The executive director of the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association believes the Juneteenth holiday is the perfect time to celebrate the “huge contribution” that Black trainers, drivers and owners are making to the sport in Illinois.
“I don’t know where we’d be without them,” Tony Somone said of the “50 or 60” members of the Black community who have competed in the state from late April to early September at the 27 county fairs, non-betting races at the Springfield and DuQuoin fairgrounds, at pari-mutuel races at the Illinois and DuQuoin State Fairs in August, and at Hawthorne Race Course.
“Over the last 15 years or so, I’ve watched these guys grow from hungry young men who wanted to succeed in the sport to seasoned veterans. I feel really good that these guys are making such a huge contribution to harness racing in Illinois.”
In 2021 Hawthorne held a Juneteenth race with all black drivers — the first of its kind in the United States. Illinois stands apart from other major harness racing states because of the relatively high number of Black horsemen who train, drive and own horses.
In the vanguard is a sizeable contingent from Mississippi. While there is no betting on races there, Black trainers and drivers have competed for years at events such as the Nishoba County Fair and in neighboring Tennessee. Many who come to Illinois every spring and summer return to Mississippi and use it as a winter training base.
“They’re the backbone of the fairs, which are the grassroots of harness racing,” said Tim Norman, the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s bureau chief of county fairs and harness racing.
The demise of Balmoral Park and Maywood Park following their 2015 meeting left dual-purpose Hawthorne as the only harness track in the state with a conventional season. When Arlington International Racecourse was wiped off the racing map by corporate owner Churchill Downs, Inc. after 2021, Hawthorne also became one of only two Illinois thoroughbred tracks left standing. The other is Fairmount Park in Collinsville.
Since 2022, the harness horses and thoroughbreds have had what amounts to a timeshare arrangement at Hawthorne. This year on Feb. 12, the harness horses concluded their session that began last Sept. 12 and they’ll return from Oct. 19 to Dec. 19. The thoroughbreds began their racing on March 23, which will run through Sept. 25.
The non-betting races at Springfield and DuQuoin — funded by Hawthorne’s purse account with financial help from the Illinois Department of Agriculture — provide owners, trainers and drivers with the opportunity to earn money until pari-mutuel racing resumes. And since 2022, the county fairs have become an increasingly important revenue source.
With a few exceptions — most notably the only Black members of harness racing’s Hall of Fame, the late driver/trainer Lew Williams (a 2009 inductee) and trainer George Teague (a 2022 inductee) — Black participants haven’t attained the prominence that members like their counterparts in baseball, basketball and football since Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947.
“In harness racing, they were the grooms, the low people on the totem pole. They were doing the work that no one else wanted to do,” said harness historian Dean Hoffman, who was the editor of the United States Trotting Association’s authoritative monthly magazine HoofBeats for 25 years.
“By sheer talent, Lew Williams rose to the top and he opened the door.”
The governing body of North American harness racing, the United States Trotting Association, doesn’t ask for race on license applications so it’s impossible to know the exact number of Black drivers and trainers, but a review of the standings at the tracks lends credence to Hoffman’s opinion that they are a small minority. In contrast, in Illinois, they are a significant presence and are making an impact.
Most prominent on the list of seasonal migrants are trainers Freddie Patton Jr., Roshun Trigg and Jerome Daniels.
“When I was 16, I started driving in the fairs in Mississippi,” said Patton, the eldest of the group at age 60. “Many of us are from Clinton, just outside Jackson. As horses got more popular in Mississippi, my dad had a few friends who were racing in Illinois. We followed them and people followed us. It grew from there.
“In May, I come back to DuQuoin, where my stable is based during the summer, and look at the county fair schedule book and just go. I hit practically every one. I have 11 head and I’m working by myself since my son Cornelius Cavett started his own operation and my other son, Jordan Patton, is working with him. They have about 22 head and they stay in DuQuoin for the winter.”
DuQuoin is located 325 miles south of Hawthorne and 155 miles south of Springfield, so Patton and his counterparts log a lot of miles behind the wheel on the fair circuit that stretches to Sandwich in the northeast, Morrison in the northwest and Rockford/Belvidere in the north-central part of the state.
Patton’s travels have proven to be productive. In 2016, Princess Sage, the 2-year-old filly he co-owned with breeder Keli Jo Bell, was selected Illinois Harness Horse of the Year.
The 46-year-old Trigg also has had major accomplishments. He has earned trainer titles at the county fairs and DuQuoin, and his colt Louscipher was the 2017 Illinois male Trotter of the Year.
“I have 25 horses in my stable and my biggest owner is Dr. Richard Flacco (owner and breeder of Louscipher) here in Illinois,” Trigg said. ”He’s the main reason I haven’t branched out of Illinois.
“My godfather used to come up here to race at the fairs. I came on my own when I was 22 or 23, hit the road and had a good year. I’ve been coming back every year.”
Trigg confines his racing to training and shoes horses to augment his income.
Patton’s 42-year-old driver/trainer nephew Jamaica Patton and 30-year-old driver Cordarius Stewart are among those who don’t return to Mississippi for the winter.
Jamaica Patton made his Illinois debut at the county fairs in 1998 and within a few years he was showing up in the winner’s circle at Balmoral, Maywood and Hawthorne with horses he trained and drove. Since Balmoral and Maywood have gone out of business, occasionally he has made appearances at The Red Mile and Oak Grove in Kentucky and Indiana’s Hoosier Park.
But he still is a fixture at the fairs. “I love going around to the fairs regardless of how much money we’re racing for,” Jamaica Patton said. “It’s like a family in Illinois — a racing family.”
Jamaica Patton has 40 horses in his Springfield-based stable and he stays there at the fairgrounds during the winter to train them for the coming year.
Stewart, who also owns four horses that compete at the fairs, has become a regular driver for the Midwest Division of the powerful stable of Hawthorne’s defending champion trainer Erv Miller. His summer base is the fairgrounds in Indianapolis and during the past two winters he has gone to Florida’s Southern Oaks Training Center to condition horses for Miller.
“When I was 19, I raced at Balmoral,” he said. “Then, I stopped racing for five years and worked at a Nissan plant back in Mississippi. I came back and drove for four years for Roshun Trigg at the fairs and Brandon Bates at Hawthorne. I won the driving title at the fairs in 2020.”
Among the Mississippi-born Black horsemen in Illinois, owner/trainer Hosea Williams (no relation to Lew Williams) is unique because he has lived in the Chicago area since 1966 and wasn’t involved in harness racing until about five years after he came here.
“I grew up in Leland, Miss., which is pretty far from where those other guys come from,” he said. “My only involvement with horses was with Shetland ponies. I never met those guys until many years later after they came here to race.”
Williams’ introduction to harness racing came when he was a neophyte horseplayer: “One night in 1968 I went to Washington Park and caught the Big Q for $86 and I was hooked from then on.”
Williams started hanging out at Maywood. He became acquainted with Harry Sprunger and quit his job that paid $280 a week to take a job grooming horses for the trainer for $86 a week.
In 1973, Williams went to now-defunct Quad City Downs to pursue a career as a trainer and driver. He made his Chicago area debut in the winter of 1974 at Aurora Downs, another track that has gone out of business. From the mid-1970s onward, Williams became a fixture at the Chicagoland tracks and in 1990 he went on his own as a trainer.
Starting in 1998, he served on the board of directors of the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association and is a member of the IHHA’s Hall of Fame.
Williams said when he began his career there was only one Black owner in Illinois that he knew of and no Black drivers or trainers, with the exception of Lew Williams, who sometimes raced at the Chicagoland tracks.
Today, the state is at the forefront of diversity among competitors.
Neil Milbert is a freelance writer who covered harness racing and other sports during his 40-year career with the Chicago Tribune.
