On June 15, 1971, Cheryl White found herself in the starting gate in Thistledown Racetrack aboard a horse named Ace Reward. It had been her first official race, and she had been extremely focused.
“I just needed those gates to open,” she told me recently. “I wasn’t nervous and knew I’d be out and find the lead.”
Cheryl was right. She took control in the $2,600, six-furlong event, and for almost half the race, she seemed like a winner. However, Ace Reward and White would finish dead of 11 horses. However, Cheryl White had made history with her ride, becoming the very first African-American female jockey of our time.
Cheryl grew up around horses and other creatures that were hundreds of.
“We moved into the country when I was very young, so I always recall being around horses and being very comfortable around them. And we’d all types other animals,” she explained.
White came from good racing inventory. Her dad, Raymond, started his career as a jockey in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924 and rode in Chicago, Cleveland and Cincinnati, among other places. Raymond started training horses toward the end of his riding career as well as conditioned two horses which ran in the Kentucky Derby. Cheryl’s mother, Doris, was an owner whose horse’s often conducted at Thistledown.
Cheryl was thinking about becoming a jockey, and her parents were mostly supportive.
“They encouraged me, but with my father being in the horse industry, he was not just in favour of female riders,” she said. “My Dad was only old school and did not think, like many old timers, that women belonged across the racetrack. There was a time when women weren’t even allowed on the backstretch after five o’clock. But my parents didn’t attempt to talk me out of it.”
White didn’t do any better in her second outing and ran dead last again, but it didn’t faze her. She was awarded an apprentice permit on June 26, 1971, and 2 weeks later, it happened. White rode her first winner on September 2, 1971 at Waterford Park on a horse named Jetolara, becoming the first black woman to win a thoroughbred horse race in the United States.
White received enough attention to be encouraged to the”Boots and Bows Handicap,” an all-female riders race at Atlantic City in 1972. She won on the longest shot on the plank in a field of 14. But the race wasn’t without controversy, as fellow rider Mary Bacon was mad at White following the race and accused her of coming over on her horse. But the two women were friends and eventually put the problem behind them.
White continued riding in her recognizable circuit and held her own, but she needed more. While visiting friends in California in 1974, she chose to ply her trade at the hot and sunny Southern California tracks. But Santa Anita, Hollywood and Del Mar were just plain tough venues to compete at, and few female riders found major success on the California circuit.
“I probably should’ve remained in the east rather than going west,” she told me. “I think the tracks on the East Coast and Midwest were more accepting of women cyclists, at least thoroughbred-wise. There were always five or six in any track I was at. Successful female jockeys on the East Coast, well, I do not believe they would’ve done too in the western paths. They simply wouldn’t have gotten the (good) mounts and the chances that feminine jockeys had back east and west in the Midwest.”
White shifted her attention to riding Quarter Horses, Paints and Appaloosas in the California County Fairs. She had a reputation for being fast out of the gate and has been in high demand on the California Fair circuit. She awakened the rider standings and got the Appaloosa Horse Club’s Jockey of the Year in 1977, 1983, 1984 and 1985 and has been inducted into the Appaloosa Hall of Fame in 2011.
Cheryl White also became the first female jockey to win two races in two distinct states on the exact same day after she rode a winner at Thistledown in Ohio in the day and scored again in the night at Waterford Park at West Virginia. She was also the first female jockey to win five races in 1 day, accomplishing that feat at Fresno Fair.
In 1989, White dislocated her hip and started making plans to find a simpler way to create a living. In 1991, she passed the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination and rode her last race on July 25, 1992 at Los Alamitos and only happened to go out a winner. She’s since functioned as a racing official in a variety of functions at many distinct racetracks. Since her retirement, White has ridden many times in charity events, competing with fellow retired female cyclists.
Now, White works happily as a putting estimate at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio. She has a brother and nephew who have an advertising firm, Kabango Media. It gives the family pleasure to see the title of the company, as it was named after one of Cheryl’s father’s beloved horses, Kabango.
Although it seems White was severely underrated, she did get some coverage and awards. Back in 1994, she was honored as one of those”Successful African Americans at the Thoroughbred Racing Industry” from the Bluegrass Black Business Association in Lexington, Kentucky. She was respected by the National Girls and Women in Sports Day, introduced by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, California in 2006.
I asked Cheryl if she could sum up her livelihood in a couple of sentences.
“I had a long and relatively successful career winning 750 races. I must retire on my terms and of my choice and basically in 1 piece. I was quite fortunate to have had a job that I loved and had a passion for. Many people just are not that lucky. It has been a very long road, but it has also been a fascinating and incredibly lucrative and enjoyable street,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything”
When I inquired about any probable strategies of retirement, Cheryl said,”Retire? Retire out of this? I was a race track brat for a child, and I’m likely going to die on the track!”
Cheryl White was a true pioneer in our game, and one can only imagine the challenges she dared to pursue her career. She had been young and determined, ignored the play along with the bigots, and just put her head down and rode. She paved the way for many individuals to pursue their own dreams, both on and off the racetrack.
It’s truly fitting that Cheryl White went out a winner in her final race, as she is surely a winner in my book.
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