Alonzo Clayton

Who was Alonzo Clayton?

Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton was an American jockey in Thoroughbred horse racing described by author Edward Hotaling, as "one of the great riders of the New York circuit all through the 1890s” and who holds the record as the youngest jockey to ever win the Kentucky Derby.

An African American, Lonnie Clayton was born in Kansas City, Missouri, one of the nine children of Robert and Evaline Clayton. At age ten, his family moved to North Little Rock, Arkansas where he attended school and worked as a gofer for a hotel and as a shoeshine boy to help support his family. According to the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, a correspondent for the Thoroughbred Record wrote in 1896 that Clayton attended school and was considered "exceptionally bright."

At age twelve the diminutive Lonnie Clayton left home and made his way north to Chicago's Washington Park Race Track where his brother Albertus was a jockey for prominent Thoroughbred horse racing stable owner, Lucky Baldwin. Lonnie Clayton was given a job as a stablehand and exercise rider for the Baldwin stable then the following year he moved east to the Clifton Race Track in New Jersey where in 1890 the fourteen-year-old began his professional riding career. Immediately successful, in 1891 at Morris Park Racetrack in The Bronx, New York, Clayton won the important Champagne Stakes aboard Bashford Manor Stable's two-year-old colt, Azra. On May 11, 1892 he rode Azra to victory in the Kentucky Derby which at age fifteen made him the youngest jockey in history to ever win the Derby. Clayton and Azra followed up their Derby success with victories in the Clark Handicap and the Travers Stakes.