The thoroughbred racehorse Longfellow was known as the “king of the turf” and won nearly every contest he ran in the 1870s. The horse was born in 1867 in Kentucky and began racing as a four-year-old. His jockey was the young John Samples (d. 1912) who was born to enslaved parents in Midway, Kentucky, around 1857.
Samples appears in nearly every print of Longfellow but he is never identified by name. Black jockeys and handlers were common in the racing industry as early as the colonial period. Longfellow’s trainer was a Black man recorded only as Mose. Samples rode until around 1880 when he left jockeying and became a police officer in Cincinnati, Ohio. This print was one in a group of forty-six Currier & Ives sporting prints and trade cards recently donated to the Society. The gift of Roger Stelle.
~ Lauren B. Hewes, Vice President for Collections and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts
