WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Black Cowboys 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:06.920 Hey you, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.639 and there's Chuck who knows where Jerry is. But this 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.080 is short stuff, so it doesn't matter because we can 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.680 handle it ourselves with a little assist by our friend 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.560 Dave Kustan. Yeah, I don't think we We don't shout 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.000 out Dave enough, not nearly enough. As a matter of fact, 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.480 let's just make this episode us talking about how great 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:29.440 Davis right, the original Black Cowboy, that's right, um, but 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:32.640 totally wrong, but it was a it was a decent 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.600 attempt at a sea. Yeah, because we all know the 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:42.440 original black Cowboy was Sheriff Bart and Blazing Saddles. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.440 I forgot about that movie. That's a that's is that 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.080 a good one? I mean it's a classic. It couldn't 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.479 be made today, sure, but uh, you know, written by 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:54.920 mel Brooks and the great Richard Pryor and uh I 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:57.360 think there was one other co writer. But yeah, they 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.160 played that for comedy in that movie. But as it 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.920 turns out, there were a lot of black cowboys in 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.720 the United States, and you just don't see a bunch 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:08.760 of movies and TV shows where they're represented, shock, shock, 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.840 But they were I mean, there are some statistics that 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:17.840 say or more of al all cowboys, Um, after the 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.800 Civil War in the wild West, were these black men 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.600 out there like doing cowboy stuff, working hard rope and cattle, 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.640 doing all the things that you see in the movies. Yeah, 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.560 like that. The idea from what I can tell from 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.800 the research is that the popular conception of cowboys and 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.440 cowboy life and what cowboys did is fairly accurate. But 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:42.880 the the race of them is what was off that 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:47.200 that the just the fact that black people were not 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.800 at all represented among cowboys in the popularization of you know, 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:55.760 cowboy life back east. Um, it's just that's the historical 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:00.760 misunderstanding and that um apparently, even before or the Civil War, 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:06.320 most black cowboys, according to one historian of the American West, um, 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.480 most of them, most of the cowboys were black, and 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.320 that it was a job that was um open to 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.240 enslaved people basically, and that if you were white you 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.960 didn't want to be known as a cowboy, that that 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.200 job was potentially beneath you or whatever. Even though it 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:26.000 was all all about bronco busting and you know, hurting 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.519 cattle and lassoing and stuff like that, all the stuff 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:33.480 we think of with with cowboys today. Um, but that 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.720 the that transition between it being from something that me 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.120 that was like beneath a white guy out west, to 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.440 something that was a coveted title among white guys was 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.080 when back East people started to hear about cowboys and 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.079 say that's that's cool, what a cool life. And then 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.280 all of a sudden, white guys were like, oh, actually 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.280 I'm a cowboy, now you can count me in. Yeah. 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.160 I mean I think that that named uh, at least 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:01.040 according to this historian, is racist in nature because the 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.120 white workers wanted to be called cow punches or cow hands, 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.200 and the black men were called cowboys. And like you said, 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:12.040 once they once lor hit back East, they jumped on 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.360 that cowboy train because I guess that word took and 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.160 it sounded cool. Yeah. The thing is, I went and 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.200 tried to corroborate that elsewhere, because it makes sense if 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.800 you take it from that standpoint that oh is that 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:29.080 actually cowboy actually has um like a denigrading origin. But 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.880 I did not see that anywhere else, and I couldn't 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.960 find the difference between a cow hand and a cowboy. 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.840 They are completely interchangeable from what I can tell, definition wise, 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.400 but I don't know, maybe that just that etymology got 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.680 lost to history. You know. Well, Larry Kelly's runs the 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:50.440 Black Cowboy Museum in Texas and Rosenberg and uh, we 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.280 want to credit him with saying that since he's he's 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.240 where we got it. Yeah, here, Larry, here's the limb. 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.760 Let's go out on it. So the idea of UM 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:04.160 cowboys UM and cowboys in general really kind of came 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:10.320 out of this migration of UM Southerners, especially uh Southern whites, 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.680 moving out west to Texas for the chance for cheap land, 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.919 wide open spaces, the promise of a new chance for 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.159 a fortune because the South had had really become industrialized 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.440 as far as a grarianism is concerned, and Texas had 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.000 a lot of opportunity, especially if you were willing to 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:33.719 push UM Spanish settlers and indigenous people from Mexico off 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.240 of their land. You could really make make a name 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.440 for yourself in Texas. And a lot of those UM 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:42.080 white settlers brought enslaved people with them, UM, and they 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:46.520 were the earliest black cowboys out there. Yeah, because what 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.760 happened was, you know, you're in Texas, you get roped 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:55.360 into the Confederacy and then these uh white people who 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.120 moved out west go back east to fight in the 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.120 Civil War. They left the people that they enslaved behind 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:04.520 to you know, keep the ranch going basically, and those 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.080 that was sort of the beginning of the black cowboy movement, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.880 it really was. What's interesting is that it was triggered 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.560 by the Civil War, that that the Civil War created 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.800 that kind of um niche and require and need sorry 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.800 that need for um cowboys of all stripes, but that 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:28.599 they that typically fell to African Americans, um, who who 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.560 were doing this work while the whites were off fighting 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.480 the war. And then um, when the war was over, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:40.960 when the the white Confederates came back to Texas, they're like, hey, 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:42.800 I don't know if you heard or not, but we're 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.440 free now. So you have to pay us for this work. 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:47.880 And because a lot of herds had been broken up 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.800 and lost, there was a lot of work to be 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.320 done getting these herds back in order and getting Texas 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:57.520 back up and running, um economy wise, especially with cattle herding. Yeah, 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:00.640 so maybe let's take a break and we'll talk about 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:02.880 some of the more famous of these black cowboys right 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:28.919 after this. All right, So, if you look at the 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.760 history books and TV shows and movies. You hear a 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.600 lot about while Bill Hillcock and Annie Oakley and all 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.760 these sort of legendary wild West figures, Uh, you don't 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.680 hear as much about the black cowboys who were also 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:45.479 legendary figures, just in the same way like they would. 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:47.680 You know, some of them were bad guys who would 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:50.560 shoot up a saloon and have a gunfight in the 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.040 middle of the street at high noon. Uh. Many of them, 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.800 obviously were just regular cowboys who did hard work day 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.160 and night, wrestling cattle. Some of them also chuck or 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.560 even lawman too. There was a guy named um Bass 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:10.360 Reeves who was the first African American Marshal Us Marshall 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.080 west of the Mississippi. And he had a thirty two 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.560 year career and apparently was so um morally unimpeachable that 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.840 some people insist he was them the model for the 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:25.320 Lone Ranger. I know, and that crazy it is. And 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:27.280 I have to tell you I grew up on the 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:32.800 Lone Ranger of the two or three movie. Like the movie, okay, yeah, yeah, 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.440 it informed my childhood. I also watched the TV show Tune. 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:37.200 I had like a place that and everything, But I 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:39.800 was a big time into The Lone Ranger. I watched 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.960 that movie within the last couple of months. It is 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:47.160 one of the most boring movies I've ever seen in 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.720 my life. I was like, my parents must have been like, 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:53.040 what is wrong with this kid? This movie is just 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.400 like watching paint dry. There's like five parts that are 0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:02.080 that are interesting and the rest is like just slowly 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.040 stringing together those parts. It's really weird. And the chemistry 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:11.800 is like baking soda and more baking soda. Like nobody 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.360 has any chemistry, and like it means that there's nothing happening, 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:17.600 there's no reaction. I'll tell you what I love though 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.920 about that movie is that that color blue of his 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:26.640 uh outfit. It's the star of the movie. Basically the 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:28.760 color of his hat too, because it was white, but 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.040 it wasn't stark white. It was sort of this creamy white. Yeah, 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:34.600 he had a tinge of badness to him, maybe when needing, 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.800 but I guess not. Another famous black coup away from 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:40.719 back in the day was a man named Bow's I 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.080 card Um. He is in the on the Hall of 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:48.440 Fame at the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.560 of Fame. God bless the people who founded that, I know. 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.480 And he was the right hand man to one Colonel 0:08:54.559 --> 0:09:00.480 Charles Goodnight. He was a big, super successful cattleman in Texas. Apparently, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.400 if you've ever read or seen Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:08.040 um sort of classic Western, the character of Joshua Deats 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.559 was based on him. Played by it none other than 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.280 Danny Glover, who was not too old for that? Dess 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.920 who is what? He was not too old for? That? 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:22.240 S getting too old for this? S oh man, that 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.480 was a great joke. I'm sorry I had to repeat it. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.400 That's sight so um. There's another one named Bill Pickett 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.800 who was a very famous rodeo guy. He he was 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:36.120 one of the first African American rodeo uh man, I 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:41.120 guess um. And he invented the the sport of steer wrestling, 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:43.360 which is where you ride up alongside a steer and 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.640 grab him by the horns and drag him to the ground. 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.840 It's really awful, especially when you when you understand what 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.160 he came up with. It just called bulldogging, where it 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:56.160 was a technique that he would overwhelm the steer with 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.080 pain by biting its lip and he was inspired by 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:02.240 watching dogs heard cattle, so he tried it himself. He's like, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:06.679 this really works. But he was a genuine trailblazer in 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:11.640 the rodeo world. And uh despite the fact that he 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.319 was barred from competing in a lot of rodeos, even 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.000 though he was among the best that um, the rodeos 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:20.120 were segregated for a very long time, and if you 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.000 were an African American rodeo cowboy, you had to compete 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.320 either late at night or early in the morning before 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.800 the actual rodeo started, or else you might have your 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.880 own rodeo altogether. I mentioned outlaws. There was a man 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:37.400 named uh isom or dart Uh. He was an enslaved 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.120 person who who went the other way, and he was 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.800 a horse thief. Like so many other horse thieves. He 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.040 would steal horses and cattle in Mexico, drive him across 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.199 that big old rio Grand River, sell him off in Texas, 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.800 and like so many outlaws he was he was shot 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.000 down by a hired gun in this case Tom Horn 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:57.960 And I'm thinking of movies. I think there have been 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.559 a couple of movies where they did represent these black cowboys, 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:04.720 but it always seemed like these movies were sort of 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.320 a not a trick, but just kind of like a 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.120 like stunt casting, like, oh, we're gonna make a movie 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.439 with black cowboys, how different? Instead of wealth, This is 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.839 just a movie like any other Western, because this is 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.440 how it was exactly. And I'm sure that they were 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:20.400 all just left out of the history books because of 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.520 some oversight. But I'm glad we're here correcting it today. 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.840 We're trying our best. There's also we would be very 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:30.640 terribly remiss if we didn't mention the most famous black 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:35.599 cowboy of all time, one Nate Love, also known as Deadwood. 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.640 Dick's not no, it's not I. I specifically saw in 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:41.760 a couple of places, and when I realified it, yeah, 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.720 his name was. He was born Nathaniel um and I 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.480 guess they just didn't feel like adding the e, which 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:49.840 is significant because he was taught to read and write. 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.880 Despite being born enslaved, his father taught him to read 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.240 and write, so he was educated enough that he actually 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.800 wrote his own autobiography in nineteen seven, teen oh seven. 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.240 I should have just kept at his nineteen seven. That 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:05.840 sounded kind of old timing, but Chuck, I think you 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.520 need to read everybody the title, and note that there 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.720 is not a single colon found in it. Yeah, it's 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.880 Life and Adventures of Nat Love, and it's spelled in 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:20.360 a t in his the autobiography title where it's Nate. Well, 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.199 I'm looking at the book cover. I know I'm telling 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.599 you it's pronounced Nate Okay, but there is no he. 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:28.880 I just want to point out to people Life and 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:33.680 Adventures of Blank Love, better known in the cattle country 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:37.400 as Deadwood Dick by himself colon A true history of 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.920 slavery days, life on the Great Cattle Ranges and on 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:43.520 the planes of the wild and Wooly West, based on 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:47.280 facts and personal experiences by the author. There is a colon. 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.400 I thought that was a semi colon. There's always a colon, 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:52.840 isn't there, And it seems to be. But he was, 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.280 like you were describing, like he would get and shootouts, 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:57.360 and he was kind of known as an abandon er 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.000 and outlaw in some circles. But from what I can tell, 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.040 he was just a legitimate, bona fide cowboy and he 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.520 led a cowboy life like any other cowboy would. Fantastic, 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.960 It really is fantastic, very very big self promoter like 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.680 so many of those cowboys back then. Yeah, for sure, 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:15.600 they say that they're not entirely certain where in fact. 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.040 Uh it departs from fiction in in his autobiography. But 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:22.640 it's apparently a heck of a read, So go check 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:26.000 it out. Um and I guess I said check it out, 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.680 which means that that short stuff is out. Huh, it's out. 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.320 Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radios 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.040 How Stuff Works. 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