On June 15, 1971, Cheryl White found 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 wanted those gates to start,” she told me lately. “I was not nervous and knew I’d be first out and find the lead.”
Cheryl was ideal. She took command in the $2,600, six-furlong occasion, and for nearly half the race, she looked like a winner. However, Ace Reward and White would finish dead of 11 horses. However, Cheryl White had made history with her journey, getting the very first African American female jockey of the time.
Cheryl grew up around horses and creatures that were countless.
“We moved to the country when I was very young, so I recall being around horses and being very comfortable around them. And we had all kinds other animals,” she said.
White came from great racing inventory. 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 end of the riding career as well as conditioned two horses that 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 together with my father being in the horse business, he wasn’t just in favor of female riders,” she explained. “My Dad was just old school and did not believe, like most old timers, that girls belonged across the racetrack. There was a time when women weren’t even allowed on the backstretch after five o’clock. However, my parents didn’t try to talk me out of it, either.”
White did not do any better in her next outing and ran dead last again, but it didn’t faze her. She had been granted an apprentice license on June 26, 1971, and two months later, it occurred. White rode her first winner on September 2, 1971 in Waterford Park on a horse called Jetolara, becoming the first black woman to win a thoroughbred horse race in the United States.
White received enough attention to be invited to the”Boots and Bows Handicap,” an all-female riders race in Atlantic City in 1972. She won on the longest shot on the board at a field of 14. However, the race was not without controversy, as fellow riders Mary Bacon was angry at White after the race and also accused her of coming over on her horse. However, the two girls 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 in the warm and sunny Southern California tracks. But 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 stayed in the east rather than going west,” she advised me. “I think that the paths on the East Coast and Midwest were much 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 that they would have done as well at the western paths. They just wouldn’t have gotten the (great ) mounts as well as the opportunities that feminine jockeys had back east and in the Midwest.”
White shifted her attention to riding Quarter Horses, Paints and Appaloosas at the California County Fairs. She had a reputation for being fast from the gate and was in high demand on the California Fair circuit. She awakened the rider standings and earned 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 distinct states on precisely the exact same day after she rode a winner at Thistledown in Ohio at the day and scored again in the night 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 began making plans to find a simpler way to make a living. Back in 1991, she passed the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination and rode her final 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 various functions at many distinct racetracks. Since her retirement, White has ridden many times in charity events, competing with fellow retired female riders.
Now, White works happily as a putting estimate at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio. She has a brother and nephew that have an advertising firm, Kabango Media. It gives the family pleasure to see the title of the business, as it was called after one of Cheryl’s father’s favorite horses, Kabango.
Even though it seems White was severely underrated, she did get some awards and coverage. In 1994, she was honored as one of the”Successful African Americans at the Thoroughbred Racing Industry” by 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 career in a couple of sentences.
“I had quite a long and relatively successful career winning 750 races. I must retire on my terms and of my own choice and essentially in 1 piece. I was very lucky to have had a job that I loved and had a passion for. A lot of people simply are not that lucky. It has been a very long road, but it’s also been a fascinating and incredibly lucrative and fun street,” she said. “I wouldn’t exchange it for anything”
When I asked about any probable plans of retirement, Cheryl said,”Retire? Retire from this? I was a race track brat as a kid, and I’m probably going to expire on the trail!”
Cheryl White was a real pioneer in our sport, and you can just imagine the hurdles she overcame to pursue her career. She had been young and determined, ignored the drama along with the bigots, and just put her head down and rode. She paved the way for many people to pursue their own fantasies, 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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