On June 15, 1971, Cheryl White discovered herself at the starting gate in Thistledown Racetrack aboard a horse named Ace Reward. It had been her first race, and she had been extremely concentrated.
“I just needed those gates to start,” she told me lately. “I was not nervous and knew I’d be first out and find the guide.”
Cheryl was ideal. She took command in the $2,600, six-furlong event, and for nearly half the race, she looked like a winner. But 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 the time.
Cheryl grew up around horses and other creatures.
“We moved into the country when I was really young, so I always remember being about horses and being very comfortable around them. And we’d all types other animals,” she said.
White came from racing stock. Her dad, Raymond, began 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 conclusion of his riding career and even conditioned two horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby. Cheryl’s mother, Doris, was an owner whose horse often conducted at Thistledown.
Cheryl was thinking about becoming a jockey, and her parents were mostly supportive.
“They encouraged me, but together with my dad being in the horse business, he wasn’t just in favor of female cyclists,” she explained. “My Dad was only old school and didn’t believe, like most old timers, that girls belonged across the racetrack. There was a time when girls were not even allowed on the backstretch after five o’clock. But my parents didn’t try to talk me out of it, either.”
White did not do any better in her second outing and ran dead last again, but it did not faze her. She had been 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 in Atlantic City in 1972. She won on the longest shot on the plank in a field of 14. But the race was not without controversy, as fellow riders Mary Bacon was angry at White after the race and accused her of coming over on her horse. But the two women were friends and finally put the problem behind them.
White lasted 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 in the warm and sunny Southern California tracks. However, Santa Anita, Hollywood and Del Mar were just plain tough venues to compete , and few female riders found major success on the California circuit.
“I probably should have remained in the east rather than going west,” she told me. “I feel the paths on the East Coast and Midwest were more accepting of women riders, at least thoroughbred-wise. There were always five or six at any track I had been at. Successful female jockeys on the East Coast, well, I don’t think they would’ve done too in the western tracks. They just wouldn’t have gotten the (good) mounts as well as the chances that female jockeys had back east and in the Midwest.”
White shifted her focus to riding Quarter Horses, Paints and Appaloosas in the California County Fairs. She had a reputation for being fast from 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 was inducted into the Appaloosa Hall of Fame in 2011.
Cheryl White also became the first female jockey to win two races in two different states on the same day after she rode a winner at Thistledown in Ohio at the day and scored again in the evening at Waterford Park in West Virginia. She was also the first female jockey to win five races in one day, accomplishing that feat at Fresno Fair.
In 1989, White dislocated her hip and started making plans to obtain an easier way to create a living. Back in 1991, she passed on the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination and rode her final race on July 25, 1992 in Los Alamitos and only happened to go out a winner. She’s since served as a racing official in a variety of roles at many distinct racetracks. Since her retirement, White has ridden many times in charity events, competing with fellow retired female cyclists.
Today, White works thankfully as a placing judge at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio. She has a brother and nephew that have an advertising business, Kabango Media. It gives the family pleasure to see the title of the company, as it had been called after one of Cheryl’s dad’s favorite horses, Kabango.
Even though it seems White was severely underrated, she did get some awards and coverage. 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 also honored by the National Girls and Women in Sports Day, presented by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, California in 2006.
I asked Cheryl if she could sum up her livelihood in a few sentences.
“I had quite a long and relatively successful career winning 750 races. I must retire on my own terms and of my choice and essentially in one piece. I had been very lucky to have had a job that I loved and had a passion for. A lot of people just are not that lucky. It’s been a very long road, but it’s been an interesting and incredibly lucrative and enjoyable street,” she said. “I would not trade it for anything”
When I inquired about any probable strategies of retirement, Cheryl said,”Retire? Retire out of this? I had been a race track brat as a kid, and I’m probably going to die on the track!”
Cheryl White was a true pioneer in our sport, and you could only imagine the challenges she dared to pursue her career. She had been young and decided, ignored the play along with the bigots, and just put her head down and rode. She paved the way for countless individuals to pursue their own dreams, both on and off the racetrack.
It’s really fitting that Cheryl White went out a winner in her last race, as she’s surely a winner in my book.
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