As the Kentucky Derby turns 150, Black heritage in racing is in the Louisville spotlight

Ten thousand cheering horse racing fans at Kentucky’s Louisville Jockey Club, now called Churchill Downs, marveled as African American jockey Oliver Lewis brought his chestnut colt Aristides neck-and-neck with Volcano on the homestretch, and the pair surged ahead of the pack of lightning-fast thoroughbreds racing on May 17, 1875. They thundered in tandem at such breakneck speed it seemed as if they could take flight, and in the last few seconds Aristides broke away and bolted to victory in the inaugural Kentucky Derby. That was the first of many history-making...