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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's Friday - that means it's time for StoryCorps. On the eve of a Kentucky Derby, we remember America's first Black female jockey. Cheryl White grew up on a horse farm in Ohio. In 1971, as a teenager, she left home to become a jockey. White's younger brother Raymond came to StoryCorps with his son to remember her.
RAYMOND WHITE SR: She always was very vocal coming out of the gate. That was one of her trademarks, screaming like a bat out of hell.
RAYMOND WHITE JR: Her war cry.
RAYMOND WHITE SR: It's exactly what it was. It was a war cry.
RAYMOND WHITE JR: I was terrified of her as a kid.
RAYMOND WHITE SR: (Laughter).
RAYMOND WHITE JR: You know, I would have swore she ate babies and breathed fire.
RAYMOND WHITE SR: She had perfect form when she rode. The old saying is, you know, a good jockey, you can put a cup of coffee on their back 'cause their back is level. And, you know, racehorses are mean as hell. So maybe that's why she was kind of mean herself.
RAYMOND WHITE JR: (Laughter).
RAYMOND WHITE SR: She was fearless. My biggest memory of her was on a horse named Tiger's Tune. He had a habit of bolting. And when a horse bolts, it's dangerous. So he was an outlaw. Nobody wanted to ride him. Cheryl said, I'll ride him. And Cheryl ended up winning four races in a row on Tiger's Tune. And every win picture, she would hold her fingers up to indicate two...
RAYMOND WHITE JR: Which race it was, right?
RAYMOND WHITE SR: ...Three, four. You know, she had this hard exterior. She wasn't real patient, and she was misunderstood by a lot of people. She was misunderstood by me. Me and her are almost the opposite in personality. My mom used to always say that I was the sweet one, and she was the mean one. But it was just front. She was so quick to cry. We'd gotten a lot closer in the last couple of years after our mother passed. Cheryl called me at 3 in the morning to let us know what happened. And that's when our connection really began.
I lost my mother, but I found my sister. I miss being able to call her and talk to her - because one thing I could always depend on, if I called my sister, she'd answer the phone. And, you know, I always was very proud of my sister. 21 years riding as a jockey. And she won 750 races, I believe. She was our version of viral in the '70s. She was on every news channel. She was in newspapers. She was in magazines.
RAYMOND WHITE JR: She was kind of oblivious to it, though.
RAYMOND WHITE SR: Yeah. She just didn't think of herself as that big of a deal. And then she kind of got forgotten about. But I want her to be etched in stone in history.
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MARTIN: Raymond White and his son, Raymond, remembering his sister Cheryl White. She died in 2019. Their interview is part of the StoryCorps Brightness in Black Project and is archived at the Library of Congress. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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