Black cowboy culture is more than just a moment; it is a reclamation of history as it happened.
The Lone Ranger. Clint Eastwood as a cattle driver named Rowdy Yates. “King of the Cowboys” actor-singer Roy Rogers. For generations, no image symbolized the American West more often than gun-toting white men on horseback. Whiteness was the quintessential imagery of Western-esque media, but the reality of cowboy-dom was a lot more Black than the mainstream depicted.
When six million Black people fled the South due to racial terror during the Great Migration, many traveled North, settling in places like Baltimore and New York City. However, the media seldom mentioned the millions of African American migrants who went West to California and Arizona. They worked as miners, farmers, soldiers, barbers, and more along the Western frontier; several thousand were cowboys. According to historian William Loren Katz, who authored The Black West, Black people “rode every wilderness trail—as scouts and pathfinders, slave runaways and fur trappers, missionaries and soldiers, schoolmarms and entrepreneurs, lawmen and members of Native American nations.”
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The Western cattle industry was booming during the 1870s and ’80s, and thousands of cowboys rode the dusty trails, especially in Texas, where many enslaved people did the dangerous work of taming wild horses for white herders. On the weekends, they competed to see the best ropers and riders, and few went into competing in rodeos for prize money. Once free, many Black men harnessed working with horses into careers. During the industry’s heyday, one in four cowboys was Black. Phillip Durham and Everett L. Jones, the authors of 1965’s The Negro Cowboys, estimated that at least 5,000 cowhands in the late 19th century were Black. Some historians say that number was closer to eight or nine thousand.
Although African Americans left the region, many “Southernisms” followed them across the country. The term itself, cowboy, is steeped in a legacy of America’s racism that ties the sport to enslavement. Initially, white cowboys were called cowhands, while Black cattle drivers and ranch hands were considered cowboys. The “boy” is a relic of the Southern plantation and Jim Crow era, where whites often used “boy” to belittle Black men. And while life in the West wasn’t exactly a “Yee-Haw” kind of time‒Black people couldn’t stay in most white hotels or eat in restaurants–life was considerably different economically and socially, and likely more enjoyable than the laboring lives of Southern sharecropping from which they escaped.
One of the most well-known Black cowboys was Nat Love. He was born enslaved in Tennessee in 1854, but his adventurous spirit led him West at fourteen, where he drove cattle and horses all over the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and even down to Mexico. Love’s memoir is a first-hand account detailing surviving dangerous storms, being captured by “Indians,” and getting caught in the shootouts typical of Western films. He eventually quit the cowboy business to become a Pullman Porter on the Denver and Rio Grande (D&RG) Railroad before passing away in Los Angeles.
While many weren’t famous and led ordinary lives, cowboys like Bill Pickett have a legacy too big to erase. Pickett was a five-foot-seven, 145-pound rodeo star who performed and was nothing to mess with. His claim to fame, “bulldogging,” filled seats at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch and Wild West Show, with folks paying to see Pickett’s genius in action. His childhood inspired the technique in Texas, where he witnessed a bulldog subdue a wild steer by grabbing its upper lip and freezing it in place. Pickett brought this process to steer wrestling, and when forcing the animal to the ground, like the bulldog, Pickett leaned over and bit its lip before finishing the task without any hands. Many cowboys were repulsed by the idea of bulldogging, and animal-human societies eventually fought to outlaw Pickett’s biting innovation.
The cool associated with Western culture, from country music to trail riding, was built or innovated upon by Black people. Cowboy culture is no different.
As in many facets of American life, Black history and culture are at the root, unable to be erased. The cool associated with Western culture, from country music to trial riding, was built or innovated upon by Black people. Cowboy culture is no different, and no matter how hard Hollywood or systemic racism worked to rid Black cowboys and cowgirls of the legacy of the Western frontier, the two are irreversibly linked.
Over the past two years, Black cowboys have finally gotten their mainstream shine, with artists like Lil Nas X, Solange, and most recently, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter embracing the imagery and sounds of the Wild West and helping to rightfully reclaim cowboy culture as a part of Black culture. Films like The Harder They Fall and Concrete Cowboy, starring Idris Elba, about Black horse riders in Philadelphia, shed light on the true diversity of the Western genre. In 2020, Walter Thompson-Hernández wrote The Compton Cowboys: The New Generations of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland, about Compton, California’s cowboy crew working to inspire the youth using horseback riding.
Today, California’s Black cowboy community continues to thrive. The culture is on full display at the annual Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR) held at a Rowell Ranch Rodeo Park in Oakland and traveling cross country, where it’s not unusual to smell whiffs of fried catfish and smoked BBQ in the air, nor is seeing cowboys and cowgirls trotting along proudly waving the black, red, and green Pan-African flag. Often considered akin to homecoming, the 40-year-old rodeo event is dubbed the “Greatest Show on Dirt,” is an undeniable celebration of Black rodeo culture that educates audiences on the legacy of Black cowboys and cowgirls who contributed significantly to building the West, and a stage for modern-day rodeo stars who continue the Black western tradition.
Celebrity cowboy Tre Hosley, who grew up riding in and around Compton, is no stranger to the BPIR. As a kid, organizations like Compton Junior Posse (now Compton Junior Equestrians), founded in 1988 by Mayisha Akbar, located on Richland farms in the city’s heart, made learning about and riding horses accessible to Hosely and other Compton kids interested in the sport. Akbar dreamt of making the farm a paradise for residents to experience the transformative power of horses who wanted to embrace riding, agriculture, and Black cowboy history despite the often complex realities of daily life in Compton.
In high school, Hosley’s parents made him choose between football or horseriding, and initially, he bet on the gridiron. But Hosley back peddled to the sport when he couldn’t shake the feeling horseriding gave him, going pro at just nineteen and winning Bill Pickett Rodeo’s Rookie of the Year in 2013. The bareback rider and cattle roper is a multi-title holding Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association California Circuit Champion.
The Compton Cowboys, a crew of lifelong friends who grew up together in the Compton Junior Posse, co-mentor the city of Compton’s youth using horses while paying homage to Black equestrian heritage. The organization’s mission is to keep kids on horses and off the streets while instilling principles of belief, dedication, and collaboration through classes held at their ranch and meetups around the city. They also use music, merchandise, fashion, and horseback riding to keep the legacy of Black cowboys alive. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, they held a “peace ride,” standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter movements sweeping the country.
Brianna Noble also leaned into the power of riding when she protested Floyd’s 2020 murder on horseback. Noble, an East Bay, California native, works to empower marginalized communities through access to horses and agriculture through her organization Urban Cowgirl Ranch. At his home in Jurupa, cowboy Ron Jennings operates a youth bull riding academy and trains his rising rodeo star son, Andrew. The Loyalty Riderz Club of Sacramento, California, honors the cowboy past while making room for the future of the sport through events, RV campouts, and sponsoring Bay Area and Southern California rodeos.
Black folks have always known and been a part of Cowboy culture. Black cowboy culture is more than just a temporary moment; it is a reclamation of history as it happened. Now, it’s about hide time that everyone else saddles up with the truth because Black cowboy culture continues.