While I was out for a walk today in downtown Raleigh I stopped to have a chat with a man that works nearby and I found out that he’s a cowboy. We ended up talking about animals and his dream of one day owning a horse, which ended up dovetailing into a convo about the world of Black cowboys. They are a seldom seen but tightly knit community of riders and ranchers committed to keeping the memory and the legacy of the Black Cowboy alive.
So today I want to highlight a photographer who has been instrumental in preserving that legacy. Oklahoma-born and Philadelphia-based photographer Ron Tarver’s grandfather was a cowboy, so he has long been immersed in vaquero culture. Between 1993-1997 Tarver traveled the U.S., photographing Black cowboys for the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. Many of those photographs found their way into museum and gallery exhibitions that reclaim history by asserting the Black cowboy’s rightful place within the diverse communities of ranchers and settlers in the South and the West, but Black Cowboys are also represented widely throughout the United States. The 1972 documentary Black Rodeo, recalls a late-summer parade of Black Cowboys who rode horses through the streets in Harlem convening at a rodeo on Randall’s Island. The gathering was affectionately nicknamed, according to an article in the Undefeated, “a rodeo with soul”and the two-day event was wildly successful drawing famous celebrities like Mohammed Ali, whose presence drew crowds who would become introduced to a culture they never knew existed.
In the Studio Museum of Harlem’s 2017 exhibition Black Cowboy, curator Amanda Hunt combined photography and film in a trenchant exploration of the rich traditions of Black cowboys and the evolution of imagery that both expanded and upended the definition of this powerful symbol of Americana. Since that show, pop culture references in film and music have brought the contemporary work of Deana Lawson and Kahlil Joseph to the fore, preserving important ties to the past while pushing boundaries in imagery that remains fresh and poignant today. Both artists have continued the important work of Ron Tarver, beautifully capturing the spirit of the Black Cowboy in complicated juxtapositions of time and place that cement their important connections to Black history in the South.