Black Cowboys of Rodeo

Author Keith Ryan Cartwright is a self-described “storyteller”—a fitting description. Cartwright's new collective biography, Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West, introduces audiences to Black cowboys of rodeo and Hollywood. Cartwright's collection covers more than “one hundred years’ worth of cowboy stories” and accomplishes his goal to ensure that “they no longer will be among the nameless in American history” (1).Cartwright presents each vignette in a way that makes the reader feel as if one were sitting on a front porch fondly listening to family stories. The text is bookended by stories of the first well-known Black cowboy, Bill Pickett, and the final shares how the United States Postal Service, when attempting to commemorate Pickett's legacy with a stamp, made a “$1.1 million” mistake when the artist painted the wrong Black cowboy (293).Cartwright includes a twelve-page timeline that embeds these stories of Black cowboys as historical markers within broader African American history, covering the years 1619 to 2021. Each chapter is about a single person or two or even three connected to each other in some way and opens with a relevant quote by an historically known figure. Chapter 6 about Taylor Hall Jr. from Bailey's Prairie, Texas, titled “Bailey's Prairie Kid (aka Taylor Hall Jr.),” opens with a quote from Booker T. Washington: “Character not circumstance, makes the man”—introspective of a man known for his high work ethic (44). The forward by actor Danny L. Glover sets the tone for the book with the question: “How did African Americans factor into the history of the American cowboy?” (xi). Because nearly one in four cowboys west of the Mississippi River were Black, the question of how the iconic American national character is a white cowboy is one Glover answers himself: “The story of the American cowboy is also implicitly about race” (xi).Beyond reminiscing, these men unveil professional rodeo's history of discrimination. As Cartwright notes, rodeo did not have written rules forbidding Black cowboys from competition. Nevertheless, those competing outside of the Southwestern National Cowboys Association (created by and for Black cowboys) experienced biased interference in their professional careers. In the 1940s and 1950s, cowboys like Roy LeBlanc did not compete during the regular rodeo, having to ride in “the slack competition earlier that day or made to wait until the crowds left” (20). Myrtis Dightman Sr., the first Black cowboy to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo (NFR), also found accessibility to rodeos literally blocked. One time in Little Rock, he was literally not allowed to enter the building (56). These two examples are among many that reveal the reality and longevity of professional rodeo's practices. Clarence LeBlanc's story, as reported by Cartwright, indicates that, like the rest of the United States at the time, racism was more blatant in some areas than others. “Clarence was on the rodeo trail with IPRA [International Professional Rodeo Association] and looking back, he said, only once did he feel he was the victim of racism. His first year as a pro, he was down in Tallahassee, Florida . . . [when] Skip Akers, a Florida native . . . ran his steer two-seconds further than Clarence, but when they announced Akers's time it was one-tenth [of a second] faster than” Clarence (25–26).Sport historians will find this book most beneficial as an introduction to athletes previously omitted from the larger studies of Black athletes. However, it is helpful to have some knowledge of rodeo history beforehand. For example, Cartwright notes that when Robert “Money” Jackson was rodeoing in the 1950s and 1960s, “Bobby would compete locally on the weekends” (15). Before the era of sponsorships, weekend rodeos were where most cowboys got their start regardless of race.The main sources Cartwright utilizes are interviews, “nearly five hundred,” according to the author, including firsthand and generational accounts (301). However, newspapers and popular magazines, and popular and scholarly histories also informed the author's study of the United States, African American history, and the history of the West.By including cowboys both in the arena and on the screen, Cartwright's stories introduce readers to Black cowboys who created the West and, in part, the development of the iconic cowboy. While Cartwright offers a partial list of cowboy stories, his work inspires a critical study to answer another of Glover's questions: “why then is there such a paucity of representation for them?” (xi) The extent to which organized rodeo's appeasement perpetuated racism may be the place to start

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