competition from horse breeders and businessmen from New York and New Jersey. As part of this struggle, from 1865 to 1910, the social and physical landscape of Kentucky underwent a remarkable metamorphosis, resulting in the gentile, beautiful, and quintessentially southern Bluegrass region of today. In her debut book, How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders, former turf writer Maryjean Wall explores the post–Civil War world of Thoroughbred racing, before the Bluegrass region reigned supreme as the unofficial Horse Capital of the World. Wall uses her insider knowledge of horse racing as a foundation for an unprecedented examination of the efforts to establish a Thoroughbred industry in late-nineteenth-century Kentucky. Key events include a challenge between Asteroid, the best horse in Kentucky, and Kentucky, the best horse in New York; a mysterious and deadly horse disease that threatened to wipe out the foal crops for several years; and the disappearance of African American jockeys such as Isaac Murphy. Wall demonstrates how the Bluegrass could have slipped into irrelevance and how these events define the history of the state. How Kentucky Became Southern offers an accessible inside look at the Thoroughbred industry and its place in Kentucky history.

Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature explores an aspect of modern French literature that has been consistently overlooked in literary histories: the relationship between the colonies—their cultures, languages, and people—and formal shifts in French literary production. Starting from the premise that neither cultural identity nor cultural production can be pure or homogenous, Leslie Barnes initiates a new discourse on the French literary canon by examining the work of three iconic French writers with personal connections to Vietnam: André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda Lê. In a thorough investigation of the authors’ linguistic, metaphysical, and textual experiences of colonialism, Barnes articulates a new way of reading French literature: not as an inward-looking, homogenous, monolingual tradition, but rather as a tradition of intersecting and interdependent peoples, cultures, and experiences. One of the few books to focus on Vietnam’s position within francophone literary scholarship, Barnes challenges traditional concepts of French cultural identity and offers a new perspective on canonicity and the division between “French” and “francophone” literature.

Katherine C. Mooney recaptures the sights, sensations, and illusions of America’s first mass spectator sport. Her central characters are not the elite white owners of slaves and thoroughbreds but the black jockeys, grooms, and horse trainers who called themselves race horse men and made the racetrack run—until Jim Crow drove them from their jobs.

More than a century before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, black athletes were dominating America's first national sport. The sport was horse racing, and the greatest jockeys of all were slaves and the sons of slaves. Cheered by thousands of Americans in the North and South, they rode to victory in all of the major stakes, including the very first Kentucky Derby. Although their glory days ranged from the early 1700s to the turn of the 20th century, the memory of these great black jockeys was erased from history. Who were these athletes and why have their names vanished without a trace? "This may be the most fascinating untold sports story in American history. We are lucky that it is so well told now by Mr. Hotaling in his wonderfully written book." -- Charles Osgood, anchor, CBS News Sunday Morning "The Great Black Jockeys is the first book about the lives and times of the forgotten men whose extraordinary skills were a wonder to behold, men with names like "Honest Ike" Murphy, Abe Hawkins, Willie Simms, Austin Curtis, Jimmy Winkfield, and dozens more. This is also a story of a young country where whole towns turned out in cleared fields to cheer and place wagers on magnificent horses and the men who rode them, and where the greatest athletes in the land were the property of others. For fleeting moments on the racecourse black riders in colorful silks tasted the glory and freedom that slavery had denied them. In "The Great Black Jockeys, the exploits and courage of America's earliest and best athletes are finally remembered.

The rise and fall of one of America’s first Black sports celebrities Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes—and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all. At the same time, he lived through the seismic events of Emancipation and Reconstruction and formative conflicts over freedom and equality in the United States. And inevitably he was drawn into those conflicts, with devastating consequences. Katherine C. Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy’s troubled life, his death in 1896 at age thirty-five, and his afterlife. In recounting Murphy’s personal story, she also tells two of the great stories of change in nineteenth-century America: the debates over what a multiracial democracy might look like and the battles over who was to hold power in an economy that increasingly resembled the corporate, wealth-polarized world we know today.