WHY THE FIRST U.S. COWBOYS WERE BLACK

Last edited Wed Mar 9, 2022, 07:32 PM - Edit history (1)

- The Guardian, 2021. Historians estimate that one in 4 cowboys were African American, though you’d never guess because the conventional Hollywood image of a cowboy is a white man. Black cowboys have been written out of history, along with the original cattle-raising Native Americans & Mexican vaqueros who taught them.

So what are the real origins of cowboy culture in the US? And is there more to modern black cowboy culture than Old Town Road and Lil Nas X? Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to some of the Black riders who are keeping the history of Black cowboy culture alive.
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- Nat Love (1854 – 1921), an African-American cowboy and former slave.

Black cowboys in the American West accounted for up to an estimated 25% of workers in the range-cattle industry from the 1860s to 1880s, estimated to be at least 5000 workers according the latest research. Typically former slaves or born into the families of former slaves, many black men had skills in cattle handling & headed West at the end of the Civil War. Though the industry generally treated black men equally to white men in terms of pay & responsibilities, discrimination persisted, though to a lesser extent than in other industries of the time. After the Reconstruction of the South after the American Civil War, freed slaves were still denied land ownership & other rights in many states, & about 20,000 Exodusters headed west to Kansas between 1879-1884, with smaller migrations to other Western states.

Many trained under Mexican vaqueros, cattle-raising Native Americans, or their former masters; they then worked as ranch hands for wages equal to their white counterparts & offering more opportunities than existed for freemen in the South.

Black men, typically former slaves, children of slaves, or working in plantations, & farms would have been exposed to kitchen work & stables as well. As early as 1770, regulations in Louisiana required 2 slaves to manage 100 head of cattle. White ranchers could even win competitions based on the cow-handling skills of the Black slaves in their possession. In Antebellum Texas, white ranchers referred to white workers as "cow hands," with Black people in the same position referred to with the pejorative "cow boy." Prior to the abolition of slavery, the cattle trade was considered to offer a high degree of relative freedom to slaves, who would be issued guns, often left unaccompanied on horseback for long stretches, & trusted to return. Free Black cattle drivers drove cattle from Kansas to areas including Atlanta, the Dakotas, & Canada, also New Mexico, Arizona, California & Oregon.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cowboys
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- THE BLACK COWBOY MUSEUM. The Real History of the Cowboy. Check it out!! Founded by LARRY CALLIES, The Black Cowboy Museum in Texas is preserving the legacy of America's Black Cowboy. Step into the boots of the likes of Bass Reeves, Nat Love, and Bill Pickett. Meet the important African American cowboys who shaped the history of the West as well as the ones who will shape its future. - **Larry's Black Cowboy Museum ► http://www.blackcowboymuseum.org/



*WATCH* The Black Cowboy Museum founded by Larry Callies. 2/23/20. ABC13Houston. Happy Black History Month!
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Also:
- Brianna's Mulatto Meadows ► https://www.mulattomeadows.com/humble
- Randy's Compton Cowboys ► https://www.comptoncowboys.com/
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- Brianna Noble on her Appaloosa, 'Dapper Dan,' leading a BLM protest, Oakland, 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
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- Globetrotting. 'HEELS DOWN, FISTS UP: BRI NOBLE & BLACK LIVES MATTER'

It’s become an iconic image in the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement: Bri Noble astride her Appaloosa, Dapper Dan, leading a protest with her fist high in the air after the murder of George Floyd. With Dapper Dan standing 17 hands high, Bri was literally someone to look up to at the Oakland protest and she inadvertently became a key figure in the movement. ‘I wanted to give the media something to look at other than the destruction and damage they were promoting,’ she explained. And with people of colour – especially women – so dramatically under-represented and excluded in the equestrian world, she sure was eye-catching.

What she didn’t expect was how fast and how far her story would travel.

‘I really hoped that for my city and for my community, I could just do a little bit of good. […] It’s just really made me angry that people are more upset by the destruction that’s going on than they are at the fact that someone was murdered. When I was up there on Dapper, I said, ‘Wow… I’m not even saying a word through all of this and look at the positivity that this is inspiring.’ Although he was absolutely perfect amidst the intense commotion of the protest, Dapper Dan was the most challenging horse Bri has ever trained. ‘I called every mentor I had and said ‘What do I do?” But she said to herself, ‘I can’t sell this horse. I said I was going to keep him and I just know that he’s here for something bigger than this. He’s not something that comes along every day.’

Walking down Broadway in front of the crowd on May 29th, Dapper Dan’s moment finally came...

- Read More, https://www.globetrotting.com.au/heels-down-fists-up-bri-noble-black-lives-matter/