Isaac Burns Murphy
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- For other people named Burns, see Burns (disambiguation).
Isaac Burns Murphy (April 16, 1861 - February 12, 1896) was an African-American thoroughbred jockey.
Isaac Burns was born in Frankfort, Fayette County, Kentucky. His father served in the Union army in the Civil War, until his death at Camp Nelson as a prisoner of war. After Burns' father's death, his family moved to Lexington, where they lived with Burns' grandfather, Green Murphy. When he became a jockey at age 14, he changed his last name to Murphy to honor his grandfather.
Between 1877 and 1893, Isaac Murphy competed in eleven Kentucky Derbys, becoming the first jockey to win three Derbys: "Buchanan" in 1884, "Riley" in 1890, and "Kingman" in 1891. "Kingman" was owned and trained by Dudley Allen and is the only horse owned by an African-American to win the Derby.
As well, he is the only jockey to have won the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, and the Clark Handicap all in the same year (1884). Considered one of the great jockeys in American history, Murphy was dubbed the "Colored Archer," a reference to Fred Archer, a prominent English jockey at the time.
Murphy won 628 of his 1,412 starts, a 44% victory rate that has never been equalled. The first to be honored, he and Willie Simms are the only two African American jockeys to have been inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
Isaac Murphy died in 1896 in Lexington, Kentucky and is now interred in the cemetery at the Kentucky Horse Park.
Since 1995 the National Turf Writers Association has given the Isaac Murphy Award to the jockey with the highest winning percentage for a given year in North American racing, from a minimum of 500 mounts.
