This Throwback Thursday, in recognition of Black History Month, we’re looking back at the life of Tom Bass, the groundbreaking equestrian who was the namesake for the annual Tom Bass Seminar on Diversity in Equestrian Sport. This article was first published in the July/August 2017 issue of Untacked.
When Tom Bass rode his brilliant black mare Belle Beach into a show ring in the early 1900s, large crowds were often stunned into silence—and then brought to their feet to cheer for him.
Today Bass, considered by many to be one of the greatest horse trainers of the early 20th century, remains an idol for Saddlebred enthusiasts. But he’s also known for his impact on larger U.S. horse show history.
Bass was the first African-American rider to participate in many horse shows, including New York City’s Madison Square Garden. He invented a bit that’s still used for gaited horses today, and he rode in one of President Grover Cleveland’s inauguration parades. Presidents William McKinley and William Howard Taft visited him in his home of Audrain County, Missouri. President Theodore Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill Cody owned Bass-trained horses, and when Bass died, Will Rogers eulogized him.
“I call him the original horse whisperer,” says Lori Pratt, director of the Audrain County Historical Society, “because he could tell you anything about a horse; he could make a horse do anything you wanted him to do, and he was gentle. He never used a whip. He didn’t raise his voice.”
The Best In The Business
Bass was born enslaved in Missouri in 1859, writes Bill Downey in his 1975 biography of Bass, “Whisper On The Wind.” His father was the farm owner, William Hayden Bass, and his mother was Cornelia Gray, an enslaved woman.
Gray’s parents, who had been emancipated, raised him, and he grew up helping in the stables on the Bass family farm, riding his father’s mare, Helen MacGregor, before he was 3 years old.
“My interest in saddle horses was by breeding and environment,” he said. “I slept in the stables when I was so tiny I got covered up in the straw, and I rode the old mares when I was no bigger than a horsefly.”
By 1879, Tom had moved to Mexico, Missouri, the center of the saddle horse world. He was only in his 20s but was already a highly regarded trainer, and by 1883 he’d started his own stable. He trained three- and five-gaited horses, and people referred to a horse as “Tom Bass-gaited.”
“People questioned how good he was,” says Pratt, “so he took a mule, and he gaited the mule to walk the way he wanted, and he gaited it backwards also.”
Newspaper articles from those years are filled with notes about his frequent wins. Though one story in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Oct. 20, 1901, notes he was “seriously if not fatally hurt” when a mount fell on him at a New York competition—and a few other publications reported he had died—by early 1902 he was winning again.
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In 1904, Tom met the New York-based rider and trainer Belle Beach at a horse show in Kansas City, and she bested Tom, who was riding a horse named Paris. After that, he renamed a black mare he’d been calling Blackbird Belle after Beach. She became his favorite mount.
Belle Beach excelled in the competition called “high school,” a dressage-like series of movements—including passage, pirouettes, renvers and travers—performed solo in a ring. Belle Beach could “salute” by waving a foreleg.
When Calvin Coolidge was the governor of Massachusetts, he walked down from his box at a show to see the mare, and Tom had her kneel on her forelegs to show respect. She became so dominant in the high school division that show organizers would change any Belle Beach appearance to an exhibition rather than a contest.
A long interview from 1909 provides some rare insight from Tom about how he trained horses to achieve such extraordinary heights.
“I get the first line on the best ones when they are being handled for ordinary saddle horses,” Tom told the reporter, Henry Ten Eyck White, “and it does not take long at that stage to pick out the naturally smart beasts, that also are capable of being educated above the ordinary, for not every brainy horse will let you use his intelligence to its full extent.”
The first thing Tom taught horses was a Spanish march—imagine an extended walk, with forefront-pointing energy. It was a crucial gait, the trainer said, because, “It is like the alphabet to a child learning to read. With it thoroughly mastered the infant will surely progress, although, as everybody knows, some children will acquire proficiency much easier and earlier than others.”
Trickier, Tom said, was the “military mount,” where the horse stretches out with fore and hind legs.
“I noticed horses doing that in their stalls,” he said. “And it occurred to me that, inasmuch as it was a natural thing for the horse to make that long stretch when he felt like it, just as a man stretches when in the mood, it could be used in high school work. Once the idea was in my head I never stopped until I had discovered how to make a horse do it at will. It is accomplished by use of the bit, and [is] not now considered a difficult trick to teach in a horse.”
His emphasis on watching the horse at liberty reflects the idea of natural horsemanship but also pushes further. With his methods, Tom integrated what the horse does when no one is asking.
Not Always Welcome
Another long interview took place in 1917, and, while Tom explained his views on training with patience in the same way, the piece also demonstrates the racism he encountered.
The reporter attributed Tom’s success to the fact that he “knows his place and keeps it,” which is why “more than one horse show association has ruled that ‘entries shall be accepted openly only from white exhibitors save that an exception is made in the case of Tom Bass, colored.’ ”
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Sometimes, they didn’t. One of Tom’s allies, a white man and Saddlebred trainer named John Hook, told a story about being presented with a petition that sought to bar African-Americans in Saddlebred shows. Hook was a leading trainer, and when he refused to sign, the matter was dropped.
Other times, Tom would have to leave a show upon learning he was not allowed to compete.
As Downey writes, “Tom Bass was often held up as an example of how the Black man could rise above the circumstances of humble birth. Yet, very few of Tom’s admirers had any idea how eternally haunted he was by the very racism they thought Tom had managed to overcome.”
Belle Beach died in 1933, and newspapers eulogized her passing. She was 31 and had been retired since 1927.
Tom Bass died the next year at 75, with a Nov. 20, 1934, article in the Moberly Monitor-Index noting he died “suddenly at home in Mexico” and that friends thought the death of Belle Beach left him “grief-stricken and probably contributed to his death.”
After Tom’s death, showman Will Rogers wrote about him: “You have all seen society folks perform on a beautiful three-, or five-gaited saddle horse, and said, ‘My, what skill and patience they must have had to train that animal.’ Well, all they did was ride him in. [Tom] trained thousands that others were applauded on. A remarkable man, a remarkable character.”
To this day, Saddlebred riders and trainers still use Bass bits. Tom also helped start Kansas City’s famous American Royal Horse Show, which bore that name because it was similar to The Royal Show, held annually in England from 1839-2009. It started as a livestock show and now includes a rodeo, hunter/jumper competition and barbecue contest, but for many years its Saddlebred competitions took center stage. A warm-up arena at the American Royal is named for Tom, and there’s a Tom Bass Road in Missouri.
And at the Audrain County Historical Society, Pratt says visitors can view Tom’s show outfits, ribbons, an early Bass bit, paintings, photographs, hats, spurs and a golden horse pin he wore on his lapel. These artifacts make up the tangible part of his legacy. But according to Audrain County Historical Society docent Jackie Cauble, Tom left much more.
“He didn’t care for the money at all,” she says. “He didn’t care for the glory or that part of it. Everything he did was to benefit the horses and their owners.”
A this article originally appeared in the July/August 2017 issue of Untacked. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.
