Until the 1890s, however, racing was unusual in allowing racial integration at its lower and middle ranks. In the antebellum South the best riders and trainers had been slaves, and once freed they, alongside a new generation, continued to ride and train horses during the Gilded Age, creating a tight and prosperous community centered on Lexington, Kentucky. At least a dozen of the jockeys in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875 were black,
