Penny Ann Early

Early life and background

Penny Ann Early was born on May 30, 1943, in Chicago, Illinois, though a few later reference works have given different birth details. The Chicago birth date is the most widely cited in modern biographical sources and is consistent with reports of her dying at age 80 in 2023. She grew up during a period when women were rarely encouraged to seek roles in professional sport, especially in racing and basketball, arenas that were structured around male participation and male audiences.

Early attended Senn High School in Chicago and graduated in 1961. After school, she worked with horses, an early practical connection that shaped her eventual entry into racing. Those beginnings mattered because horse racing was not a typical route to public prominence for women in the 1960s. The sport was strongly gendered, with many tracks and racing cultures assuming that jockeying was a male occupation. Early’s later career should be understood against that backdrop of limited opportunity and persistent skepticism toward women riders.

Entry into horse racing

By 1968, Early had become one of the first women in the United States to be licensed to ride parimutuel horse races. That development itself was important, but it did not mean equal access in practice. Accounts of her career describe efforts to ride at Churchill Downs in Louisville, where male jockeys reportedly responded with boycotts or threats of boycotts to block her participation. Such resistance illustrates the climate she faced: formal licensing was only one barrier, and social exclusion could still prevent women from actually competing.

Her situation was closely related to the broader breakthrough made by other women jockeys in the same period, including Kathryn Kusner, who secured a license through legal action, and Diane Crump, who became the first woman to actually ride in a pari-mutuel race in the United States in early 1969. Early’s place in this history is significant because she was part of the first cohort of women to force American racing to confront gender segregation on the track, even when the resulting opportunities were fragile and contested.

In the racing press and in later historical summaries, Early was sometimes described in absolute terms as the “first licensed female jockey,” but more detailed histories place her among the first licensed women riders rather than as the only one. What is not in doubt is that she was among the earliest women to gain that access and that her efforts drew public attention at a moment when women’s participation in professional racing remained highly controversial.

Public attention and the ABA appearance

Early’s name reached a much wider audience in late 1968 when the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association signed her as a publicity move after the Churchill Downs dispute. Early was not known as a basketball player and, by contemporary accounts, had never played the sport professionally before being recruited. The Colonels' decision reflected the ABA’s willingness to embrace spectacle and promotion, but it also created an unexpected milestone in sports history.

On November 27, 1968, Early appeared in a game for the Colonels and became the first woman to play in a men's professional basketball league in the United States. Her participation was brief: she inbounded the ball and was quickly substituted out. Even though the appearance lasted only moments, it crossed a symbolic line that had not previously been crossed in American pro basketball. The event is remembered not because it transformed the league, but because it made visible a space where women had been wholly excluded.

The episode also reveals the ambivalent politics of publicity. On one level, Early was used as part of a stunt. On another, she entered the official record as the first woman to appear in a men's professional basketball game in the country. The contradiction is important. Many historic firsts for women in sport have come through circumstances that were not ideal or fully respectful, yet they still created a precedent that later generations could build upon. Early’s ABA appearance has remained a landmark because it documented a literal breach in the gender barrier.

Racing victory at Suffolk Downs

Early continued to ride horses after her ABA appearance, and on April 19, 1969, she won the $10,000 Lady Godiva Handicap at Suffolk Downs in Massachusetts. The race was an all-women event, and the victory became the best-known win of her jockey career. It is also notable because it came after the earlier controversies over whether she and other women would be allowed to compete at all.

The victory mattered in practical and symbolic terms. Practically, it showed that women jockeys could win competitive races under pressure. Symbolically, it gave substance to claims that female riders were not merely novelties or publicity figures. In the late 1960s, women in racing had to prove not just that they deserved licenses, but that they could perform in the same high-risk, high-skill environment as men. Early’s win was part of that larger effort to normalize women’s presence in the saddle.

Although her riding career did not become long-term stardom, it remains historically important. The fact that her most prominent victory came in a special women’s race also speaks to the transitional nature of the era. Women were beginning to carve out places in the sport, but those places were often provisional, limited, or segregated. Early's success therefore belongs to the history of access as much as to the history of competition.

Later life

After the late 1960s, Early’s public visibility diminished. The surviving record emphasizes her brief but important role in racing history and the unusual circumstances of her ABA appearance. Later biographical notes suggest that she continued to work with horses in California and, eventually, in Tennessee.

She was married later in life and was known in some records as Penny Ann Hill. Beyond that, publicly documented information about her personal life is limited, and reliable sources do not provide a detailed account of marriage dates, children, or family life. That lack of detail is itself typical of many women athletes of her generation, whose public identities were often reduced to the few moments when they broke through institutional barriers.

Legacy and historical impact

Early’s legacy rests on two distinct but related achievements. First, she was among the first women licensed to ride parimutuel races in the United States at a time when the racing industry was still openly resistant to women. Second, she became the first woman to appear in a men's professional basketball league in the United States, a moment that has remained a footnote in basketball history and a milestone in women’s sports history.

Neither achievement unfolded under ordinary conditions. Her riding opportunities were shaped by discriminatory resistance, and her basketball appearance was arranged as publicity. Yet both events still matter because history is often made at the edge of what institutions are willing to permit. Early’s career shows how women in the 1960s could be both constrained by sexism and visible enough to challenge it. She did not have a long, decorated professional career in either sport, but the significance of her life lies in the barriers she helped expose.

In later years, obituaries and retrospective articles returned to her as a pioneer. They emphasized not only the novelty of her ABA cameo but also her role in the broader movement that opened horse racing to women riders. For historians of women’s sport, Early stands as an example of how a short, even awkward public career can still leave an enduring mark when it punctures a long-standing exclusion.

Death

Early died on June 23, 2023, in Tennessee at the age of 80. Racing sources reported her death as an apparent suicide. Her passing renewed interest in the unconventional career that had made her famous and drew attention back to the struggles women faced in mid-century American sport.

Her life is remembered not because she fit the model of a conventional sports star, but because she occupied a uniquely historic position at the intersection of racehorse culture, gender politics, and professional basketball spectacle. Penny Ann Early’s name endures as a marker of how women entered closed institutions, often under difficult and humiliating conditions, and nevertheless altered what those institutions could be seen to permit.