An exhibit on the role African Americans played in settling the West has opened in Dallas. “Black Cowboys: An American Story” opens Saturday at the African American Museum at Fair Park.
The exhibit includes dozens of pictures, films, pieces of clothing, and equipment used by Black cowboys.
“The master narrative has tended to exclude African Americans so much that most people think the only thing Black people do is play sports, sing, and dance,” chief operating officer of the museum Marvin Dulaney said.
Dulaney said African Americans accounted for 30% of the cowboys working to bring cattle to market.
“They were part and parcel of the work that had to be done to get the cattle from Texas to Kansas City and further north on the Chisholm Trail,” he said.
“Black Cowboys: An American Story” includes biographies and films showing the work the cowboys were doing. The exhibit opens with the roles they played and their impact on the Texas economy.
“That was hard work, dirty, dangerous work. In our society, we know the people who do the hard, dangerous, and dirty work are immigrants, Black people, poor people, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, so being a cowboy was like that,” Dulaney said.
He said people will see the cowboys’ clothing, boots, saddles, and guns. The exhibit also includes a replica chuckwagon that shows the other types of duties cowboys had to perform in addition to herding cattle and the kinds of food they ate.
“When food was hard to come by, they often had to eat the food raw,” he said. “It just really grabs you when you think about what kind of situation they were in and was it really this hard to be a cowboy?”
The second part shows how Black cowboys then started their own ranches after emancipation.
The third section shows how Black cowboys became popular at rodeos, in music, and in film. Dulaney said Black cowboys played a major role in settling the West, but have not gained the same notoriety as others.
“People like Deadwood Dick, who was both a cowboy and sort of an outlaw like Jesse James,” he said. “‘Yellowstone’ has actually done a good job of making it multicultural, but some of the ‘Old West’ stories with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne told a distorted side of the story.”
Dulaney said the museum as a whole can show people the role African Americans played in the United States’ development.
An estimated 20,000 African American men joined the British during the American Revolution. Dulaney said the British drew the men by promising to help them leave the country. After the war, the men were taken to Canada and Sierra Leone.
“It’s a wonderful story,” Dulaney, who said he spent 42 years teaching African American history. “I used to tell my classes, if the British had done what was called the ‘Southern Strategy’ earlier in the war, we’d be speaking with a British accent because it was sort of a turning point. That’s part of what we do here at the African American Museum.”
“Black Cowboys: An American Story” runs through April 15.
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