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A new Hall of Fame for horse racing is coming to town.   The first ceremony will be held at Leeds Center for the Arts in Winchester, Kentucky, on Saturday, June 15, 2024, at 7:30 p.m.   As submitted, the Hall of Fame’s goals include honoring living African Americans in the thoroughbred horse racing business, teaching youth the thoroughbred horse racing business, and making the Isaac Murphy homeplace in Clark County a Kentucky tourist attraction. 

Admission will be $10, with children able to enter for free. Greg Figgs, a local blues entertainer, will be performing.

Isaac Murphy, an American Hall of Fame jockey who won three Kentucky Derby races and was the first jockey to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame when it was created in 1955, was born into slavery in Clark County in 1861.   This year’s honorees are Edward DeBartolo, Lester McKeever, Ted Bassett, Barry Gordy, Dick Broadbent, Fred Precious, Herb Luster, Ben Huffman, James Jackson, Larry Demeritte, George W. Jones, and Jim Cottrell.

Also inducted will be Winchester Extraordinaires. 

They are Willie Hopkins, Marvin O. King Jr., Jeremiam Bell, Buzz Burnham, Larry Gay, Tommy Lynch, Scott Osborne, Joe Chenault, Paul Howard, Sherman Chalres, Martha Miller, Joyce Ann Morton, Wilbert Hackett, Flora Shelby, Gene Culton, Charles Scott, Tommy Paisley, Alvin Paisley, James Paisley, Jessica Durphy, Stacy Lyles, Deatra Newell, Danny Nutter, the Shackleford Elks Lodge, Rhonda Lynn Mason, and Kenneth Huhley. 

The President is Jennifer Mason.