By Jessica K. Whitehead, Senior Curator of Collections, Kentucky Derby Museum
Had you opened almost any newspaper to the sports pages in the late 1960s, chances are you would have come across the name Diane Crump. Crump was busy shaking up the racing establishment in those years, fighting for women’s long-denied right to ride as jockeys in professional horse races.
Crump died after a battle with brain cancer in January, and her passing has inspired countless memorials honoring her contribution to women’s participation in the male-dominated sport of Thoroughbred racing.
The Connecticut-born Crump, whose love affair with horses began with her mother’s hand-painted murals of Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion on her childhood bedroom walls, never let social norms keep her from her dreams. She, and a small cohort of determined women, brought the national movement for women’s equal rights into the heart of American horse racing in the 1960s and ’70s—even if Crump insisted until her death: “I never felt like I was making a statement. I wanted to ride! That was my statement. I wanted to ride.”
This first wave of professional female jockeys attempting to break in to the sport—of which Crump was one—met significant opposition in print and in person.
When Kathy Kusner, an Olympic equestrian skilled at show jumping who dreamt of racing against men on the flat, announced her intention to seek a professional license to ride Thoroughbreds in November 1967, conservative turf writers like Canada’s Jim Coleman were merciless. In his syndicated column, “Bang Tails,” Coleman snarled, “While I am prepared to acknowledge that North American women can do many things better than North American men, I plead with them to refrain from further encroachment on our few remaining preserves … Stay away from the race track, Miss Kathy Kusner. The kitchen is the proper place for every North American woman.”
Even female horse trainer Judy Johnson, who received a provisional license to ride as a steeplechase jockey during the workforce shortages of World War II, went on record against Kusner’s quest. “There’s a lot of difference between galloping on a jumper and breaking out of the gate on a race horse,” she said. “You don’t get hit in the face with dirt, or have to judge distances and pace the same way, or a number of other things. They really aren’t the same at all.” Johnson said she hoped Kusner’s applications would be turned down.
Kusner prevailed against the establishment nearly a year later, when in 1968, she sued the Maryland Racing Commission for discrimination after it refused to issue her a license—despite her having passed the necessary gate tests for apprentice male jockeys. Using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in her defense, Kusner became the first woman to receive the right to compete in professional, pari-mutuel races in the United States.
Although only a teenager when Kusner won her landmark suit, Crump already had pedigree as a horsewoman for the battle ahead. She spent her early years learning the ins and outs of the horse industry. Some of her most formative experiences came at Nelson Zambito’s Oldsmar, Florida, operation, Lake Magdalene Farm, where Zambito’s head trainer, Art Chestnut, recognized a special spark in Crump.
At Magdalene, Crump saw the life of a horse from foal to starting gate, learning the foundational skills of breeding, weaning and breaking. When Chestnut saw how Crump took to the work, he advanced her to racing, never failing to be impressed by her singular work ethic and drive. “The more I did it, the more I loved it,” Crump said in an oral history interview conducted for the Kentucky Derby Museum in 2019. “I was the groom; I was the exercise rider; I was the hotwalker; I was everything … It was the greatest passion I could ever imagine.”
However much Chestnut believed in Crump, the rest of the industry still needed convincing that women belonged on the backside of the racetrack—let alone in a racing saddle. Kusner’s lawsuit may have provided women a legal precedent in the fight to ride, but the victory did not ensure social acceptance for aspiring woman riders.
Days after Kusner received her license, an exercise rider from Chicago named Penny Ann Early applied for hers at Churchill Downs. The track granted Early her license beacause the stewards saw no recourse in the face of civil rights legislation. Unfortunately, the male jockeys who were expected to ride against her decided to boycott what would have been Early’s maiden race—and the first race for any woman as a professional rider—on Nov. 21, 1968.
By this time, Crump had a proven record working for a number of successful trainers in multiple states and at various tracks as an exercise rider. One of these trainers was her future husband (later ex-husband), Don Divine, who had Crump riding horses for him at Churchill Downs during the Early protest. Despite witnessing Early’s frustration, Crump wished to pursue a license to ride in races. Divine supported her, believing her ability gave her as much chance as any woman to succeed in becoming a jockey.
But Crump had competition. Back on her home turf of Florida, Barbara Jo Rubin was agitating the conservative establishment at Tropical Park for her opportunity to ride. Subjected to a rock or two thrown through her temporary jockeys’ quarters in a trailer at Tropical Park, Rubin endured a boycott in January 1969. The striking jockeys—including top riders such as Jorge Velasquez and Ray Broussard—found themselves staring at a hefty fine from the Tropical stewards for obstructing the racing schedule.
With an increasing number of women legally licensed and a bevy of disaffected male riders formally chastised, by February 1969, it was only a matter of time before a woman finally would be successful getting out of the gate.
The question was: who?
Most bets were on Rubin, whose skill on horseback even her most acerbic opponents couldn’t ignore. Ed Pons, the steward at Tropical Park, commented after Rubin’s January 1969 gate test, “We were very impressed. It looked to me like she can ride as good as anybody. She broke the horse very well and even used the whip effectively, which we do not require of the male jockeys taking the test.”
But eyes were also trained on Crump, who finally received her license to ride in Florida the week after the Tropical Park boycott of Rubin.
There were some false starts in getting newly licensed Crump in a race. Mary Keim, an established female owner and trainer with horses at Hialeah Park near Miami, thought highly of Crump and wanted to give her the leg up she knew any young rider—especially a woman—could use. “She is a smooth rider,” Keim said of Crump. “She’s cool enough and has enough gray matter to make as good a rider as any boy.” But the horse Keim had in mind to make history with Crump in the saddle, Merr E. Indian, failed to draw in as an also-eligible in a race on Feb. 3, 1969.
A few days later, owner Tom Calumet—reportedly at the behest of his wife—named Crump as the rider on his horse Bridle ’n Bit in Hialeah’s seventh race on Feb. 7, 1969. In front of more than 15,000 fans, Crump had the chance to become the first woman to ride in a professional race in this country.
In spite of the catcalls hurled at her from the massing crowd—“Go home and cook dinner,” and “Go home and have babies,” chief among them—Crump marched confidently to the post, dressed in a smile. She later told her biographer, Mark Shrager, “I’ve never been the type of person to get nervous.”
Crump didn’t win the race that day, but she certainly felt the weight of her accomplishment. It was a triumph for women, of course. But more than anything, Crump treasured the validation of her long-held dream of riding fast and beautiful horses—just like those painted on the walls of her childhood bedroom.
Barbara Jo Rubin claimed the title as the first woman to win a professional, pari-mutuel race as a jockey later that month, at Charles Town Racetrack in West Virginia. Amid the media circus that followed, Barbara Jo is quoted as asking a friend, “When will all this publicity end, so I can just get down to the business of riding?” She, too, just wanted to do the job she loved.
And that’s the funny thing about these women who changed the history of horse racing. Even amidst the rampant, sometimes personal sexism they were forced to encounter, women like Crump, Rubin, Early and Kusner didn’t let anger overtake their passion for their work. Instead, they bore down, worked hard, and proved everyone wrong.
Case in point:
On April 5, 1970, the columnist Don Zamarelli published an article on the heels of Rubin’s sudden retirement from riding due to a catastrophic knee injury and pointing out the seeming dearth of female riders a year after the movement began. He prophesied the imminent end of the industry’s pesky “female jockey problem,” sneering, “Orchids to all of you girls, for giving it a big try. For that, and for that alone, you’ll always be remembered.”
Less than a month later, on May 2, 1970, Crump rode out under Churchill Downs’ Twin Spires, entered the starting gate, and burst into the annals of history as the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. Although she finished fifteenth in the race—the fault of a longshot horse more than of a bad ride— Crump came in just behind Bill Hartack, the same jockey who told LIFE Magazine in 1968, “I still doubt you’ll ever see a female riding in the Kentucky Derby.”
Today, we honor Crump as one of only six women (still!) to have ridden in the Derby in its 151-year history. We also honor her as one of the most kind, yet determined, souls to ever grace a racing saddle. Crump’s passion changed history, paving the way for other monumental career firsts from the likes of Patti “P.J.” Cooksey, Julie Krone and Rosie Napravnik.
Zamarelli can keep his orchids. These women ran for the Roses, and we remember them just fine.
For more information visit derbymuseum.org