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Black cowboys. A Black cowboy from the early 1900s. Black cowboys in the American West accounted for up to an estimated 25% of cowboys "who went up the trail" from the 1860s to 1880s and substantial but unknown percentage [contradictory] in the rest of the ranching industry, [1][2] estimated to be at least 5,000 workers according to recent ...
cowboy. Black cowboys, African American horsemen who wrangled cattle in the western United States in the late 1800s and beyond. Though they were almost entirely excluded from the mythology of the American cowboy, it is estimated that Black men accounted for nearly a quarter of all cattle workers in the nascent American West during the latter ...
The Black West: A Counter History of the Wild West airs Sunday, 8th October at 9pm on Sky HISTORY. On the face of it, the cowboys of the Old West made for unlikely folk heroes. Their lives were spent in harsh, unforgiving landscapes, where they were expected to carry out all kinds of resolutely unromantic tasks.
- Nat Love
- Bass Reeves
- Rufus Buck
- Cherokee Bill
- Stagecoach Mary
- Jim Beckwourth
- Bill Pickett
Riding at the center of The Harder They Fall is the outlaw Nat Love, played with a smoldering intensity by Jonathan Majors. Majors’ Love engages in petty thievery and seeks revenge on a man who killed his parents and then branded him when he was a child. Much of what we know about the real Nat Love comes from his 1907 autobiography: The Life and Ad...
In The Harder They Fall, Majors’ Nat Love finds an unlikely ally in the U.S. deputy marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), who helps him hunt down Rufus Buck. Reeves was a revered lawman in Indian Territory for three decades starting in 1875, handcuffing more than 3,000 felons; he was known for being unbuyable at a time in which many lawmen accepted b...
Idris Elba’s Rufus Buck walks a path not unsimilar to one of his most famous characters: The Wire’s Stringer Bell. Like Bell, Buck is a lifelong criminal hardened by systemic injustice and racism. He believes that through his criminal enterprise, he can build legitimate business structures that will better his community—but takes ruthless approache...
While Cherokee Bill, portrayed in the film by Lakeith Stanfield, did not run in Rufus Buck’s gang as The Harder They Fall depicts, he was a feared criminal in his own right. He was born Crawford Goldsby; his mixed heritage included Sioux, Mexican, Black and white ancestors. As a teenager, he rode with the Cook Gang, stealing horses, holding up trai...
Zazie Beets’ Mary Fields is Nat Love’s romantic foil; she owns a saloon and is also something of a burlesque performer. The real life Mary Fields became renowned in middle age, when she agreed to leave her home in Ohio to join a Catholic mission in the wilds of Montana. Mary Fields is said to have been born on a Tennessee plantation around 1832. Fo...
RJ Cyler plays the cocky Jim Beckwourth, who believes himself to be the quickest draw in the west. The real Beckwourth actually had a far more rip-roaring life. Beckwourth was a mountaineer and explorer who went on fur-trapping expeditions across the Rocky Mountains. In the 1820s, he left white society to live among the Crow people, fathering sever...
The real Bill Pickett wasn’t a sharpshooter, like Edi Gathegi’s character, but perhaps the most famous Black rodeo rider of the early 20th century. Bickett grew up in Oklahoma in a ranching family and soon pioneered the rodeo sport of “bulldogging,” in which he would grab a bull by the horns and bite into its upper lip to immobilize it. Pickett soo...
Feb 13, 2017 · Katie Nodjimbadem. February 13, 2017. An African-American cowboy sits saddled on his horse in Pocatello, Idaho in 1903. Corbis. In his 1907 autobiography, cowboy Nat Love recounts stories from his ...
Jul 4, 2019 · In the 19th century, many cowboys on the American frontier were black -- as many as one in four, by some estimates. Rory Doyle. Lawrence Robinson, who goes by “Cowboy,” is, at 65-years-old ...
Mar 22, 2013 · In the real Old West, as opposed to the film depiction, black cowboys were a common sight. "Black cowboys often had the job of breaking horses that hadn't been ridden much," says Mike Searles, a ...
