America’s Forgotten Black Cowboys
By dopper0189, Black Kos, Managing Editor
After the Civil War and Reconstruction eras ended, Americans turned their attention to settling (stealing) both the lands of the Great Plains and the Western range. This was the time of the rugged westerners who would come be known as cowboys. But anyone performing an internet search for the term “American cowboy” will yield a predictable crop of images. Husky men with weathered expressions galloping on horseback. These rugged men are dressed in denim or plaid, six shooters holstered at their wastes. They’ll have a lasso on their hips and a bandanna tied around their necks. Of course there will always be their signature cowboy hats perched on their heads.
And yes, most notably, in their Hollywood images, they’re all white.
The images of white men as cowboys and other Western heroes, in the American public’s eye, was mostly enshrined through film and television. But the originally genesis for this image was in the Western pulp novels that were sold for nickels and dimes throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before the advent of crime and detective stories, Western tales were the dominant form of pulp literature.
The original Western novels were not about historical material; they were written at the height of the Wild West period, and detailed what were back then contemporary events. Writers back East would eagerly gather news and rumors reported from the West and fill in the rest with their imaginations. At the same time, aspiring heroes and outlaws would devour the pulps in anticipation of their own adventures.
Despite what you might have seen on TV and at the movies, the American West was settled by a large population of freed slaves. In the 1870s and 1880s, as many as 25 percent of the 35,000 cowboys in the Old West were black cowboys. Cowboys of color have had a substantial presence on the Western frontier since the 1500s. In fact, the word “cowboy” is believed by some to have emerged as a derogatory term used to describe Black cowhands. As the word “cowboy” grew in popularity, the Black cowboys the term described have been stricken from the record with what can only be described as extreme prejudice.
As America farmers began looking for new lands to cultivate in what would become the Western states, a demand for people skilled in herding and ranching grew. The unsettled (by non-Native people's) West attracted ambitious people of all colors seeking a better life than they had in the East. For enslaved Blacks the West offered freedom and refuge from the bonds of slavery. It also gave African Americans a chance at better earnings. From pioneers to cowboys to prospectors, African Americans have contributed immensely to the most legendary chapter of American History The Wild West.
Employed by Europeans all over the Americas, people of African decent regularly served as white’s go-between with Native Americans. Adept at exploring, communicating, hunting and herding, Blacks were some of the most proficient pioneers and explorers.
On a related historical note domesticated horses were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors during the 1500s. Spanish explorers combined breeds of Arabian steeds, African Barbs and Andalusian horses eventually moved north from Mexico, and bred with Spanish strays to create the famous western American breed that became known as mustangs.
By the end of the Civil War, about 5 million cattle and wild horses were roaming free after being left to fend for themselves. Freed slaves headed west to find their fortunes among cattle ranches and rows of crops. As slaves, blacks were in charge of crops and took care of cows for their white owners, and the availability of land presented a new opportunity for many to escape the South.
It has only been in the past few decades that a strong effort has been made to reclaim the stories of men of color behind many pulp novels featuring white protagonists. For instance, the widely-panned 2013 film “The Lone Ranger,” starring two white men, had the unexpected effect of renewing public interest in Bass Reeves, an African-American United States Marshall whose adventures are believed to have been the inspiration for the white Lone Ranger. Unlike Reeves, and many forgotten African-American frontier figures.
In the real Old West, black cowboys were a common sight. "Black cowboys often had the job of breaking horses that hadn't been ridden much," says Mike Searles, a retired professor of history at Augusta State University. His students knew him as Cowboy Mike because he gave lectures dressed in spurs, chaps and a ten-gallon hat.
"Black cowboys were also chuck wagon cooks, and they were known for being songsters - helping the cattle stay calm," he says. Searles says his research, which included poring over interviews with ex-slaves in the 1930s, suggested black cowboys benefited from what he calls "range equality".
"As a cowboy you had to have a degree of independence," he says. "You could not have an overseer, they had to go on horseback and they may be gone for days."
Life was, nevertheless, harder for black cowboys than for their white counterparts.
In 2013 Vincent Jacobs then 80, a former rodeo rider who lived near Houston, Texas, recalled the racism he faced when he was starting out. "There would be separate rodeos for blacks and whites," he says. "It was hard, real hard - they would only let me perform after all the white people had been led out of the arena."
There are no comprehensive records of who cowboys were. Cowboys were by definition transient and often used assumed names. Bust modern historians estimate that most likely a quarter (up to just shy of a third) of all cowboys in the Old West were black. The first significant number of black cowboys was found in Texas prior to the Civil War. Most of them were slaves owned by white ranchers, but some were freemen. The famous western cattle trails were established in the 1860s, immediately after the Civil War, just as many former slaves were looking to begin new lives. These trails led north from the ranches of Texas to the booming cattle markets of Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. It is no surprise that many black men who had been born in slavery, either in Texas or in other Southern states, found work as cowhands.
Not only did Hollywood ignore black cowboys, it plundered their real stories as material for some of its films. The Lone Ranger, for example, is believed to have been inspired by Bass Reeves, a black lawman who used disguises, had a Native American sidekick and went through his whole career without being shot.
The 1956 John Ford film The Searchers, based on Alan Le May's novel, was partly inspired by the exploits of Brit Johnson, a black cowboy whose wife and children were captured by the Comanches in 1865. In the film, John Wayne plays as a Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his niece who has been abducted by Indians. In recent years, black characters have appeared in Westerns such as Posse, Unforgiven and Django Unchained.
While Hollywood is finally starting to pay tribute to the black cowboys of yesteryear, their memory is also being honored by the 200 members of the North Eastern Trail Riders Association, modern-day black cowboys and cowgirls.
Riding more than 100 miles in seven days on horses and in Western-style wagons, they regularly retrace the original trail rides that former slaves made.
As the legal scholar Michael Waldman notes, in the 1860s Southern states “passed Black Codes seeking to restore slavery in all but name. These laws disarmed African Americans but let whites retain their guns.” In the West, though, all men carried firearms, regardless of race. The prevalence of African-American troops — the famous Buffalo Soldiers — in the United States Army acclimated western whites to seeing black men bearing arms. The Buffalo Soldiers served under white officers, but they exercised authority over white lawbreakers and mobs. The regular presence of black soldiers in newly established towns not subject to Black Codes often meant that businesses such as hotels and saloons served black customers, even when they did not serve Mexican or Native American customers.
Ranchers returning from the Civil War discovered that their herds were lost or out of control. A combination of a lack of effective herd containment (barbed wire was not yet invented) and with too few white cowhands, the cattle population was running wild. White ranchers tried to round up the cattle and rebuild their herds with slave labor, but eventually the Emancipation Proclamation left them without the free workers on which they were so dependent. Desperate for help rounding up maverick cattle, ranchers were compelled to hire now-free, skilled African-Americans as paid cowhands.
“Right after the Civil War, being a cowboy was one of the few jobs open to men of color who wanted to not serve as elevator operators or delivery boys or other similar occupations,” says William Loren Katz, a scholar of African-American history and the author of 40 books on the topic, including The Black West.
Black cowhands were particularly embraced by their white peers. The necessities of trail life meant that cowboys of all races had to work, sleep and eat side by side. In their influential 1965 book, The Negro Cowboys, Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones write of the racist social strictures of Reconstruction-era Texas. “Upon Negro cowboys, however, these sanctions fell less heavily than upon many other Negroes, for as cowboys they had a well-defined place in an early established social and economic hierarchy.” Durham and Jones do go on to note, however, that this unique social role did not offer upward mobility. Even experienced and well-respected cowhands and top hands had little chance of ever being promoted to foreman of a cattle outfit. African-American cowboys faced discrimination in the towns they passed through. Blacks were barred from eating at certain restaurants or staying in certain hotels, but within their crews, they found respect and a level of equality unknown to other African-Americans of the era.
Freed blacks skilled in herding cattle found themselves in even greater demand when ranchers began selling their livestock to Northern states, where beef was nearly ten times more valuable than it was in cattle-inundated Texas. The lack of significant railroads in the state meant that enormous herds of cattle needed to be physically moved to shipping points in Kansas, Colorado and Missouri. Rounding up herds on horseback, cowboys traversed unforgiving trails fraught with harsh environmental conditions and attacks from Native Americans defending their lands as they were stolen.
Just like their more widely known white counterparts, African-Americans cowboys generated their own rouges gallery of infamous outlaws. Names like Addison Jones, “Stagecoach” Mary Fields, Charlie Willis (who wrote Good-bye, Old Paint), Isom Dart, and Bob Lemmons.
Crawford “Cherokee Bill” Goldsby was every bit as ruthless as Jesse James or Billy the Kid. The son of a Cherokee mother and an African-American “Buffalo Soldier” from the 10th Cavalry, Goldsby supposedly committed his first murder at the age of 12, shooting his brother-in-law during an argument over chores. He avoided serious punishment due to his age, but then shot someone else when he turned 18 and had to flee his hometown.
John “The Texas Kid” Hayes born in Waco, Texas, the outlaw always kept an eye out for “Whites Only” signs on drinking establishments in towns he passed through. When he spotted one, he would enter and ask for a drink. If the bartender refused, he got his revenge by riding his horse into the bar and shooting out all the lights before hightailing it out of town.
The era of cowboys in general and cattle drives in particular ended around the turn of the century. Railroads became a more prominent mode of transportation in the Western US and barbed wire was invented. By 1900 Native Americans were almost all relegated to reservations. All of these factors decreased the need for cowboys on ranches. These changes left many cowboys, particularly African-Americans who could not easily purchase land, in a rough position as the factors that created demand for their services dried up.
Popularized across the United States in 1873 by Buffalo Bill Cody, "Wild West Shows" showcased skills and characters of the Western United States in the form of a traveling performance including rodeo roping, Native American dances, and other acts. Among these traveling shows, African-American cowboy Jesse Stahl was famous for his saddle riding, a defining aspect of rodeos. Racism was common in rodeo competitions, and terms such as “harder to cover” could be used to mask racism in rodeo competitions under the guise that white riders had more difficult horses.
Black rodeo riders would often be compared to animals, given nicknames reflecting African animals and using animal metaphors not found in descriptions of white rodeo performers.[*] In response to their treatment and Jim Crow laws, Black cowboys formed "soul circuits," later organized as the Southwestern Colored Cowboys’ Association, with the largest number of African-American cowboys participated in rural communities along the coast of Texas up to the 1940s.[*]
Today’s black cowboys are aiming to set the historical record straight and teach a younger generation to ride. HOW AMERICA’S BLACK COWBOY POPULATION IS FIGHTING ERASURE
With the raucous crowd, sunny arena, and pervasive scent of warm hay, this is a typical moment at a small-town rodeo. Except for one thing: All the contestants and nearly everyone in the stands are black. The Bill Pickett Invitational markets itself as the only all-black nationally touring rodeo in the United States. Every year, it threads its way through several of the country’s more deeply rooted black communities, including Memphis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.
Here, at this stop just outside of Oakland, black culture intermingles with conventional country style. Cowboy hats are de rigueur. In the concessions area, vendors hawk catfish, fried alligator, frog legs, and peach cobbler. Next door, Reid’s Records sells coloring books that tell the story of the Buffalo Soldiers, all-black army regiments that fought for the U.S. in the 19th century. Contestants vie for prizes in bulldogging, calf roping, and bareback riding to a soundtrack blending backcountry zydeco and blues with DJ Khaled and Biggie Smalls. During the opening Grand Entry procession, riders of all ages saunter around the arena on brightly braided saddles. Their horses amble and buck to the percussive strains of 2Pac’s “California Love.”
Though heroes of color are virtually absent from the classic Western story, some historians estimate that up to one-third of cowboys during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were black. Their legacy continues in communities bringing attention to cowboys of color across the country today. In Texas, black-cowboy trail rides reportedly attract thousands of attendees; in Queens, New York, riders sometimes compete with traffic. Here in Oakland, black cowboys teaching kids like Brinson to ride say they hope to restore texture and richness to a whitewashed past — and pass down values they believe will lead to brighter futures.
The Oakland stop of the Bill Pickett rodeo always begins the same way. A rider carrying an American flag races through the gates of the Rowell Ranch rodeo grounds as they fill with the swelling chords of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The song is followed by “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — also known as the black national anthem. This year, as the final chords die away, the rodeo announcer includes Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, black men shot by police officers just weeks before in Minnesota and Louisiana, among his list of community members lost during the year.
Black cowboys may still be underrepresented in popular accounts of the West, but they had an undeniable contribution to creating the modern Western United States.
Sources:
Smithsonian Magazine, FEBRUARY 13, 2017
Wikipedia
BBC Online, 2013
Pacific Standard
Listverse
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Pruitt’s final months at the EPA were undoubtedly haunted by various ethics scandals, from using taxpayer funds to build a $43,000 phone booth in his office, to allegedly enlisting his staffers in an effort to get his wife a high-paying job. Last week it became clear that the White House had enough, with reports suggesting that Pruitt was forced to resign as his scandals mounted. On Monday Pruitt’s deputy, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, took over at the agency.
But focusing on those controversies overlooks Pruitt’s efforts to roll back or curb the implementation of numerous environmental regulations. The changes Pruitt has sought would likely fall disproportionately on the people of color and low-income communities that numerous studies, including from Pruitt’s own EPA, have shown are more likely to suffer the harms of polluted water, air, and soil.
And a network of advocates, policy experts, and academics have long rallied around the cause of “environmental justice,” which argues that a person’s race or economic status should have no effect on the quality of the environment they live in.
Indeed, as with so many other policy debates that have occurred under the Trump administration, people of color stand to be particularly affected by moves made by Pruitt’s EPA. And for those concerned about the quality of the environment that people of color live in, Pruitt’s tenure has raised concerns that won’t end with his resignation.
The push for environmental justice has been around for decades, but gained prominence during the Clinton administration, when the president signed an executive order charging the federal government to take on the issue. The EPA defines it as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
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Ethiopia and Eritrea made a declaration of peace and agreed to reestablish economic links after an unprecedented summit between the Horn of Africa nations’ leaders ended decades of enmity.
In an historic visit to neighboring Eritrea, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sealed a swathe of agreements with President Isaias Afwerki, restoring diplomatic relations, flights and telecommunications, as well as securing Ethiopia’s use of Red Sea ports. Foreign observers described it as a boost for regional stability, and there were signs that United Nations sanctions, imposed on Eritrea in 2009, may be lifted.
“To all Ethiopians and Eritreans, congratulations,” Abiy said during his two-day visit to the capital, Asmara, in an address televised in both countries. “There is no border between Ethiopia and Eritrea; instead we have built a bridge of love.”
The rapprochement was another sign of sweeping change in Ethiopia since Abiy, 42, took office in April. Facing unrest, protests and displacement of people that have threatened to derail a boom in Africa’s fastest growing economy, Abiy and his ruling party lifted a state of emergency and accelerated long-awaited market reforms.
With his trip to Asmara, Abiy has begun to close a bloody chapter in his nation’s history: a 1998-2000 border war that claimed as many as 100,000 lives and left thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean families divided. The two sides have clashed sporadically in the years since and accused each other of supporting rival rebel groups.
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As the video begins, Lindell focuses on the young boys, one of which is bare-chested, calmly sitting on the ground brandishing their non-existent weapons.
“The cops just literally just pulled guns on children,” Lindell says in the footage. “These kids are literally children, can’t be more than 21, 15-years-old. Instead, they’re being eaten alive by mosquitos.”
Passersby enter in and out of the frame, unable to stand still as they are being bitten by mosquitos. But the cops leave the shirtless child on the ground as he squirms in an apparent attempt to fend off the insects.
When asked to describe what happened, Lindell explains: “An older white kid, who’s probably 17, and coming at them with a garbage can lid, threatening them and calling them the n-word when we passed by earlier. And cops come and they’re arresting the kids, apparently.
After the police officers eventually loaded the boys into the back of the cruiser, Lindell and other onlookers asked why the two were being arrested. One cop explained that the boys were not under arrest (they were just handcuffed and locked in the back of a police car, which is totally different from being arrested.)
The cop said they tried to find the other kid, to no avail. When he asked the bystanders to help him do his job, a woman steps forward to speak to the officer—without a gun—proving that it is possible to converse with law enforcement without a glock in your face.
After the video went viral, Minnesota Park Police say they received a call about four kids with a knife, a stick and a firearm in a backpack. The responding officer “drew his weapon” while detaining the kids, but didn’t point it at any of them, reports the local CBS station.
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In at least five state and national races across the country, the Republican Party is dealing with an uncomfortable problem. Their party’s candidates are either a card-carrying Nazi, a Holocaust denier, a proud white supremacist, or all of the above.
In North Carolina, for example, GOP officials are stuck with Russell Walker, a white supremacist running for the state House of Representatives. According to his personal website (littered with the n-word), he believes that “the jews are NOT semitic they are satanic as they all descend from Satan.”
Republicans in the state have regrets. “This is a very Democratic district, one that we failed to keep our eye on,” Dallas Woodhouse, executive chair of the North Carolina GOP, told me in an email. “However, we can’t stop him from running.”
In Illinois, meanwhile, the Republican Party shrugged off Arthur Jones, a candidate for the state’s 3rd Congressional district who boasted of his membership in the American Nazi Party. But Jones won the GOP primary, and now party officials, including ones who called Jones “morally reprehensible” and “a complete nutcase,” are scrambling to launch a write-in campaign. Jones’s campaign website features a section called “Holocaust?” in which he argues that the “idea that six million Jews, were killed by the National Socialist government of Germany, in World War II, is the biggest, blackest lie in history.”
In Virginia, the chair of the state GOP resigned earlier this month, reportedly because of alt-right leaning, pro-Confederate candidate Corey Stewart’s win in the Republican primary. But even Stewart had to disavow Wisconsin’s Paul Nehlen, who is running to replace Speaker Paul Ryan. Nehlen’s too racist for Twitter and even for Gab, the preferred social media platform of the alt-right. Meanwhile, a California Republican running for Congress has been making appearances on neo-Nazi podcasts and argues on his campaign website that “diversity” is a Jewish plot. (The California GOP has disavowed him.)
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Apparently, astounded that all black children don’t spend their time shooting hoops or exploring new avenues of committing black-on-black crime, the governor of Kentucky regurgitated a small amount of previously digested racism when he declared how surprised he was that black kids could play chess.
On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin visited Nativity Academy at St. Boniface, a Louisville, Ky., middle school that is 86 percent black and only 1 percent white. Before entering, Gov. Bevin recorded a brief introduction for his Twitter followers.
“I’m about to go in and meet the members of the West Louisville Chess Club,” he explained. “Not necessarily something you would’ve thought of when you think of this section of town.”
The video montage, appropriately set to Appalachian banjo riffs, shows Bevin actually standing next to the blacks and imploring teachers to “give them the chance to succeed, to pursue the American dream.”
While I could point out how Bevin doesn’t give a damn about black kids or their dreams being that he supports Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, lowering the minimum wage, gun-toting teachersand the Blue Lives Matter law, I’d rather focus on a more important question:
What does Matt Bevin, and other white people expect from that “part of town?”
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A year after a book on the brutal slaying of black teen Emmett Till revealed that a key figure in the case acknowledged lying, the federal government has reopened its investigation of the 1955 crime that helped build momentum for the civil rights movement.
A federal report sent annually to lawmakers under a law that bears Till’s name said the Justice Department is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Mississippi after receiving “new information.”
The report issued in late March doesn’t indicate what that information might be.
But the 2017 book “The Blood of Emmett Till” by Timothy B. Tyson quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, as saying during a 2008 interview that she wasn’t truthful when she testified that Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a Mississippi store in 1955.
A potential witness with the 14-year-old Till in the store that day, cousin Wheeler Parker, said Thursday that he has talked with law enforcement about the case in recent months.
A Mississippi prosecutor declined to comment on whether federal authorities had given him new information since they reopened the investigation.
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Three racially charged confrontations have occurred at swimming pools already this summer. On June 24, a white woman named Stephanie Sebby-Strempel, now known as “Pool Patrol Paula” on the internet, physically assaulted a 15-year-old black boy at a private community pool in Summerville, South Carolina, claiming he and his friends “didn’t belong” there, then exclaiming, “Get out, little punks!”
Then, on the Fourth of July, a white man named Adam Bloom singled out the only black family at a crowded community pool in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and demanded to see the mother’s “identification,” even though she had used a resident key card to enter the facility and no one else at the pool had to show an ID. When she refused, Bloom called the police.
That same day, 555 miles away in Memphis, Tennessee, the manager of a large apartment complex engaged in a similar act of racial profiling. Even though several other people were wearing prohibited clothing in the pool area, Erica Walker only confronted a lone group of African Americans. She reprimanded 25-year-old Kevin Yates for dipping his sock-clad feet in the water and eventually demanded that he and his party leave the pool. When they refused, she, too, called the police.
These incidents exemplify a strand of white privilege that has flourished in the past couple of years — whites feeling emboldened to confront black and brown-skinned people for assumed transgressions and then summon the power of the state to punish them. Recall the attorney who threatened to call ICE on several New York City restaurant workers when he heard them speaking Spanish to customers.
More than just a symptom of race relations in Trump’s America, however, these incidents reflect America’s long history of swimming pool segregation. For nearly a century, blacks and whites have mostly swum separately from one another. And, just as with residential segregation, separate pool use persists today as an ongoing legacy of past discrimination.
Swimming pool segregation became pervasive in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, when cities across the country opened thousands of new public pools and began permitting males and females to use them together. Gender integration was a direct cause of racial segregation. Most whites did not want black men interacting with white women at such intimate public spaces. Whites at the time also objected to swimming with blacks because they perceived them as dirty and likely to be infected with communicable diseases.
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