PruittHealth celebrates pioneer equestrian teacher during Black History Month

Lorraine Ferebee was 5-years-old when she saw two thoroughbred horses rise on their hind legs and playfully paw at each other. She was struck by their power, their beauty, the majesty of their forms. She knew right then that there was a God and that the He had planned for her destiny would include these incredible creatures.

Last week Ferebee was recognized at Pruitt Health in Louisville, GA, where she is currently a resident, for overcoming feelings of alienation and otherness to become one of the first African American classical equestrian instructors in the country.

“To have her is an honor and to know what she has done is even a greater honor. So, we chose one of our own to recognize,” said PruittHealth Activities Director Veronica Oliver.

Ferebee’s first rides were provided by a neighbor who rewarded her keeping his pitcher full of cold water, by letting her sit on top of his mule as it ploughed the last rows of her family’s garden.

She remembers watching its feet as it trotted.

“The trot is like two gaits. Watching that inspired me to want to know what that felt like,” Ferebee said. “So I did...all the way to England.”

As a child during the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, in a town where most adults she knew worked as sharecroppers or as maids, butlers, chauffeurs, cooks and gardeners for rich families in Virginia Beach, her grandmother did not understand when she told her she wanted to grow up to ride horses.

“Ain’t nobody marching and going to jail for that,” her grandmother told her. “We’re looking to move up in this world, not go around picking up manure for white folks.”

And so she stopped talking about it, but throughout her life, growing up and raising children of her own, surviving several abusive relationships, all of which she recounts in her memoir, Faith Is a Verb, she held onto that dream. And once her children were grown, she found her way to Morven Park, a professional riding school known by Olympic hopefuls. She went on to graduate from a four-year program with the Alexander Foundation becoming an Alexander Technique teacher and later completed a two-year study of the Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement. Ferebee met, befriended and apprenticed with world-renowned riding instructor Sally Swift.

“The movement (of riding) itself, it’s invigorating and energizing,” she said from her wheelchair at PruittHealth. “It takes you out of your head and into your body. Not many people get to experience their body. We use it for stuff, but we don’t really experience it as an entity in and of itself. I enjoyed learning how the hip joints work and what is inside your shoulders.”

She says that she always loved getting out and teaching riding, especially early in the morning.

“For me it was prayer because you are in the world God made. How can you go outside in the morning and not notice it is morning and so I start thinking about who created morning and what was morning for,” she said. “Around noon you do a more active ride than you do in the morning. Then you put the horses outdoors for a few hours in the mid-afternoon. And then by 4 p.m. it was back to lessons again.”

Ferebee talks about how her experiences with horses strengthened her faith and how it bolstered her confidence, helping her to overcome racism while introducing her to a culture of wealth and privilege she had never known.

“I was teaching lessons at Tuckahoe Plantation,” Ferebee writes. “Plantation is synonymous with slavery in my world, so I was aware of where I was and what I was doing. So too were the spirits of the slaves whom I could feel and see watching me and rejoicing as they shimmered along the tree line. Finally, one of us up on top of the horse.”

Interacting with world-class riding and horse-breeding families, meant living and socializing in what she calls an economically, culturally and ethnically foreign environment. But she did it because she believes she was led by God to follow that lifelong dream, and because exposure to that world provided her the skills and experience she needed to confidently accept invitations to teach all over the world.

Ferebee combined the disciplines she studied, Centered Riding, The Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais with her years of experience and created her own curriculum, which was published in Dressage Today. She taught at Delaware Valley College while continuing to travel and teach throughout the United States and abroad, teaching clinics as far away as Germany and England. While living in New York City she served as an Auxiliary Mounted Officer for the city’s Park Enforcement Patrol and while there joined the Harlem Writers Guild.

“We can live many lives during our lifetime,” she writes in the closing of her book. “I have recreated myself every 20 years, so how many more lives can you live while yours lasts? Just do what’s before you next, but never give up your dream.”

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: PruittHealth celebrates equestrian teacher during Black History Month