A former Oak Parker has seen the need to diversify the sport of horseback riding and is working to answer the call through by creating a nonprofit organization aimed to ease the financial burden for families of color.
Makesha Flournoy-Benson was inspired by her daughter’s love for riding horses, so she founded Black Girl Equestrian to make the sport accessible to more Black children and other traditionally marginalized groups. She hopes to launch a fully fledged nonprofit in coming months.
The mission of Black Girl Equestrian would be to help families afford the highly expensive sport, bringing diversity and inclusion to a world that typically has been accessible to white, affluent riders.
According to a 2023 New York Times article detailing the struggle for Black riders to find appropriate helmets that would keep them safe without having to compromise their hair — which has a long history and deep meaning for the Black community — their number of riders identifying as Black isn’t clear. The United States Equestrian Federation, one of the major governing bodies for competitive horse sports, reported that only about half of their 447,000 members disclose their race and of that half, 92% are white. Black riders only account for 0.5 percent of that registered population.
“When you are little sometimes you don’t even think that riding a horse is an option, it is not even in your list of wish list items because you don’t see girls like you and others like you on horses,” Flournoy-Benson said.
Flournoy-Benson is no stranger to community activism.
She was a co-founder and served as co-president of Oak Park Elementary School District 97’s Diversity Council, where she served for seven years before the family decided to make the move to the Dominican Republic, where they currently reside. The family lived in Oak Park for more than 20 years.
During her family’s time in Oak Park, her daughter, Lucy Custard, began showing an interest in horses, prompting the family to participate in various trail rides. But other than that, Flournoy-Benson said, there weren’t many local opportunities for Lucy to continue to dive deeper into English Equestrian, a style of riding, and what was available was far and expensive.
When the family began living part-time in the Dominican Republic, Lucy had the opportunity to interact more with horses at the local barn.
“It was nice to see a lot more Brown girls riding horses,” Flournoy-Benson said. “There was sort of a level of comfort for Lu but also the cost of taking lessons here was so much less.”
Riding then turned into something Lucy became very passionate about and wanted to keep pursuing.
The issue then became cost. For Lucy to compete and perform at her preferred level, the costs added up.
“It is an extremely expensive sport,” Flournoy-Benson said. “After going to many competitions, I saw there were a lot of girls, even here that were underrepresented and when I started thinking about our barn, it really felt like there was an opportunity to open up this idea of really having a dream.”
To help with the growing costs of the sport, Flournoy-Benson set up a GoFundMe for Lucy.
Right now, the GoFundMe is about 40% funded, with $4,645 out of the goal of $12,500 raised. Flournoy-Benson said they have also received donations aside from the GoFundMe.
Although the current GoFundMe that is set up to benefit Lucy, Flournoy-Benson said the funds donated after the $12,500 will be used to get the nonprofit up and running as well as begin benefiting other children.
“Those funds that we are raising money for will help with that process,” Flournoy-Benson said, adding that she knows of a few kids at Lucy’s barn who could use the financial assistance.
Nykia Blue, who is helping Flournoy-Benson launch BGE, and her family relocated to the Dominican Republic from New Orleans, Louisiana, to escape the “rat race” they were experiencing in the United States.
After arriving on the island in 2017, Blue said her daughter, Kylie Blue, now 14, began horseback riding and wanted to pursue the equestrian sport.
Blue said throughout the years she began to see her daughter gain confidence and other important life skills through her work with her horse, Ohlala. But the sport is expensive, she said, and being able to aid families could really open that door for many future riders.
There is training, owning a horse, stable fees, medical expenses, horses’ shoes, and then fees to enter competitions, along with lessons, which even in the Dominican Republic, can be costly, Blue said.
She added that if her family hadn’t relocated, there would be a very good chance that Kylie wouldn’t have been able to participate in the sport, because the costs in the States were surely higher.
By bringing in that financial accessibility to other Black girls and families, Blue said the sport would be able to grow and diversify.
As Flournoy-Benson and Blue continue to work out the details for BGE, including whether the benefiting ranch would be in the Dominican Republic or in the U.S., Flournoy-Benson said she hopes to have people rally behind Lucy, who is an “embodiment,” of Oak Park values.
“She does really represent what Oak Park is all about,” she said. “She is a kid that represents Oak Park progressiveness and values with aspirations to dream big.”
“There has to be a change in representation within equestrian sports but not only equestrian sports, there are so many other league sports that all of our kids need to have access to so they can find something they truly love,” Flournoy-Benson said.
