Today’s Martin Luther King Day card at Aqueduct honors a legendary African-American jockey from the turn of the century with the inaugural running of the $75,000 Jimmy Winkfield Stakes.

Born in Kentucky in 1880, Winkfield was a true Horatio Alger success story, rising from shoeshine boy to stable hand, to exercise rider to one of America’s top jockeys, who won back-to-back Kentucky Derbys in 1901-02. Later, Winkfield rode in Russia and France, where he was friends with celebrities like Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemingway.

Winkfield died in France in 1974. He was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., last summer, one of three African-Americans to enter the Hall.

A field of six 3-year-olds has lined up for the Winkfield (formerly the Best Turn Stakes), with Penn National shipper More Smoke the one to catch and beat going six furlongs. A gray son of champion sprinter Smoke Glacken trained by John Zimmerman, More Smoke has won three of four starts, including a 3 3/4-length romp last out in the Jan. 1 Dancing Count at Pimlico as the 4-5 favorite. Leading rider Rafael Bejarano picks up the mount.