The Wild West’s Most Influential Black Men: The Lives and Legacies of the Forgotten Mountain Men, Cowboys, Sheriffs, and Rodeo Performers

Space may be the final frontier, but no frontier has ever captured the American imagination like the “Wild West”, which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorful portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind.

Almost absent in the perceptions of modern America is the comprehension of African Americans participating so prolifically in the building of the nation. Print fiction idealizing the cowboy life to Eastern readers would not depict what had ignited the war for which so many had an utter revulsion. The black man of the post-war years did not inspire the white spirit so essential for reveling in the old system. The 20th century’s television and cinematic offerings operated on the same drive, and the existence of black cattle workers was all but blotted out. Indeed, many of the modern age are barely aware that an African-American ever “stepped foot on the West bank of the Mississippi River.” No one saw the black cowboy on screen or in print, the two information industries that shaped our perception of America’s westward expansion. Therefore, a collective assumption that they must never have existed at all was nationally internalized.

However, as UCLA professors Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones, authors of The Negro Cowboys, reminded readers, about 25% of cowboys working in the West were African-American. They further noted that former slaves emigrating from the South entered virtually every viable profession in the plains, mountain ranges, and on to the Pacific. Their contribution ranged from the military to mining, exploration, farming, and in the construction of the West’s first towns.

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