They were stars and they were slaves.

In the annals of sports history, little attention has been paid to the black jockeys who inaugurated and triumphed over horse racing in the United States. Owned by white men, they occupied an exceedingly peculiar place in the world - which made them an ideal topic for playwright Carlyle Brown, who has spent much of his career mining black history for drama in such plays as The African Company Presents Richard III and The Little Tommy Parker Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show.

For Pure Confidence, opening Tuesday at Denver Center Theatre Company, Brown looked to the history of black jockeys.

"I discovered this phenomenon that black jockeys were quite common in the American South, which is the home of horse racing," Brown says. "African-Americans were rural people at that time, and they knew the horses, I imagine that was the reason."

While rewriting a 1940s Harold Arlen musical, Brown was drawn into the history and its theatrical possibilities.

"I thought to myself, 'If somebody owned a horse and a jockey, what would that relationship look like?'" he says. "They were equally valuable, certainly. It also was a place where one could look at slavery in terms of capitalism. When we look at slavery, we leave out the quotient of the fact that we're talking about the ownership of human life and that black people had a monetary value, they were a commodity."

Brown drew on different jockeys to come up with his composite character, Simon Cato, a successful jockey who uses his prize money to buy his freedom.

"You get a guy like Simon, his place in society changes because of how much he's worth," Brown says. "He's got the opportunity to buy himself or negotiate for himself."

But what makes the slave money also makes his owner money.

"The better he gets, the more he's worth, the less he's able to buy himself."

The Pioneers

Here are some of the first great black jockeys:

• Austin Curtis: A quarter-horse jockey, trainer and groom, Curtis worked for Colonel Willie Jones in Roanoke, Va. Jones had his slave emancipated in 1791 as a reward for his excellence.

• Simon: Denied the dignity of a surname, Simon was frequently hired out by his owners to Colonel George Elliott in Tennessee. He had an ongoing rivalry with Andrew Jackson's horse.

• Charles Stewart: He began his career as a stable boy for Kentucky racing entrepreneur William R. Johnson, becoming a jockey and eventually a trainer. Even while a slave, Stewart earned so much money he had an agent to handle it.

• Cato: The jockey won his freedom in 1839 in the Grey Eagle race in Kentucky.

• Abe Hawkins: Although a slave, Hawkins became the most celebrated athlete in the nation, running in the nation's first derby in 1864.

- Information drawn from the Cincinnati Playhouse and The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America's First National Sport, by Edward Hotaling

Stop. Talking. Now.

Author Edward Hotaling wrote the definitive history of black jockeys and also conducted the interview that brought down Jimmy the Greek.

In 1988, sports commentator Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder told Hotaling why he thought blacks made such good athletes:

"He's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started."

The whole incident amazes playwright Carlyle Brown, including the fact that Hotaling only did the interview because he was desperately trying to find someone to comment on Martin Luther King Day and found Snyder sitting in a deli.

"What an irony it is that Jimmy the Greek got himself in trouble for this thing when America's really first great athletes were not big, strong black men that necessarily looked like football players, but were in fact little, short black players," Brown says.

Pure Confidence

• When and where: 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 1:30 p.m. Saturdays through April 21, Stage Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, Speer Boulevard and Arapahoe Street

• Cost: $30 to $46

• Information: 303-893-4100

Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic. bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

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