The History of the Texan Black Cowboys
Westerns no longer reign supreme on our screens anywhere close to how they used to. However, there has been a resurgence recently with TV shows like Yellowstone and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. The genre has typically depicted a romanticised image of gunslinging, wrangling white cowboys, white damsels and often an offensive portrayal of native Indians. This is why The Harder They Fall starring Idris Elba was an applauded change to the Hollywood cowboy phenotype. Coupled with Beyonce’s new country album Cowboy Carter and its global hit single ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’, how far a stretch is it to argue that country music and cowboys are very much a part of Black history and culture?
Not a stretch at all. It is estimated that one in four American cowboys during the 1800s and beyond were Black. In this two part series we bring you a brief history of the Texan Black cowboys and introduce 5 legendary Black cowboys history has forgotten. Saddle up.
The emergence of the Black cowboys
The South relied heavily on its livestock industry and slavery between the 18th and 19th century (America abolished slavery in 1865). Texas dominated the livestock industry from as far back as the 1600s and did so for multiple centuries, and enslaved Black men were charged with keeping watch of large cattle herds on plantations. Very often unsupervised as they worked, the highly skilled men drove and managed herds across long distances as trackers, wranglers and adept horsemen. Many of these skills were handed down generationally and some were taught by Mexican vaqueros, considered to be the original cowboys.
In 1861 Texas joined the Confederacy, where white ranchers left to fight in the Civil War against the North, leaving Black cowboys completely in charge of maintaining herds. After the war ended in 1965, the growth of cities in the North created a booming market for beef. This spurred the expansion of cattle ranching in the southern States. With demand at an all time high, the abolition of slavery meant that white ranchers had no choice but to hire newly freed Black cowhands.
Life as a Black cowboy
Black cowboys such as Nat Love and Bass Reeves ventured on long distance drives on horseback to sell cattle in other states, segregation amongst white cowboys was practically non-existent. Outside of that, social acceptance was limited within the towns that they passed through, denying them access to restaurants and proper lodging. Despite their contributions, advancement for Black cowboys was difficult, they were also often paid less than white cowboys for the same work. And land ownership, a key to wealth and independence, was largely out of reach due to discriminatory practices.
The end of the prolific cowboy era
The prolific cowboy era of the Wild West came to an end around the late 1880s and early 1900s.The invention of barbed wire fencing in the 1870s revolutionised ranching. It allowed for the creation of smaller, fenced-in ranches, replacing the need for large crews of cowboys. Railroads also played a role by providing a more efficient way to transport cattle to market, eliminating the need for long cattle drives altogether.
The Long Depression (1873-1896) hit the cattle industry hard. Beef prices dropped, making large-scale ranching less profitable. This led to a further decrease in demand for cowboys and the Wild West transformed.
The history of cowboys has been whitewashed. Thankfully, that is changing with the emergence of heritage groups that are shining a light on the legacy of the Black cowboys such as The Black Cowboy Museum in Texas, Oakland Black Cowboy Association and the New York City Federation of Black Cowboys.
