Lake Neuron

As I posted a few weeks back, Mim Eichler Rivas’ book “Beautiful Jim Key: The Lost History of a Horse and a Man Who Changed The World” is about to be released. I interviewed the author last spring, and I’ll talk to her again soon in preparation for an appearance she will make in Shelbyville.

I have just finished reading the book. It’s a remarkable tale, skillfully told, and exceeded my already-high expectations. Of couse, I was particularly fascinated because I learned so much about my own home town of Shelbyville (I wasn’t born in Bedford County, but moved here at age 10). I knew that Shelbyville, because of high pockets of Union sympathy, was known as “Little Boston” during the Civil War, but Rivas brought out details and nuances of that reputation I had never know about. Even without that personal connection, however, you’ll be hooked by this fascinating story.

Since the late 1930s, Shelbyville’s best-known distinction has been the Tennessee Walking Horse industry and the annual Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration. But Shelbyville had a prior equine claim to fame — one which many of its current residents have no clue ever existed. Beautiful Jim Key was an Arabian-Hambletonian horse who lived at the turn of the 20th Century. His trainer was William Key, a former slave who developed and marketed a patent medicine called Keystone Liniment. William Key was a horse whisperer, one who used exclusively-gentle training methods, and he taught Beautiful Jim Key to recognize letters and numbers and perform other feats. Some of these, such as spelling names phonetically and making change, appear to have involved simple forms of reasoning. There were skeptics throughout the horse’s career, who assumed that the trainer was somehow sending secret signals to the horse, but no one — not even a team of Harvard professors — were ever able to discover any sort of system. Most, like Mim Rivas, came away concluding that the horse’s abilities were for real.

Promoter Albert Rogers teamed up with William Key and his amazing horse and made them nationwide celebrities, using them to promote the still-new cause of humane treatment of animals. More than one million children joined the horse’s fan club by promising to be kind to animals. The horse was praised by President William McKinley. Beautiful Jim Key was arguably the most famous horse of his brief era, and William Key was one of the best-known African-Americans of his day.

There are plenty of twists and turns to the tale, including a plausible argument that the horse had a significant impact on the development, decades later, of the Grand Ole Opry. It turns out that an appearance by Jim Key was only the second secular event held at the Union Gospel Tabernacle, later known as the Ryman Auditorium, and it seems to have opened the floodgates for the tabernacle to be used as an entertainment venue. The Ryman for a while became the Grand Ole Opry House, housing the venerable radio show during the peak of its prominence and influence.

Rivas and her husband, former Miami Dolphin Victor Rivers, have been honored by the Lifetime cable network for their work in the prevention of domestic violence. It’s obvious that the theme of humane treatment of animals resonates strongly with her as well, and that she believes the story of Jim Key has resonance even today. But the book is not a polemic, and doesn’t address modern disputes about what constitutes humane treatment of animals. It’s simply a good story, which will touch anyone with an interest in history, animals, race relations or popular entertainment.