Isaac would go to work with his mother who was working at a racing stable. Eli Jordan, an African-American trainer, took notice of the young Burns and began to mold him into a jockey. Isaac adopted the name “Murphy” to honor his grandfather, Green Murphy, and became known as Isaac Burns Murphy.
At the age of 14 Murphy rode and won his first race. He was one of the first jockeys to pace his mount throughout the race and make a late surge in the homestretch. He rode his first Kentucky Derby the following year and finished a respectable fourth. Murphy used his words and a spur to urge his mounts rather than hit them with a whip.
By 1879 Isaac had become a star in the sport of racing, winning the biggest races the country had to offer. He won the Kentucky Derby three times in 1884, 1890 and 1891. Over the course of his career Murphy earned an average salary of $20,000 per year and lived in a mansion in Lexington.
EZ Horse Betting Fun Fact
Isaac Murphy was the first jockey inducted into the Horseracing Hall of Fame.
During the mid-1890’s Murphy’s career began to wane due to ongoing battles with his weight, alcoholism and racial discrimination. The days of African-American riders dominating the American turf were coming to an end as more and more white riders emerged.
Isaac Murphy died on February 12, 1896 of pneumonia just a few months after the end of his riding career. He was buried in an unmarked grave in African Cemetery No. 2 in Lexington, Kentucky and forgotten. During the 1960’s, University of Kentucky Press Specialist Frank B. Borries, Jr. spent three years trying to locate Murphy’s grave. In 1967 the once famous rider was reinterred at the old burial site of the legendary horse Man O’ War. When the Kentucky Horse Park was built, Murphy was moved again and laid to rest a final time beside Man O’ War at the entrance to the park.
During his career, Murphy’s win percentage was phenomenal. One record states that his win percentage was 44%, another claims it to be just over 34%. That percentage has never been matched by any rider since. In 1995 The American Turf Writers’ Association created the Isaac B. Murphy Memorial Award. Every year since then, the jockey who has the highest win percentage of the year is honored with this award.
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Isaac Murphy’s Historical Significance in American Racing
Isaac Burns Murphy’s achievement of winning three Kentucky Derby victories in the 19th century — at a time when Black jockeys dominated American thoroughbred racing — represents one of the sport’s most significant historical stories. Murphy’s skill, professionalism, and commercial success made him the highest-paid jockey of his era, yet the racial dynamics of American society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries systematically excluded Black riders from major American racing in the decades following his death, erasing a generation of elite talent from the sport’s competitive landscape.
The rediscovery and celebration of Murphy’s legacy in modern times — reflected in his Hall of Fame induction and the naming of a major Kentucky race in his honour — represents a belated recognition of how much his era contributed to the sport’s development. For racing historians and betting enthusiasts who want to understand the full scope of the sport’s development, Murphy’s career is essential context — a reminder that horse racing’s history contains both great sporting achievement and the same social inequalities that characterised broader American society. For more on the historical foundations of American racing, our article on a history of horse gambling traces the sport’s full development. And our guide to the Triple Crown explained covers the Kentucky Derby that Murphy mastered in the race’s early decades.
