Pickett, who founded the Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders with four of his brothers toward the end of the 19th century, rose in popularity while working with a traveling Wild West show. As the creator of rodeo steer wrestling, or bulldogging, Pickett was posthumously inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1972.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the traveling event, nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Dirt,” which takes the Black rodeo from coast to coast. The value of the rodeo lies not just in the thrilling moments but also in the connections formed. It’s a celebration that goes beyond entertainment and is deeply rooted in history.

The tour’s most recent stop from July 20-21 at the Industry Hills Expo Center, just east of Los Angeles, evoked the warmth of a Sunday afternoon reunion, rich with the spirit of the South. The rodeo’s infectious energy and heartfelt connections transformed it into a meaningful celebration, honoring the past while embracing the present.

The rodeo is an individual and collective expression. The arena is not just a space for competition but a reflection of a larger narrative — a place where each event, each cheer, and each connection pays homage to a tradition that binds generations, honoring the collective journey of the rodeo cowboy. Andscape was on hand to capture it all.

For five days in spring 1992, the world held its collective breath as it watched much of Los Angeles burn in the wake of four white police officers being acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. By the time a dusk-to-dawn curfew was lifted on May 5, and some semblance of order was restored, the riots had left 50 people dead, more than 2,300 injured, and more than 3,000 buildings either partially damaged or totally destroyed, according to various news reports. King’s beating had been captured by an amateur videographer. The acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers involved in King’s controversial arrest touched off what the History Channel has since characterized as the most destructive civil disturbance of the twentieth century and is estimated to have caused more than $1 billion in damage. The sustained rage and violence — which had not been seen in LA since the Watts Riots of 1965 resulted in 34 deaths — had less to do with King and more to do with a growing sentiment that the mostly white Los Angeles Police Department and its scandalous police chief, Daryl Gates, had been racially profiling minorities, especially in inner-city neighborhoods like South Central LA, Watts, Compton, and Inglewood.

In its aftermath, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and her husband’s friend and confidant Andrew Young — U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — called for a peace summit. They brought together civil rights and social justice leaders, well-respected Black actors and athletes and leaders from the city’s rival street gangs, the Bloods and Crips.

King levied a stern challenge to all in attendance: Before leaving the summit, everyone had to not only promise to help bring peace and unity to their communities but also conceive an individual way to accomplish that promise. Actor Glynn Turman, who owns a 20-acre ranch north of Los Angeles, was among those at the gathering. He made a promise to develop a summer camp for kids that would introduce as many as 100 kids to “a dose of fresh air and a different way of life” that included horseback riding.

Almost 30 years later, Turman described the annual Camp Gid-D Up and the work he’s done with his foundation as “one of the highlights of my life.”

Glynn Turman was born on the last day of January in 1947.

After his parents divorced, he and his mother lived in an apartment tenement in Harlem with two of her sisters and a brother-in-law. Turman was 8 or 9 years old when he and his mother moved to Greenwich Village in the mid-1950s. The sisters remained close, which helped Turman learn how to get around Manhattan. A latchkey kid, he would return to Harlem to spend some days with one aunt or head to the projects on the Lower East Side to be with the other. It was a lesson in independence that served him well years later on the rodeo trail and when his Emmy Award-winning acting career led him around the world.

But his true passion came to pass on the corner of 147th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Too young to venture out into the streets of Harlem on his own, Turman would sit on the stairwell of the fire escape and watch as mounted officers from the New York City Police Department would ride south on horseback down Amsterdam.

Seeing those big bay horses — brown bodies with black manes, tails, and lower legs — from afar was magical.

On rare occasions, Turman would wait downstairs and run alongside them from 147th down to 146th Street. He wasn’t allowed to cross from one block to another on his own, but he would often steal an apple from an outdoor fruit stand to feed one of the horses while they waited to cross at the first corner. The risk of getting caught was worth the opportunity to interact with the horses.

He was amazed and fascinated by them, and even when he watched Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy shows on television, his interest was less about the cowboys and more about the horses. A friend of his mother’s once took him to a professional rodeo at Madison Square Garden. More than being a rodeo cowboy, he dreamed of one day owning a ranch and having horses. Turman was popular and athletic but hated school and was chronically truant. In those days, the kids played a lot of stickball in the street around the corner from where he lived in the Village. They would break off a broomstick handle, grab a ball with a great deal of bounce to it, and wait for the street to clear of traffic. Turman had a passion for the game and enjoyed playing alongside his friends.

Turman’s mother raised her son in an artistic community. They lived in a sixth-floor, cold-water flat with a shared bathroom in the hallway. His mom was friends with novelist James Baldwin and playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who arranged for the 11-year-old Turman to audition for the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun.

He made his acting debut as Travis Younger on March 11, 1959.

Turman found himself on Broadway acting with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee and 22-year-old Louis Gossett Jr. He was a preteen and, as such, was not aware of the historical implications of the landmark play, which took its name from the Langston Hughes poem Harlem.

While he enjoyed the experience, he did not like the fact that his mother had pulled him out of public school and enrolled him in a private school.

“I wasn’t very happy with that arrangement, because I wasn’t a show business-minded kid,” Turman said. “I would rather go to baseball practice than rehearsal.”

Prior to his 13th birthday, Turman quit Broadway.

Without the responsibility of acting professionally, he could return to junior high and attend a public school. For the next six years, his grades were good enough to play on the baseball team and participate in theater. His drama teachers in junior high and high school cast him in the lead roles.

He also continued to play hooky. If he happened to have a quarter, he headed down to the movie theaters on Forty-Sixth or Forty-Second streets. If his pockets were empty, he headed up to Central Park and offered to help a stable manager “shovel s— … if you let me ride a horse around the arena.”

It was there that the teenager rode a horse for the first time.

When his mother found out where he was, she was not happy, but she supported his passion. “Instead of getting pissed off, she took me to a stable to horseback ride up in the Bronx — Pelham Bay Park,” said Turman of the stable where he learned how to properly saddle a horse and ride. Though he was too young to know any better, Pelham Bay is where Black cowboys like Bud Bramwell, Charlie Reno, and Steve Robinson regularly rode in the 1960s. More than 50 years later, those same legends don’t remember befriending Turman, but each recalled how they would attract youngsters and adults of all ethnicities whenever they were around.

“It was a magical time,” Turman said. “Sometimes, I’ve got to pinch myself to see how a little Black boy from a tenement in Harlem got to, I mean, I’m talking to you from my ranch. It’s more than I could have ever imagined my life would be like.”

By the late 1960s and early ’70s, Turman was living in Los Angeles and was regularly guest starring on popular television series like Peyton Place, The Doris Day Show, Hawaii Five-O, and The Rookies. He also earned roles in a series of made-for-television movies and the cult classic film Cooley High. Then, in 1975, a year before he married Aretha Franklin, he auditioned with director George Lucas for a film called Star Wars, which would become one of the biggest films of all time when it was released in the summer of 1977. Turman did not know it at the time, but he was up for the role of Han Solo, which would have made him a cowboy of sorts in a galaxy far, far away. Instead, the part went to Harrison Ford because Lucas knew in subsequent films there was a romantic storyline between Solo and Princess Leia and the famous filmmaker did not want the racial implications of a mixed couple to distract from the rest of the episode, according to the biography Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.

In recent years, Lucas confirmed the reason for the casting change when he and Turman attended a fundraiser together and Turman asked the filmmaker whether the story was true or not.

Turman spent much of the 1970s away from the bright lights and stress associated with a career in Hollywood. He became one of the top ten horsemen competing in the Tevis Cup, a 100-mile endurance race held annually since 1955. He has quite a trophy case chronicling his many accomplishments.

In 1984, Lu Vason, founder of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, called Turman and fellow actor Danny Glover to ask if they would serve as grand marshals on horseback and welcome the crowd at his Los Angeles rodeo. Not being a contestant allowed Turman to get more involved. As the rodeo unfolded, he was on horseback as a pickup man during the rough stock events, did some hazing during the steer wrestling and helped the rodeo hands gather cattle.

Once Vason and his staff saw how skilled the actor was on the back of a horse, they asked if he would be interested in staying involved. When the Bill Pickett rodeo was in Atlanta, Turman was in Atlanta. When the rodeo made its way to Denver and Washington, D.C., Turman made his way there, too. Even today, he will make himself useful when he attends a Bill Pickett rodeo.

Turman was introduced to the competitive side of rodeo by a stuntman named John Sherrod, who also introduced the actor to Reginald T. Dorsey. Turman and Dorsey became fast friends while honing their skills as team ropers. They mostly competed in California and would sometimes travel to Arizona and Nevada. At the time, Turman could be seen in a series of guest roles on everything from The Paper Chase and White Shadow to The Love Boat and Fantasy Island before taking another turn on the big screen in Gremlins. You could also see him on T.J. Hooker, Riptide, The Twilight Zone, Matlock, and Murder She Wrote. Then came a five-year run as Col. Brad Taylor on the television series A Different World, from 1988 to 1993.

By then he had sold his property in Malibu and in 1992, he married his current wife, Jo-Ann, a full decade after separating from Aretha Franklin and finally divorcing in 1984.

In addition to a new home in Los Angeles, the couple bought a 20-acre ranch in Lake Hughes, California. Together, they formed the IX Winds Ranch Foundation following a challenge from Coretta Scott King.

King thought Turman’s idea to bring 100 kids to his ranch for a weeklong summer camp was a wonderful idea. He challenged the Crips and Bloods to help identify some at-risk children ages 9 to 18 who would benefit from the experience. And so began the annual Camp Gid-D Up, which continues almost 30 years later.

Turman approached a trio of his A Different World co-stars — Kadeem Hardison, Sinbad, and Dawnn Lewis — to ask for the initial donations he used to fund the camp. “I thought I was going to do it that year and that would be that,” said Turman, looking back on nearly three decades of camp experiences. “The look on the kids’ faces — they had such a good time and I couldn’t believe they were enjoying something we were able to provide, so we did it again and again. It just grew and grew and grew.”

As an actor and a philanthropist, Turman’s life could not have been much better for him and his family.

By the late Nineties, he was a member of the U.S. Team Roping Championships, and in 1999 he and his partner, whom he has since lost touch with, won the region and qualified for the tenth annual USTRC National Finals in Oklahoma City.

Turman drove out early and stayed with Jesse “Slugger” Guillory. Guillory won all-around rodeo titles in the Texas Rodeo Association, Southern Cowboy Association, and Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo and was Vason’s righthand man for two decades before going to work for Dodge. Charlie Sampson, who had already become the first African American to win a world championship in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, was there, too. Sampson was a pro rodeo bull rider and also pretty handy when it came to calf roping. More importantly, Sampson knew what it took to win.

Before the trio left for the finals, Sampson said, “Glynn, you’re looking good. Horse is looking good. You’re doing great.”

Then he added, “But I hate your saddle.”

Turman was not sure if Sampson was serious or kidding until the 1982 world champion bull rider said, “That saddle is not a champion saddle. If you’re going to be a champion, you got to be a champion all the way.”

That’s when Sampson gave Turman one of his own saddles to use. In rodeo, for a world champion to give another competitor his personal saddle is the ultimate show of respect.

Turman finished the national finals event a career-best fifth in the world. To this day, Turman, who won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama for his part in HBO’s 2008 series In Treatment, still has Sampson’s saddle at his ranch — the same ranch where he continues to introduce kids to horses, the outdoors, and Western culture. And he’s been on screen more in the past two years than, perhaps, any other two years since arriving in Hollywood. He had 11 credits in 2019, including his Emmy-nominated arc on the television series How to Get Away with Murder, eight more in 2020, beginning with The Way Back with Ben Affleck, and 11 episodes from season four of Fargo alongside Chris Rock. In addition to these, Turman was named Best Supporting Actor by the LA Film Critics Association for his role in the critically heralded Netflix film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The film, which was produced by Denzel Washington, co-starred Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.

It’s been a life well-lived. Turman has gone from being that kid sitting on the fire escape dreaming of owning a ranch to having former campers — and their parents — come up to him in public and thank him for changing their lives. Whether they took up the sport or not does not matter, so long as it kept them off the streets.

“It’s a wonderful gift to be able to share with others,” Turman said.

With coronavirus pandemic restrictions lifting, the invitational is back in full swing, kicking off the season with a historic event in celebration of Juneteenth. The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo Showdown in Vegas aired on CBS, becoming the first Black rodeo to air on national broadcast television. Produced in partnership with the Professional Bull Riders, the rodeo featured seven events, including bareback, bulldogging and calf roping. Kortnee competes in the ladies barrel and junior breakaway events.

For Kortnee, the road to Las Vegas required a combination of dedication, perseverance and good times, for Black rodeo is about more than just the mastery of sport, it is an ongoing celebration of community, culture and heritage. One of Kortnee’s most cherished memories from the Vegas trip was seeing her friends for the first time since January 2020, the last time the invitational convened. “I got and gave lots of hugs,” she said happily.

Photographer Ivan McClellan, who has been documenting Black cowboys and cowgirls since 2015, gives us a look at Kortnee’s extraordinary life made possible by love and support, alongside a group of athletes who cannot and will not be denied.

Growing up in a rodeo family, Kanesha Jackson (left), who was born in 1989, started riding horses when she was 3 years old and won her first all-around saddle competition with the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo a decade later. As the daughter of Stephanie Haynes (center), 18-time invitational champion who sits on its board of directors, and stepdaughter of the late Sedgwick Haynes, general manager of the invitational, Jackson understands the importance of tradition and legacy, but she also wants to be sure her daughter Kortnee Solomon (right) has a well-rounded childhood. “I want Kortnee to live through her own purpose,” Jackson said. “She loves horses, but she also does dance, gymnastics, cheerleading and basketball. I want her to experience everything so she doesn’t feel like she missed out during her childhood.”

Kortnee Solomon braids her horse’s hair at her home in Hempstead, Texas. The horses are fully integrated into her and her mother’s everyday lives. They feed, groom, train and ride them regularly, developing powerful bonds inside and outside the arena. “We have a great relationship with the horses, it’s almost like we talk to them and they talk to us,” Kanesha Jackson said. “It’s very much like people and their dogs. All the horses have their own unique personality — some are laid-back, some are very outgoing. Kortnee’s horse Tiny is very laid-back, kind of a loner. She doesn’t like to be bothered, especially when it comes to other horses. She’s basically like, ‘Get out of my face.’”

Kanesha Jackson (right) and Kortnee Solomon (left) let their horses out for the day at their home in Hempstead, Texas. “Kanesha and Kortnee are really bonded and close in an effortless way, they just take care of each other in an effortless way,” said Ivan McClellan, who photographed the mother-daughter rodeo champions. Here they’re enjoying a day at home, but they’re always ready to hop into Jackson’s “open air studio” — a truck with a trailer for the horse and the family. “We live on the road,” said Jackson. “We’re look forward to going to Denver, Atlanta, Memphis, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., to spend time with our Bill Pickett rodeo family.”

A pile of some of the awards Kanesha Jackson and Kortnee Solomon have won barrel racing over the years. Throughout the rodeo season, which runs May through September, there’s at least one each weekend, and Jackson’s and Kortnee’s wins have stacked up over the years. “I don’t even know how many events I’ve won,” Jackson said. “To be a champion you have to learn to lose like you learn to win. A lot of people say, ‘Don’t give up!,’ but I think it’s deeper than that. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is how to move so that when I do lose, I can take the good from it. There’s always good and bad, but you have to stay positive.”

Kortnee Solomon carries several buckets to go water her horses. On June 5, Stephanie Haynes, Kanesha Jackson and Kortnee loaded six horses into their trailer and drove out to Rosenberg, Texas, for the Amazing MLK Scholarship Rodeo. It was 90 degrees, and a heavy storm had just passed through, turning the ground to piles of mud. Kortnee, who had just come from winning a basketball game, took water to the horses about an hour and a half before the event began. “When the buckets are full, they’re so heavy that she has to hold on to the fence and drag them along,” photographer Ivan McClellan said.

Stephanie Haynes gets ready to compete in the ladies steer decorating competition in the Amazing MLK Scholarship Rodeo, where athletes rip a piece of duct tape off of a running steer. “Stephanie Haynes is rodeo royalty,” said Ivan McClellan, who snapped this photo right before Haynes entered the event. Women mount up, back their horses into the box, then the steer is released and the rider goes after it. “The goal is to rip a piece of duct tape off its back and the fastest person to do that wins the prize,” said McClellan. “It’s a tough sport that requires flexibility, agility and a lot of speed — and Stephanie is doing it in her 50s. She is the grande dame of the event. She missed the initial try, so she chased the steer around the arena for a minute just to get a time.”

Kanesha Jackson enters barrel No. 2 during a barrel racing competition at the Amazing MLK Scholarship Rodeo. She loves suiting up for competition. “It’s like when a superhero puts on their mask and goes into activation mode. It’s game time when you put your hat on,” Jackson said. Once she’s in the arena, Jackson goes into the zone the entire run. “I can’t hear the crowd. I can’t hear the announcer. I can’t hear the music. It’s just me and the horse for two or three barrels,” Jackson said. “Then when I finish, everything opens back up and I can hear the crowd and everything around me.”

Kanesha Jackson (right) helps her daughter Kortnee Solomon (left) prepare for the barrel racing competition at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. After arriving, they were in for a shock — Tiny’s back legs were swollen after kicking the inside of the trailer the entire way. “We just got her in April and she’s not used to hauling to rodeos,” Jackson said. “We were working around the clock, probably 12 to 15 hours, to get her legs back down to size so she could run comfortably. Tiny’s attitude was, ‘Let me do my job, and that’s all I need to do.’ ”

Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo CEO Valeria Cunningham is the only Black female owner of a rodeo. She is the quiet storm, equally at ease working with the riders or speaking to the press. After her husband Lu Vason, founder of the invitational, died in 2015, she kept it going strong. She described a moment in Memphis, Tennessee, that brought tears to her eyes: “I saw a 7-year-old boy at the rodeo walking along. All of a sudden he stopped, put his little hands on his hips, his eyes as wide as saucers, and he said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! There are real Black cowboys and cowgirls!’ ”

Barrel racer Raemia Clemons enters the arena carrying the African American flag on June 13. Every Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo begins with a rider carrying the flag in celebration of the people who built this country. Clemons, who competed in the ladies steer undecorating and ladies barrel events, led the parade, which featured Hollywood stars James Pickens Jr., Obba Babatunde, Reginald T. Dorsey and Glynn Turman, all accomplished horsemen and longtime supporters of the invitational, as the official grand marshals.

The arena is dark and the ground is ablaze as the athletes competing in the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo enter to fanfare and applause. There are bull riders, bareback riders, bulldoggers, ladies steer undecorating riders, calf ropers, ladies barrel riders and junior breakaway ropers, each with a story just waiting to be told. “It’s rodeo to the max,” said photographer Ivan McClellan. The Las Vegas-style production included a display of Professional Bull Riders pyrotechnics, thumping music from the Tower of Power, LED boards flashing the invitational logo and videos showing the history of Black cowboys.

Bareback rider Harold Miller of South Carolina rides a bucking bronco at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo. At 63 years old, Miller is a phenomenon. “His presence in this event was incredible,” Ivan McClellan said. “Typically guys age out in their 30s because of the amount of injuries they sustain. The sport is very rough on your body, but he’s doing it into his 60s. I asked him, ‘How are you still competing at such an old age?’ and he said, ‘God.’ ”

It was 115 degrees outside the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo — record heat — but inside, the fans danced in the stands. They came from all corners of the country to witness this historic event and share in the love and joy of the invitational. “Looking at the audience, which was very diverse, and seeing people being a part of the moment was very powerful,” said invitational CEO Valeria Cunningham. “Everybody felt that no matter what color they were, they were part of this moment together as one — and that it just felt good. This was a dream come true. We are going to continue to celebrate our culture because it’s ours and nobody can take that away from us.”

Kortnee Solomon gets ready to compete in the junior breakaway roping competition. “Before I run, I like to be by myself and to think about what I am going to do in that run,” said Kortnee. After learning the sport from her father, tie-down roper Cory Solomon, the 11-year-old has no qualms about being the only girl competing in the event. “Kortnee always pushes herself and is willing to try anything because she knows what her abilities are,” said invitational CEO Valeria Cunningham.

Steer wrestler Sterling Walton (right) participates in the sport called bulldogging, where he tackles a steer from his horse and wrestles it to the ground. The “big man’s sport” was invented by legendary cowboy Bill Pickett. After the rider mounts up, his partner on horseback sets a steer loose while they are both running. The rider has to jump off his horse, land on the steer, flip it onto its side and drop it to the ground. Walton won the steer wrestling competition and champion buckle. Many of the best steer wrestlers are former football players who have mastered the art of tackling.

Ouncie Mitchell rides a bull named Romeo for a score of 76. This would be enough to win the bull riding competition and the championship buckle. After breaking his leg in 2019, Mitchell returned June 11 to compete at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo. “People say, ‘It’s just eight seconds,’ but it’s not just that. When you’re bull riding, it’s like being in the boxing ring. You never know what he is going to do next. I just have to move with everything the bull throws at me,” said Mitchell.

Bill Pickett Invitational CEO Valeria Cunningham (right) and Professional Bull Riding CEO Sean Gleason (left) present the championship buckle to the steer wrestling winner Sterling Walton (center). “The struggle has been real,” said Cunningham. “For the past 37 years we’ve been working to create a platform for Black cowboys and cowgirls, to educate people about how Blacks were left out of the history books in the development of the West, and inspire people to have hope for the future. I’m hoping that kids all over the U.S. will be sitting in front of the television with their parents on Juneteenth and see that Black cowboys and cowgirls do exist today.”

As part of the agreement, Professional Bull Riders (PBR), which annually holds over 200 bull riding events across the globe, will coproduce multiple events involving the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR), the oldest Black-owned rodeo circuit in America, in conjunction with PBR’s two largest tour series, Unleash the Beast and the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour, which air on CBS and the CBS Sports Network.

PBR will also create new qualification opportunities for Black athletes at World Champions Rodeo Alliance (WCRA) events in an attempt to diversify the talent pool for high-payout contests, such as the Women’s Rodeo World Championship in Las Vegas in November, which will include a $750,000 payout to first-place finishers.

The BPIR events will be incorporated into the PBR tour schedule in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to PBR chief marketing officer Kosha Irby.

“We … see it as an opportunity to allow both of our brands to synergize and create something bigger than each of us can bring in individually,” Irby said.

Historically, rodeo athletes have to accumulate points throughout the year to qualify for higher-paying rodeos. But Irby said there are time and financial commitments that not all rodeo athletes, particularly African Americans, are capable of upholding. PBR working with WCRA hopes to create automatic qualifier events for riders of color, such as in the barrel racing circuit, to give Black athletes better chances at competing at larger events.

“We’re not just going into this to try to just create television opportunities, create sponsorship opportunities,” Irby said. “We’re really, truly trying to create opportunities to elevate the sport for all Bill Pickett athletes.”

The partnership is an opportunity for PBR to leverage its expertise in branding and promotion in the rodeo space for the BPIR, broaden rodeo opportunities for riders of color and women, and the dual purpose of exposing the BPIR to a broader audience and the whiter PBR audience to more Black riders and the history of African Americans in the sport.

The BPIR was founded in 1984 to both tell the history of Black cowboys and cowgirls and create a space for those Black riders who were not allowed in other rodeo associations at the time. BPIR president Valeria Howard-Cunningham, whose late husband, Lu Vason, founded the organization, sees her role as a springboard for Black athletes to make it to the higher levels of rodeo and bull riding. She gave the example of Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame member Fred Whitfield, who started with the BPIR before becoming one of the most decorated tie-down ropers in rodeo history.

“They [PBR] are huge and they have impact all over the world, all in the United States,” said Howard-Cunningham, who, when she took over the BPIR after Vason died in 2015, became the first and only Black woman to own and operate a touring rodeo company in America.

“With them partnering with us, they are going to help us to deliver that message to people and to cities and to markets that we would not be able to do.”

BPIR can now further educate audiences about the history of Black cowboys and cowgirls, showcase the talent of Black riders and expand the legacy of the organization’s namesake, Pickett, the son of a former slave who created a rodeo event (“bulldogging”) and, in 1972, became the first Black person inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame.

The concept of cowboys and rodeos, Howard-Cunningham said, has never been equated with Blackness, which has led to the whitewashing of the history of so many Black trailblazers, such as Nat Love and Bose Ikard.

The BPIR is a way of course correcting.

“We look at the organization as an organization that is about telling history and about creating history,” she said.

And it isn’t just about exposing more African Americans to this history. Both the PBR and BPIR want the majority-white rodeo audience to take something from this partnership as well. PBR’s viewership demographics are about three-fourths white and “3 to 5%” Black, according to Irby. Hispanics make up about 20%.

“One of our reasons for partnering with the PBR is to make sure that we are able to tell that story to everybody, no matter the color of their skin, no matter what ethnic background they have,” Howard-Cunningham said.

“They need to know what … the trueness of history is and see as history is still being made.”

The BPIR has been approached in the past about television opportunities, but network executives wanted fighting and cursing, Howard-Cunningham said, which goes against the organization’s family-friendly ethos and its founders’ desire to show the “greatness” of Black cowboys and cowgirls.

“We knew that the PBR understood our passion, and it kind of aligned with theirs,” she said.

But Irby wanted to emphasize that while PBR can provide additional opportunities for the 37-year-old Black organization, the hard work has already been done by Howard-Cunningham, Vason and many others.

“Bill Pickett was doing well before us. They’ve been in this business for decades,” Irby said. “And the only thing we’re going to do now is try to come in and just help where we can.”

The afternoon of Friday, Sept. 3, 1971, was beautiful and sunny in Harlem as residents lined the streets and hung their heads out of second- and third-story windows to watch a three-mile parade of cowboys make their way through the city on horseback.

These were not the cowboys New Yorkers were accustomed to seeing on television or the silver screen, though. They were black cowboys, and a day later, more than 10,000 people — many of whom had never seen a rodeo, much less an all-black rodeo — made the short walk across the Triborough Bridge to Randall’s Island for the Black Western Cultural Show and Wild West Rodeo, or what became known as a “rodeo with soul.” Outside of Downing Stadium (since demolished), they bought programs for $1 and cheap straw cowboy hats for children along with other Western-themed novelty items. Inside, many of the cowboys from out West were competing on grass instead of dirt for the first time and finding it a rather slick surface for calf and team ropers to stop their horses.

United Press International reported that the purpose of the event was “to show ghetto-bred youngsters that there are black cowboys” from Texas, Oklahoma, California, Illinois and Michigan, along with Connecticut, New Jersey and even New York. The Raleigh, West Virginia, Register ran the story ran under a headline that read I Thought They Were All White. More accustomed to running rodeo stories, The Dallas Morning News headline simply read Black Cowboys.

Muhammad Ali was there and the Associated Press wrote that seeing the legendary fighter-turned-war protester-turned-civil rights activist “excited even the hard-bitten youngsters of the Harlem ghetto.”

The history of black cowboys intersects with America’s struggle for racial equality, human rights and social justice. New York’s first black rodeo brought out more than 50 of the best black cowboys, who otherwise would have been competing in smaller, less publicized and often overlooked events. The whole weekend was chronicled in a documentary titled Black Rodeo that has since defined the legacy of this historic event.

“With friends telling friends, America will again remember the heroes it has forgotten,” Bud Bramwell, president of the American Black Cowboy Association, wrote in a letter published at the front of the event program. Bramwell went on to explain that cowboys had long symbolized strength and courage and that black children had not been able to identify with cowboys because they had never seen them.

“From now on we want you, and your children, to know the proud role our people played in the Western history of yesterday and today,” he wrote before proclaiming, “Let our pride in our past help us to build a prouder future.”

The idea of staging an all-black rodeo in Harlem began in earnest in 1969, when Bramwell, Cleo Hearn, Charles Evans and Marvel Rogers formed the American Black Cowboy Association. A coin flip determined Bramwell would be president, while Hearn was vice president. The group quickly partnered with the plugged-in George Richardson, co-founder of the New Jersey-based marketing firm Periscope Associates.

Richardson had led Martin Luther King Jr. through Newark, New Jersey, after the 1967 riots there. “He was our contact man with everybody,” said Bramwell.

The cowboys planned the rodeo events, while Richardson, the only African American elected to the New Jersey state assembly in the Kennedy administration, raised money through corporate sponsorships. His wife, Ingrid Frank, who had escaped Nazi Germany via the kindertransport program that brought Jewish children to Britain, handled publicity.

“When we found out there were black cowboys — a friend of ours [Arthur Moore] went down West, up West or whatever you do — anyway, they came back from the West and they saw black cowboys and they took some video and showed us,” said Frank in a videotaped interview for a 2017 award she received from Labor Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to understanding the lives of working people. “We were blown away by them. We said black kids — American kids — have to know this, that they share the legacy of the cowboy.”

Bramwell, who was raised in Connecticut before attending college in Oklahoma, didn’t realize how much American history books had cheated black students from knowing the truth about their Western roots until he returned to the East Coast. That knowledge gap was one reason that many of New York’s movers and shakers thought Bramwell and Richardson were joking when they shared their plans for staging an all-black rodeo.

“Two and a half years ago, we asked the Madison Square Garden people and others for space,” Bramwell told the Associated Press at the time. “They said they didn’t know if we were competent enough and whether we would draw people. Everywhere we went, we got the door shut in our face.”

Bramwell, now 82, recently clarified his comments from 48 years ago: “We had two or three meetings with Madison Square Garden. We just couldn’t get the terms that we felt we could work with to get in, but we were close.”

One issue Bramwell noted was that Madison Square Garden executives underestimated the willingness of black cowboys to travel East. “They didn’t think we would have enough guys to have a rodeo,” he said.

Instead, the group settled on Harlem.

Underwritten by Rheingold Beer and Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Co., the cowboy association and Periscope offered cowboys $500 for every truck that drove east from Texas, Oklahoma or elsewhere.

The inducement worked: Mike Latting, who would go on to be the first African American to compete at the College National Finals Rodeo in 1973, entered the competition along with a pair of Hollywood stuntmen, Gene Smith and Cowtown Gene Walker. Bailey Prairie Kid and Billy the Kid were there, too, as was Alfred Peet, Rocky Watson, Archie Wycoff and Seneca Charles.

“As long as they had three or four guys in the truck and a couple of horses, it paid their trip up from Texas,” Bramwell recalled.

Nelson Jackson made the trip from Oklahoma with Chris Prophet and Rubin Hura. The trio showed up two days early and used part of their $500 to stay at the Park Central Hotel across the street from Carnegie Hall.

“It’s a five-star hotel,” said Jackson, now 78, of the property that hosted the NFL draft from 1980 to 1985. “I wish I could stay there now.”

It was Jackson’s first time in New York City. He grew up in Bixby, Oklahoma, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, guiding a horse-pulled-plow and milking cows by hand. But the then-30-year-old was not intimidated by what could have been an overwhelming environment. He won the steer wrestling event and was third or fourth in the calf-roping competition that was ultimately won by Bramwell.

A year later, when documentary filmmaker Jeff Kanew released Black Rodeo, Jackson could be seen riding horseback alongside Ali, who arrived in Harlem in a white convertible Rolls-Royce before sitting horseback in front of the famed Apollo Theater. Later, Ali let a pair of Oklahoma cowboys — Clarence LeBlanc and Gerald Vaughn — “drive his car around the running ring” that circled the football field at the stadium.

Ali even rode on a tame, aging bull hauled East by Moses Fields Jr., who was a plumber by trade.

“Just slide down, Mo,” a cowboy is heard in the documentary encouraging Ali, who was cautious because of the size of the bull’s horns.

“If this bull bucks, sucker, you better run like hell,” Ali said. “I’ll whip you worse than I whipped Joe Frazier.”

Actually, six months earlier, on March 8, Ali had lost a brutal 15-round decision to Frazier at Madison Square Garden, in a heavyweight bout that has come to be known as the “Fight of the Century.”

Ali’s appearance had been arranged by Kanew, who previously made a living editing movie trailers. Ali and Kanew shared the same lawyer, Bob Arum, who would form Top Rank two years later and go on to establish himself as a major force in boxing. Arum had been working with Ali since 1966, a year before he was banned from the sport for three years when he refused to be drafted.

According to Leigh Montville’s biography, Sting Like a Bee, Ali suffered financial ruin in his years away from boxing. Bills went unpaid and he borrowed money from friends and acquaintances, including his heavyweight nemesis, Frazier, that also went unpaid. To make ends meet, he began making paid public appearances for a few thousand dollars each. Even after Ali returned to boxing in 1970, Arum continued negotiating a full schedule of appearances, including the all-black rodeo in Harlem.

“I arranged it,” Kanew said of Ali’s visit the afternoon before the competition. “And paid it. It was $5,000 plus some net profit points [from the release of the documentary], but there were no profits.”

Earlier that week, Jim Gibbons, a member of the documentary crew and, years later, an executive vice president of marketing at Paramount Pictures, was tasked with carrying an envelope containing Ali’s cash payment to Arum’s Manhattan office.

Ali was at the event for no more than two hours. Yet his appearance, which was featured as the climactic third act of Kanew’s documentary, established the rodeo as a pivotal moment for all black cowboys — past and present.

“He recognized that this was part of his culture,” Gibbons said. “Once he was there, he totally understood what it was about, and I think he was as mesmerized by them as they were by him.

“He was a champ for more than just boxing. … They love that he took the time to be there.”

Longtime New York councilman Bill Perkins described the combination of Friday’s parade and Saturday’s rodeo as a romantic and attractive moment in the city’s history. He saw the competitors as “authentic cowboys” and tremendous athletes. More importantly, as Harlem natives, Perkins and Jacob Morris, president of the Harlem Historical Society, saw these never-before-seen newcomers to urban America as “real-life heroes.”

“Kids loved it,” Perkins recalled in an interview last year, “and parents loved it because their kids loved it.”

The dream of bringing an all-black rodeo to the East Coast actually began several years earlier after Arthur Moore, a longshoreman from Newark, New Jersey, and his wife Evelyn traveled to Oklahoma in fall 1967. Moore had been fascinated by cowboys for years and introduced his son, Barry, to horseback riding. Barry eventually met and was mentored by a black rodeo cowboy named Jesse “Charlie Reno” Hall and went on to become a well-regarded steer wrestler.

On their trip, Arthur and Evelyn Moore met Bramwell and Hearn, both who attended Oklahoma State University and had been members of the OSU Cowboys rodeo team. Hearn had originally gone to Oklahoma State on a football scholarship, but within a year of his arrival he turned in his shoulder pads for a piggin’ string and joined the rodeo team full time. Upon hearing their stories and attending black rodeos in Drumright, Oklahoma, and nearby Okmulgee, Moore was inspired to showcase their talents.

But Moore was unable to get people to take his proposal seriously when he returned to the East Coast. Aside from introducing Richardson to Bramwell and Hearn, Moore ultimately played no role in the Harlem event or any of the five other all-black rodeos that the American Black Cowboy Association and Periscope Associates teamed up to produce in a three-year span from spring 1970 to June 1973.

Barry Moore, who died in October at 68, understood his father couldn’t pull off such a big event. But out of love and loyalty, the younger Moore could not bear to compete in the steer-wrestling event in Harlem. He chose to spend the weekend with Charlie Reno, who was recovering from a broken neck.

The first of the black cowboy association’s events took place in 1970 in Newark, where Periscope was based. A year later, they organized a trio of events. The first was held in Baltimore, where newly elected Mayor William Schaefer presented Bramwell with a key to the city. That was followed by an event at the National Guard Armory in Jersey City and then, on Sept. 4, the far-more memorable event in Harlem.

At the time, Bramwell, who was 34, and Hearn, who was 32, told various media outlets they planned to produce a 12-city tour in 1972. The tour never happened. Instead, they produced one event the next year, in Philadelphia, and their final event, a year later, in 1973, at the Freehold Raceway, in Freehold, New Jersey.

Newspaper accounts claim 25,000 people attended the Freehold event on Saturday, and 10,000 youngsters attended a performance on Friday. Bramwell and Richardson reached out to anti-poverty organizations to offer a reduced rate of $2 per student for the Friday show.

In her 2017 interview, Frank recalled, “Friday afternoon we always gave a … performance for schools in the neighborhood, social service agencies. That was sold out. It was butt-to-butt on the benches.”

In an interview at his home in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Bramwell said that despite their success, the American Black Cowboy Association ceased operation because its ultimate goal was to host an event at Madison Square Garden. With little chance of making that a reality, Bramwell and Hearn focused on their respective rodeo careers. There was not another black rodeo in New York until George Blair organized a series of smaller rodeos in Harlem, Brooklyn and Coney Island from 1984 to 1997 with the help of two East Coast-raised black cowboys, Charlie Reno and Steve Robinson.

As for the documentary, unfortunately, Black Rodeo, which held a premiere screening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, failed to find an audience following its release in May 1972.

Kanew, now 74, who later directed Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and episodes of the television series Touched by an Angel, did not go into the rodeo project with the idea of making money. He wanted to make a film that, according to Gibbons, was “different and original.”

Cinerama was initially enthusiastic about the response to a test screening and acquired the rights to distribute the film. However, according to Kanew, some executives grew weary and were not sure a “clean, wholesome, positive black movie” would find an audience at a time when blaxploitation films were popular.

Still, a film executive in Los Angeles saw the movie poster showing a black cowboy on a horse set against the New York skyline and summoned Kanew to a meeting.

In Kanew’s telling, the meeting was short-lived: “Tell me this is about a black stud that comes into Harlem and f— everybody,” Kanew recalled the executive saying.

“No,” he replied. “It’s a documentary about a black rodeo.”

“Then forget it,” the exec said.

When he returned to New York, Kanew grew more frustrated when he learned that Cinerama had not budgeted any money for marketing his film. Despite receiving mostly positive reviews and national coverage, the documentary and the rodeo it chronicled both largely faded from memory.

“At the end of the day,” LeBlanc shrugged, “it was probably just another rodeo.”

“We were just putting on a rodeo,” Bramwell concluded, “and that was it.”

But maybe, with the benefit of hindsight, it was something more. The film’s narrator was veteran actor Woody Strode, who appeared in the classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and also helped break the color barrier in the NFL. “It’s quite a thing for all of America to know all of its history and not have it edited out,” Strode said before the closing credits of Black Rodeo. “[It’s] the start of something new for black people. I’m glad I lived to see it. … I am proud to see what it means for a man to live under the sun and make a place for him under the sun equal to all men.”

Oh, and he’s black.

Of all Butler’s attributes and uniqueness to his profession, his race is the most surprising — and polarizing.

At 33, he is a third-generation cowboy from Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, meaning he went into his chosen career aware of the challenges that come with it because he was not white. And he chose it anyway.

“It’s a passion,” said Butler, an accomplished steer wrestler who also owns a trucking company. “When you’re black and competing in places like San Juan Capistrano, California; Price, Utah; and Prescott, Arizona, you’re not going to see many people who look like you. So you will hear the N-word. A lot. I use it for power. I feed off it. I tell myself, ‘You’re going to read about me. You’re going to get sick of seeing me.’ I want it more than most, and so I use it as fuel. My belief system is different.”

Butler’s story, which includes four bar fights with white cowboys or patrons who put their hands on him, is part of a revealing documentary in production that promises to lend heretofore unknown insight into black cowboys and their history in America.

Charles Perry’s film, The Black Cowboy, takes a high-definition and comprehensive look at the legacy of African-Americans as cowboys, which dates to the beginning of the lifestyle, up to today’s influx of black cowboys in Oklahoma and other places across the country.

Perry, of Carson, California, said he “escaped” suburban Los Angeles to play college basketball at Northwest College in Wyoming in 1994. In 1997, he visited a friend’s home in Lewistown, Montana, and attended a rodeo.

“And there was this black kid participating,” Perry said. “And it was loud in my mind: ‘That kid must be adopted. A white family must have taken him and made him become a cowboy.’

“That thought stayed in my mind as I drove from Georgia to Portland, Oregon, [in 2014] with a friend. We ran across the Okmulgee Black Rodeo in Oklahoma. I was in a daze, seeing all these black cowboys. I didn’t understand what was going on.”

But it was at that moment that the budding filmmaker embraced the idea for his first major project. He had worked with others on small films where he served various roles. Perry also worked on films as an extra or bit, nonspeaking roles and said he would stick his head in directors’ discussions, and “they never told me to get out, so I learned a lot.”

In April 2015, the resourceful Perry took a job driving a U-Haul truck from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Portland. He drove “directly to Okmulgee, to tell the Okmulgee City Hall my plans of making the documentary.”

He met Delta Higgins, who worked at City Hall and who has been a guiding force for Perry — “my angel,” he called her.

“It is an incredibly important yet omitted story within America’s narrative,” the 41-year-old Perry said. “How often do we see now or in the past the cowboy of the Wild West represented as a black man or woman? Very rarely … and yet, they were there in important ways. Black cowboys and their story have been neglected.”

Perry has spent the better part of three years traveling the country, mostly by car, to research, meet and film black cowboys in all points of the country. He said the film should be completed in time for entry into the renowned Sundance Film Festival next summer. He also plans to enter it at Cannes, Tribeca and other festivals.

He used online crowdfunding to raise $25,000, which allowed him to hire Emmy-nominated cinematographer Erik Angra and respected African-American photographer Ivan McClellan, who are working at discounted rates, Perry said, because they “see the vision of the film.”

Perry’s younger brother, Marcus, is on the staff, as well as two high school friends — J.R. Redmond, who won a Super Bowl ring as a member of the New England Patriots, and Tony Harvey, who once played for the Utah Jazz of the NBA — who serve as executive producers.

“It’s been a grind, something Nate Parker [director of Birth of a Nation] told me last year at Sundance what it would be,” Perry said. “But I’m determined.”

The total budget of the film is $220,000, and Perry said he used his savings and supplemented the support and donations he’s received by eating less and working side jobs more. “I will pass up on an extra hamburger but not skimp on using the best-quality cameras we need,” he said.

Mostly, Perry said, “I know how to hustle” to keep afloat. To support himself and the film, he edits online video content, including short films and music videos.

“I’m a one-man crew for $2,500 a job. I get three or four jobs a month [to] sustain myself,” he explained. “I’m doing what I have to do to make this film. It’s that important to me.

“So I’m taking my time, not rushing,” Perry added. “This thing is deeper than I thought when I started.”

Perry, for instance, has learned that the term “cowboy” originated when farmers would instruct black farmhands to “go get that cow, boy.”

He learned that Oklahoma, first home of Native Americans, was a haven for African-Americans who fled the South in the 1800s. Blacks owned land and built thriving communities.

Government officials asked Congress to designate Oklahoma as a “black state” or “Negro Colonization.” It never happened, but the influx of African-Americans produced countless farmers and, yes, cowboys.

“I grew up playing at Will Rogers Park and Will Rogers Beach in California, so to learn the most famous black cowboy, Bill Pickett, was Will Rogers’ right-hand man, well, that was something of a confirmation for me that this was a film I should make.”

Prominent in the film is the story of Pickett, who is credited with creating in 1903 the sport of “bulldogging,” now known as steer wrestling. It is a rodeo sport in which the cowboy rides on a horse alongside a steer, leaps onto the bull and wrestles it to the ground by its horns.

Pickett is a cowboy legend and was the first African-American to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma. He died in 1932 after being kicked and stomped in the head by a horse when he was 61.

His legacy did not die with him, however. Pickett also is in the Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame and has been honored with the annual Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in Oklahoma. Pickett’s emergence spawned a wave of black cowboys that, the documentary will show, has continued over all these decades.

“It’s a good thing this story is finally going to be told,” said Clarence LeBlanc, 65, a former black cowboy who retired 13 years ago, but not before twice claiming the world steer wrestling championship (1983 and 1990). “Every ranch since the beginning had black cowboys on them. But when you saw the movies or heard the stories, we were excluded. This film will help let people know our impact.”

LeBlanc said he was quite “uncomfortable” much of his career because “prejudice was strong. When I started out, it was really bad. Most schools weren’t even integrated. Over time, the white cowboys began to get to know me because we were seeing each other every week at different rodeos. Many of them let go of the ignorance.

“But the towns we went to, those people had never been around black people before, and they didn’t want us there. And they let us know that.”

He said he never felt his life was in jeopardy, but “I knew when I was in a place that was more [volatile], and so I stayed close, I didn’t venture off at all. … But I don’t think there was anything anyone could do to run me off, I loved the sport so much.”

That love among African-Americans continues to rise, according to Perry, who estimates there are more than 100,000 black cowboys in the United States. Most are in Oklahoma, but others are in Georgia, California, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas.

“There are small pockets of black cowboys in many parts of the country, and we visit those places and the people wonder why we want to take their pictures,” Perry said. “It’s like when blacks go to Japan and the Japanese want to take our photos because they don’t see many black people. That’s how it is with the black cowboy.”

This is news to many, including a man Perry recently encountered at a party in Boston. Perry said he wears a hat and T-shirt with “TheBlackCowboy.com” on it almost everywhere he goes. “This was a smart, educated white man,” Perry recalled. “He noticed my hat and I told him a little about the history of the black cowboy, and he said no way in the world was what I told him true. He said, ‘Oklahoma is white.’ He just didn’t want to believe it.”

Perry said he has received skepticism from some in the cowboy community because others before him had committed to documenting its history of blacks in the profession but failed. So many did not “take me seriously,” he recalled.

To gain trust, he paid out of pocket for a sizable portion of historic footage — and has been consistent in his efforts to complete the movie.

“I’m excited about seeing the film myself,” Butler said. “I haven’t studied the black cowboy. I am into Warren Buffett and Napoleon Hill. But do know the black cowboys have two things in common: talent and perseverance. That’s the only way to make it with all we have to go through because of our race.”

And don’t forget money, added Butler, who also raises and sells horses on his ranch. “Really, you have to be close to rich, or have someone in your family with money, to compete,” he said. “My family isn’t rich, but my parents made some real sacrifices to get me out here.

“You’re talking $21,000 in fuel to travel to events, $20,000 fees to enter. A horse trailer: another $40,000. Then there are all kinds of miscellaneous stuff. It’s the No. 1 reason there aren’t a lot of blacks on the [rodeo] circuits.”

For LeBlanc, who has lived in Oklahoma all his life and raised prize-winning horses, seeing the number of black youths in rodeos makes him proud. “I know, in at least a small way, we paved the way,” he said. “I have a little grandson, and I can’t wait for him to get old enough to get out there.”

In the end, Perry anticipates a work that enlightens and entertains. “Our goal is not only to bring their story to the mainstream but to establish resources for young aspiring cowboys and cowgirls to follow their dreams,” he said. “I have almost been like a detective, digging for the truth, and it’s been fun.

“Imagine being a cowboy in a rodeo — the sole black person in an entire arena. It’s as close to Jackie Robinson as you can get. This is a history that has been hidden in plain sight … while going on today.

“Well, we’re bringing it all to light with this film.”

LEArN MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE BLACK RODEO:
Fred Whitfield and the Black Cowboys of Rodeo

He sat astride Jewel, his horse, in a chute on the side of the 25,000-seat, open-air stadium. Beside him, in another chute, was a calf that had been raised for this moment. In a few seconds, the chutes would open, with the calf getting the briefest of head starts. If all went well, Whitfield would give chase, lasso the animal, dismount, flip it to the ground, and tie three of its legs together with the small rope that now was clenched in his teeth. All in the time it takes most of us to tie our shoes.

But first the emcee introduced Whitfield. “There are stars, there are superstars, and then there are legends,” he bellowed. As Whitfield’s name flashed upon the stadium’s screens, he was met with thunderous applause — much louder than any of the previous competitors received. And Whitfield is a legend. He’s won more than $3 million and eight world championships (“gold buckles”) competing on the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association tour, the National Football League of rodeos. He’s also won the calf-roping event at the Stampede three times. Then the emcee ribbed Whitfield: “What is he now, 75? 68?” Actually, Whitfield was only 49 — he turned 50 the next month — but that’s practically geriatric in the punishing world of rodeo.

Left unsaid was another distinction. The Calgary Stampede features five men’s rodeo events — calf roping, bull riding, saddle bronc, bareback riding, and steer wrestling — and one women’s competition, barrel racing. There were 120 competitors, and only two were African-American — Whitfield and another calf roper and fellow Texan Cory Solomon.

The Stampede isn’t an outlier in professional rodeo. Not surprisingly, both Whitfield and Solomon say their paths have been made more difficult by the overwhelming whiteness of their sport and the racism, both overt and subtle, that accompanies it.

Fred Whitfield, 8 time world champion tie-down roper

Cory Solomon, 2012 Calgary Stampede tie-down roping champion

As the gates opened, the calf sprinted away. Whitfield and his horse were right behind and the lasso found its mark. A second or two later, Whitfield, a powerfully built 6-foot-2, had the calf on the dirt. The roping was assured, and Whitfield jumped up and spread his arms like a linebacker who’s just sacked the quarterback. His time, 6.9 seconds, was the best of day, which entitled Whitfield to a victory lap and another long ovation. “I’ve always been received by the fans as well as anyone in the sport,” Whitfield said. For less than seven seconds of work, Whitfield won $5,500 and a chance to advance to the finals.

The cowboy is an iconic American figure and in popular mythology almost always a white one. For every Django or Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman’s character in Unforgiven) there are hundreds of white gunslingers. But of the “estimated thirty-five thousand cowboys that worked the ranches and rode the trails between 1866 and 1895, researchers have calculated that the number of black cowboys ranged from five thousand to nine thousand, with the high number representing 25 percent,” wrote Tricia Martineau Wagner, an author of several books about the West, in Black Cowboys of the Old West.

As the nation’s railroad network expanded, long cattle drives became unnecessary, and cowboys turned to rodeos to show off the skills that once had more practical applications. Several towns lay claim to being the birthplace of rodeo — there’s no academic consensus — but by the end of the 19th century, rodeos were common throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and various western states. They started out as part of grander Wild West frolics, interspersing events such as bronc riding with shooting displays and Indian raid re-enactments. One of the few early African-American participants was Bill Pickett, who is credited with creating what became known in modern rodeo as steer wrestling.

Pickett was born near Austin, Texas, in 1870 or 1871, one of 13 children. His father and uncles, former slaves, were cattlemen and small farmers. One day, the young Pickett was watching some dogs that ranchers used to help corral their herd. “On a day in 1881 that was to have unforeseen potential, he happened to notice a bulldog holding a cow motionless by her upper lip,” wrote Pickett biographer Bailey C. Hanes. “A few days, later Bill walked up to a calf and grabbed it by the ears with his hands. The animal squirmed and bawled, trying to free itself. Bill then fastened his teeth on the calf’s upper lip, turned loose of its ears, and, with a flip of his body, threw it to the ground.”

Pickett went on to demonstrate the technique, called bulldogging, across the continent, including at the 1905 Calgary Stampede. (Modern steer wrestlers don’t bite the steers.) Pickett earned about $10 a week working for the 101 Ranch, a white-owned, Oklahoma-based touring show, and was billed as “the Dusky Demon.” He died in 1932, two weeks after receiving a kick from a horse.

Rodeo evolved from being part of Wild West variety shows to a modern sport by the end of World War II as the two biggest rodeo outfits merged into a single association that would be renamed the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1975. Unlike professional baseball, in which team owners agreed not to sign African-American players, national rodeo organizations were never overtly segregated. But Jim Crow laws ensured that African-Americans and other ethnic minorities, including Native Americans, were unwelcome. Rodeos often posted signs reading “no dogs, no Negroes, no Mexicans,” according to Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo, a book by University of Wyoming professor Tracey Patton and rodeo competitor Sally Schedlock.

African-Americans organized their own rodeos and formed the Negro Cowboys Rodeo Association in 1947. Later, with the end of Jim Crow, a few African-Americans participated in PRCA events. Myrtis Dightman, a Crockett, Texas, native, was one of the pioneers, becoming the first African-American to appear in the PRCA world finals in 1964. Charlie Sampson, who grew up in the Watts section of Los Angeles, became the first African-American to win a world championship when he took home the gold buckle for bull riding in 1982. At the time, the PRCA had only six African-American members.

“A lot of the early blacks in rodeo were bull riders,” said Cleo Hearn, 77, who joined the PRCA in 1959, five years after he competed in his first rodeo, an African-American event in his home state of Oklahoma. One reason is that it was cheaper: You didn’t have to own a horse and a trailer to transport it.

Hearn rode bulls, too, but he had better success as a calf roper. Bull riding is a judged sport and Hearn said he knew he wasn’t going to receive fair treatment. “The judges were all white,” he said. “You could ride the baddest bull in the world, and you weren’t going to win first. Sometimes I knew I had the best ride, but I ended up only finishing third or fourth.”

In calf roping, however, cowboys race against a clock. And while there may have been occasional timing shenanigans — “That’s happened not just to black cowboys but all cowboys,” Hearn said — he believed that the odds weren’t stacked against him.

In Calgary, Whitfield was competing in the calf-roping contest’s second bracket or “flight,” which began on a Tuesday in mid-July, midway through the Stampede. Each flight ran four days, and the 10 best cowboys overall would advance to the final day of competition.

On the second day of Whitfield’s flight, Solomon took the victory lap with a time of 6.7 seconds, only 0.4 seconds off the Stampede record. Whitfield finished a respectable fourth in 7.8 seconds, earning $2,500, but he scolded himself afterward. His tying didn’t go smoothly. On his first attempt, one of the calf’s legs slipped out and he wasted a valuable second. “I just took my eye off that rear leg,” he said.

While Whitfield was among the most physically imposing of the calf ropers, Solomon, 26, was the slightest. He stands 5-feet-9 and has the build of an undersized basketball guard, which is what he was in his Texas high school before he left the team to devote his attention to rodeo. The calves, which are 6 to 9 months old, weigh between 190 and 270 pounds.

“Being big and having technique is great,” Solomon said. “But a lot of the big guys don’t have the best technique.” He credited his horse, Spook (so named because it doesn’t get frightened by a big crowd), with doing most of the work. “As long as you have a good horse and the horse is pulling the calf, then it’s all technique.”

Like Whitfield, Solomon had won the Stampede event before, in 2012. When I asked them to explain their good starts this year, they invited me to return to the Stampede grounds at 6 the following morning. “Don’t be late,” said Whitfield, who has the stern tone of a headmaster.

Whitfield and Solomon stayed on the grounds, sleeping in their trailers, which include traveling compartments for their horses. Unlike a pro tennis player, who can fly from tournament to tournament with a racquet bag, cowboys can’t check a horse on American Airlines. So there are long hours of driving and considerable travel expenses associated with being a professional calf roper. A reliable, powerful pickup truck costs about $70,000, the traveling rig costs about the same, and gas bills add up quickly. Sponsorships can help defray these expenses. But a cowboy has to compete well just to break even. “You have to make the national finals to make a good profit,” Solomon said.

There was a light sprinkle when I arrived punctually at the Stampede grounds the next day. This morning, like the previous two, the two cowboys were going to drive about 40 miles to the cattle ranch of Stampede subcontractor Manerd Bird, an American expatriate who provides the calves for the calf-roping competition.

Competition rules barred the cowboys from mounting horses there, but they could rope the calves from the ground, tie their legs, note their tendencies, and help Bird select 10 for the day’s competition. A cowboy can’t pick his particular calf — there’s a random drawing before each day’s event — but knowing the tendencies of all 10 is a competitive advantage, Whitfield said. So it’s surprising that on the previous day, Whitfield and Solomon were the only competitors to show up. And on Thursday they were accompanied by only one other competitor, Idaho’s Matt Shiozawa.

“Some guys like to sleep in,” Whitfield said dismissively. “Just like with anything else, preparation is the key to success. And no one out here is going to outwork me.”

On the drive to Bird’s ranch, Whitfield tuned his truck’s Sirius XM radio to Country 56. He sang along to Easton Corbin’s romantic ballad Are You With Me: I want to dance by the water ’neath the Mexican sky / Drink some margaritas by a string of blue lights.

After his good start at the Stampede, Whitfield seemed confident that he’d advance to the semifinals. And if he won it all, he said, he’d consider retiring — going out on top. Whitfield could still beat guys half his age, but life on the road was exhausting. “I’d be lying if I said all the miles I put in doesn’t take something out of me,” he said.

Along with several other stars of the sport, he was helping start a new rodeo circuit, the Elite Rodeo Athletes tour, with the intent of giving athletes greater control of scheduling and organization.

Also, Whitfield has a wife and two teenage daughters. He’d already cut back on his schedule. “This year, I’ve competed at maybe 20 events, while most guys have been to 50,” he said. He’d been spending more time on his small ranch in Hockley, near Houston, training horses and selling them. Whitfield painted a picture of a satisfying domestic life, and a sharp contrast with the tribulations of his early years.

Whitfield grew up in Cypress, Texas, 25 miles northwest of Houston. His family was so poor that his mother, Marie, gave up two of her five children for adoption. It was a violent household. “Growing up, I thought everybody lived like we did — but once I got out and looked back, I saw I was wrong,” Whitfield wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Gold Buckles Don’t Lie. “Most families don’t try to kill each other as much as they did at my house.”

Whitfield’s father, Willie, was a philanderer who drank too much and beat his wife. On two occasions, Marie shot Willie after he beat her, and both times he survived. When Fred was 10 or 11, his father was convicted of killing a man over a woman they were both seeing. “When he finally went away to prison, it was like thank God he’s out of here,” Whitfield recalled in his autobiography.

Marie worked as a cleaning lady for a wealthy white neighbor, Joanne Moffitt, and Fred spent a lot of time at the Moffitt house hanging out with Joanne and Don Moffitt’s son, Roy, who introduced him to roping. The boys would spend long hours roping dogs, chickens, and cats — anything that moved. Roy and Fred competed in youth rodeos using the Moffitt family’s horses, and when Roy Moffitt, who is seven years older than Whitfield, stopped competing to work in the family oil business, he lent Whitfield his horses, truck, and trailer and paid his entry fees.

“Roy and his family were great to me,” Whitfield told me. “When I couldn’t rub two rusty nickels together, he gave me an open checkbook.”

By the time Whitfield graduated from high school in 1986, he was earning a decent living training horses for a rancher. He was also doing well in amateur rodeos, including on the national Bill Pickett circuit, which was founded in 1984 for African-American cowboys. In 1990, Whitfield started competing in PRCA events and became only the second rookie to qualify for the national finals. The following year he won his first gold buckle.

While there were many scrapes with his white peers, the lasting physical scar — a long slash across his left cheek — of Whitfield’s time in rodeo has nothing to do with racism. He was at a Bill Pickett event outside of Oakland, California, and got into a fight outside a bar with another black man, who drew a knife and sliced Whitfield’s face. Whitfield, who later received more than 30 stitches, returned the favor with a tire tool and spent a night in jail.

But Whitfield was often the target of racist taunts, said Roy Moffitt, who now lives about 10 miles from Whitfield. “His rookie year, he’d call me up in tears,” Moffitt said. “I remember he was roping at the big rodeo in San Angelo [in central Texas] and the crowd was yelling N-word this and N-word that,” Moffitt said, contradicting what Whitfield had told me about his consistent adoration from the crowds.

Other cowboys would taunt Whitfield into fighting. At one rodeo in Las Vegas in the 2000s, he returned to the horse stalls one morning to find that someone had cut off part of his mare’s tail. After a fight with three white bull riders who professed to have connections to the mob, Whitfield took on bodyguards to accompany him to the 1996 national finals, which he won.

“The harassment he faced forced Fred to grow up fast, and that’s what he did,” Moffitt said. “He doesn’t take s— from anyone anymore.”

Whitfield told me his dating choices contributed to his troubles. Most of his romantic relationships have been with white women, including his wife, Cassie, whom he married in 2000. “I think that rubbed some folks the wrong way,” he said.

But Whitfield was defiant and remains so. “There’s a lot of folks in the rodeo world that are jealous of me and don’t talk to me,” he said. “But that doesn’t do anything to me. Really, it just fuels me. Any chance I get to kick their a– in competition, I’m going to do it.”

On Thursday, Solomon took a victory lap for the second straight day after roping his calf in 7.2 seconds, while Whitfield’s time of 7.9 seconds secured second place. Both men had liked the calves they drew. Meanwhile, the rest of the field was sloppy. Tuf Cooper’s calf kicked and he gave up on tying its legs. Logan Hofer’s lasso missed its mark. Two other cowboys also recorded “no-times.” Shiozawa finished out of the money with a time of 9.0 seconds. And the Stampede’s most decorated cowboy, Trevor Brazile, who has a record 23 gold buckles, earned his first winnings of the event by tying for third place with a time of 8.5 seconds.

In a field this talented, Solomon said, a lot came down to the draw. “Out here, you’ll get half of the calves that you can’t win on, but you can still learn,” he said. “You can be roping good but not drawing good, which means you’re not winning. When you draw good, you still have to be your best. You draw bad and you’re pretty much done.”

Like Whitfield, Solomon was exposed to rodeos at a young age. His family runs a cattle business in Prairie View, Texas, and provides calves to rodeos throughout the state. “I started roping when I was 4 and tying down when I was 6,” he said. He’s good friends with Cooper, whose father, Roy, is a retired calf-roping multichampion, and said he hadn’t experienced the same degree of racial taunts that Whitfield faced a generation earlier.

Still, he noticed things. “You’ll be at a rodeo, and there will be courtesy golf carts taking contestants around,” Solomon said. “I’ll be waiting for 20 minutes, but you’ll have the drivers just standing there next to Tuf waiting to see if he wants to go somewhere.”

A larger frustration was sponsorships, Solomon said. “I have a couple of great sponsors, but not as many as guys like Tuf,” he said. “Some guys get a free truck and trailer deal, but I don’t have one yet. And other guys get free horses so their owners can say, ‘Trevor Brazile rode my horse.’ That’s nothing against those guys, who are among the best in our sport. But there are some guys who don’t even make it to the national finals, and they’re getting better sponsorship deals than me. If my skin color was different, I’d have more deals.”

Whitfield agreed that for today’s African-American cowboys the economic demands are more daunting obstacles than overt instances of racism. “The world’s changed and the rodeo world’s changed along with it, though there’s still a long ways to go, of course, as we see every day in the news,” he said, referencing recent police shootings of African-Americans. Many of Whitfield’s white peers grew up on ranches and had easy access to livestock and equipment. For young African-American men with few resources, it’s difficult to gain a foothold in the sport, he said. Few can afford to pay $40,000 for a quarter horse — an American breed that excels at short sprints — as Whitfield did a few weeks before the Stampede.

In rodeo, talent alone doesn’t get you far, Whitfield said. “If you have a half-a–ed horse and a half-a–ed truck, you’re going to get half-a–ed results.”

Before arriving in Calgary, I attended a Bill Pickett event at the Rowell Ranch rodeo grounds in Castro Valley, California, about 20 miles southeast of Oakland. This was the same event where Whitfield received his nasty scar at a nearby bar more than two decades ago. On this weekend, though, the atmosphere couldn’t have been more jovial. All the contestants were African-American, as were all but a handful of spectators, who each paid $26 for admission.

Many of the contestants were affiliated with California amateur associations. Sam Styles, who was riding in the team relay event, is a member of the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, which hosts an annual parade through West Oakland in October. “I grew up in Oakland, but now live in Hayward [not far from Rowell Ranch], where I give riding lessons,” he said. “Most of us here aren’t professionals, but we love horses.”

One of the few pros at the Bill Pickett rodeo was Chris Byrd, 24, who took home $1,200 for winning the bull-riding event. Byrd grew up in Compton, an area in Los Angeles County not known today for horses. But when Griffith D. Compton donated his land to the city in 1889, he stipulated that some be reserved for agricultural use. A vestige of that century-old provision was a stable at Figueroa and 131st Street known as The Hill. As a teenager, Byrd found work there as a stablehand. The stables burned down in 2012, but by then Byrd had relocated 60 miles north of Sacramento to work for Flying U Rodeo Company, which produces rodeos throughout California.

“Sometimes, I can work and compete at the same event, but usually I’ll work one weekend and then go compete somewhere out of state,” he said. While bull riders don’t have to tote horses from event to event, Byrd said, it’s difficult to meet his traveling expenses. He hasn’t sniffed the PRCA top-50 rankings. “Sponsorships are hard to come by,” he said.

But events such as the Bill Pickett rodeos aren’t necessarily intended to launch professional stars, said Odest Logan, a longtime attendee. Logan grew up in West Oakland, California, where he would watch rodeos on TV. After working for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for 37 years, Logan retired and founded Spurred Up, a nonprofit that introduces African-American youths in Oakland to equestrianism and black cowboy heritage, four years ago. Logan and other volunteers visit schools, conduct field trips to ranches, and organized a youth riding team that was competing in the weekend’s rodeo.

“There’s a lot more jobs in this industry than just becoming a professional cowboy,” he said. He pointed to a former high school student, Brandyn Hartfield, who joined Spurred Up when he was 17. “He said he wanted to learn about horses, so we gave him a shovel and pointed to the stalls,” Logan said. Hartfield saved his money and put himself through Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School, and now works along the Central Coast as a farrier while occasionally competing in pro rodeos.

Cleo Hearn had much the same thing in mind when he began producing rodeos in Texas. In 1995, he launched his Cowboys of Color circuit to “educate while it entertains,” he said. And while he admires champions like Whitfield, Hearn points to his own path as the basis for a more stable livelihood. While he competed in professional rodeos, Hearn, a college graduate and Army veteran who was one of the first African-Americans to serve in the Presidential Honor Guard during the Kennedy administration, also had a day job. He worked in Ford Motor Co.’s Dallas office for more than 30 years.

“You can’t rodeo forever,” he said. “And while I like to help African-American cowboys make it to the pros, I also want to encourage them to go to college, too.

“It’s tough to make it in pro rodeo, and even if you do you can’t do it forever,” Hearn said. “Charlie Sampson was a great bull-riding champion and now he works construction. Fred Whitfield has won eight world championships and several million dollars, but when you factor in all the years and expenses, that’s not as much as it seems. What’s he going to do after he retires?”

Whitfield wasn’t thinking about retirement on the last day of the Stampede. Both he and Solomon were in the semifinals, along with eight others. Four would advance to the final. The champion would walk away with $100,000 on top of any prizes he had won earlier in the competition.

Solomon finished fifth. Though he would blame his technique, it was hard not to conclude that his stature played a part. His lasso found its mark, but when he reached the calf’s side, he struggled to deposit it on the muddy ground and lost precious seconds. His time of 12.5 seconds was 2.0 seconds behind the fourth-place finisher, Utah’s Clint Robinson.

Whitfield finished in 9.5 seconds — not spectacular, but good enough for third place and a spot in the final. Analysts for Canadian Broadcasting Company Sports praised Whitfield’s experience: After noticing that a few riders had missed their mark with their lassos, Whitfield had run behind the calf for longer than usual to ensure an accurate throw.

The final began at 4 p.m. with a steady rain further muddying the grounds. Given the conditions, Shane Hanchey’s opening time of 7.9 seconds was impressive. “I’m from Louisiana, I’m from the bayou,” he said after the event. “We’ve roped in mud my whole life.”

Robinson bowed out after failing to land his lasso. Oklahoma’s Ryan Jarrett had finished first in the semifinal with a time of 7.6 seconds, but battling the mud cost him and he finished in 9.7. Whitfield took second place with a time of 8.9 seconds.

“I would have loved it to have been dry,” Whitfield said. “The last two or three times I’ve made the final four here, it’s been absolutely flooded. I used to love competing in these conditions. The worse the conditions, the better. But I think that’s another thing that changes with age.”

Still, he took home $25,000 for being runner-up, plus another $12,500 in previous days’ winnings.

After Calgary, Solomon had an excellent summer, winning his first major PRCA event of the year in late August, which cemented his invitation to the national finals to be held Dec. 1-10 in Las Vegas.

Whitfield won’t be there. The Elite Rodeo Athletes World Championship is scheduled for Nov. 12-13 in Dallas, and Whitfield will be there supporting the new group.

Had he won the Stampede, he might have retired, Whitfield told me. I don’t believe him, and I don’t think he really believed it either.

“I love to rope,” he said. “It’s something I’m addicted to and have been since I was a little kid. If I stopped tomorrow and walked away cold turkey, there’s no way I’d be happy.”

Even as he enters his 50s, Whitfield couldn’t picture himself apart from the sport. He tried to imagine selling his ranch and buying a house in town. “I’d be fooling myself,” he said. “I’d go crazy.”