Ray Sibille of Lafayette will add his name at induction ceremonies this weekend to a distinguished list of jockeys who are in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, but there’s a man who was once “the most celebrated jockey in North America” who should be in the state’s sports shrine.
Eddie Delahoussaye, Calvin Borel, Randy Romero, Mark Guidry and Ronald Ardoin are among jockeys who have been elected to the Hall. Perhaps Brian Hernandez Jr., who won this year’s Kentucky Derby aboard Mystik Dan, will enter the Hall someday.
Unlike those folks, Abe Hawkins isn’t yet a household name in Louisiana, and that’s despite some wonderful accomplishments.
In 1997, more than a century after his death in 1867, he was inducted into the Louisiana Racing Museum Hall of Fame.
And this year, just a few months ago — at long last — he was elected to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame – along with Lecomte, the famous steed he rode to victory over mighty Lexington. Lecomte, by the way, was bred by Thomas Jefferson Wells from Wellswood Plantation, just south of Alexandria.
Hawkins, Lecomte and Aristides, the horse that won the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, were elected by the museum’s pre-1900 historic review committee. The enshrinement ceremony will be Aug. 2 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Hawkins was one of two men known across the country as “Old Abe” in the mid-19th century. One of them was Lincoln, who spent some precious time in the White House. The other was Hawkins, who was quartered in another white house down in the bayou country of Ascension Parish. A Greek Revival plantation not far from Geismar that faces the Mississippi River and is backed by huge oaks, it was then known as Ashland Plantation and is now called Belle Helene.
Many books and movies have been produced about Abe Lincoln, but less is known about Abe Hawkins, other than his fame as a jockey. Records weren’t kept for slaves. Historians don’t know who his parents were, nor are they sure where he was born. We do know that Duncan Kenner, the owner of Ashland Plantation, bought him for $2,300 in 1854. It was reported in the papers of the time along with sales and purchases of livestock.
A story published in April of 2013 in “The Equine Report – the Voice of the Horse Industry” described Hawkins as “the most celebrated jockey in America prior to Isaac Murphy,” a three-time winner of the Kentucky Derby who won multiple times at two other major derbies of the late 1800s. It also said Hawkins was the “first African-American professional athlete to gain national and international prominence.”
In one of the most celebrated match races in turf history, Hawkins rode Lecomte (for whom the town Lecompte is named) to victory over the most legendary horse of the era, Lexington, at the Metairie Race Course in 1854. After the Civil War, which made him a free man, Abe won, among other races, the Travers Stakes aboard Merrill in 1866. Merrill, incidentally, was trained by another ex-slave, Ansel Williamson, who less than a decade later would ride Arisitides to victory in the inaugural Kentucky Derby.
Hawkins was touted for his skill as a jockey and his riding style, which later came to be known as “American Seat” or “Riding Forward,” popularized two decades later by Tod Sloan and Willie Simms.
Trainers and owners called upon his services to ride many of the best thoroughbreds of the era, including Arrow, Whale, Panic, Minnehaha, Louis d’Or, Rhynodine and Asteroid.
Patrick Lawrence Gilligan wrote a March 16, 2020 thoroughbred racing commentary about Hawkins for Global Appeal. He wrote that Abe was a small man, “only the size of a child,” and had a speech impediment “which may have contributed to his silent manner.”
He could talk with the horses, though. And he was reportedly a man of compassion. His former owner, Kenner, temporarily lost most of his wealth in the Civil War, according to Gilligan, but “it is said that Abe sent word to Kenner that he would help him” if he needed financial assistance.
Returning in his later years to Ashland because that was the only home he ever knew, Old Abe died there of tuberculosis and was buried “not in a slave cemetery but in a brick tomb under a mighty oak overlooking the training track of Ashland.”
This is the kind of Louisiana legend we need to know about – and to honor.