Most Americans don’t know the history of black cowboys.
“In art school many years ago I made an intaglio, dry point, and aquatint print about my horseback riding. And then, I once again forgot my tie to this Texas of the West and to my father’s equestrian identity. My claim on this Western identity has been something I barely feel, for simply being black imposes a sectional identity that is Southern. Since my youth, a generation of immigrants has added the Caribbean and Africa as places of recognizable black roots. But the West? Not much. Texas is Western, but the blackest part of Texas in historical memory is Juneteenth, the folk holiday (on its way to official recognition) commemorating the 1865 date when Texans learned of their emancipation. When my parents’ Texan origin comes to mind, I usually think Texas = South. Yet horseback riding is Texas = Western. No matter where they were born, the legendary black cowboys of history, of cattle drives and rodeos, came out of Texas. For me now, to recall my father on horseback, my father as a cowboy, is to reclaim my own personal San Pablo–Californian–Texan past. My reawakening faces down the whitewashed history of Americans—Native Americans as well as African Americans—on horseback. Like so many facets of U.S. history, cowboy history has been lily-whited-out, via the movies’ exaltation of the cowboy as a white man.”
