Which of the following sports is the first sport African Americans participated in as professional athletes?

-Horse racing-

Black jockeys were the first professional athletes. In the early 1800s, horse racing became an organized sport. Black jockeys came to dominate horse racing for two centuries.

Although African-American jockeys may be a rarity now, they dominated the winner’s circle in the race’s first three decades at Churchill Downs. When the Kentucky Derby began in 1875, 13 of the 15 riders in that first Kentucky Derby were African-Americans. In the years following the Civil War, black jockeys dominated horse racing at a time when it was America’s most popular sport. African-American riders were the first black sports superstars in the United States, and they won 15 of the first 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.

While the 1880s saw professional baseball draw the color line, not to be broken until the Brooklyn Dodgers called up Jackie Robinson in 1947, African-Americans continued to thrive on the track. Racism drove Black jockeys off the race tracks in the early 1900s.