The Black cowboys of the Mississippi Delta - BBC REEL

throughout American history we haven't told the true story of diversity and cowboy culture in the u.s. through a little bit of research I found that dating back to before the Civil War many of the Cowboys were black some say more than a quarter of the Cowboys were black and so this is not a history that's that's shared equally and so I felt like despite being located in rural Mississippi it was a good place to share that story particularly because it's not a place where people think about cowboy history I saw a small group of african-american cowboys and cowgirls at the back of our annual Christmas parade in Cleveland Mississippi where my wife and I live and so I literally jumped into the parade and asked the riders if I could just come and see where they keep their horses what they do [Music] we don't have working cowboys and cowgirls like you have in Texas Oklahoma or even Louisiana other states in the south almost none of them actually use horses to herd cattle like a traditional cowboy would so the Delta Hill riders and the local riding population in Mississippi is much more about recreation and social identity identifying with that cowboy culture wearing the hats and the boots but they're all doing different things throughout the day throughout the week that the common denominator is their love for the horses and the love for the classic American cowboy it's a part of their life and they love it there's there's nothing you can do to take it out of them there's a group of few guys who ride and everyday we'll just kind of go either out in the countryside or sometimes into the city and so one of the pictures that has gained a lot of attention is when they took their horses to McDonald's and there was some music on and they were dancing atop their horses and prior to the photo they went through the drive-thru with their horses so it was like this really special interaction of culture and the classic Americana of McDonald's in the background and I think the misconception that people have in general of cowboy culture in the u.s. is that that is predominantly a white thing and if you look at Hollywood movies classic characters have been John Wayne and this heroic stoic white man but in reality the history is much more diverse and goes back I also realized that I wanted to share the stories of of the people off their horses so the less obvious photos and so some of my favorite moments are involving time spent in their homes and including one of the pictures that I really loved is a little newborn baby that was just a few days home for the first time out of the hospital I think again getting it beyond those obvious moments you get those tender intimate moments with the people who are in your stories and as a photojournalist you don't always get the opportunity to do that when you're on assignment because you have a limited amount of time I love this photo as well of the Smith family and the oldest the mom of the family is Jordan Smith she's 91 years old and to me the Smith family has been a very special part of the project because through the oral history accounts that I've gathered throughout the scope of the project I found that there were one of the first families to be holding hoarse events and trail rides and horse shows on their property and so really in some ways they're like the nucleus of this local culture they've been proudly riding horses for generations and even people who live in Mississippi don't necessarily know that so they're very much a subculture and overlooked a group of people who are really proud of their background and I think that symbolic of the African American cowboy and cowgirl experience across the nation and I think in general cowboy culture has always been a male-dominated in reality there's always been females involved as well and so in the Delta we do have some cowgirls but what's funny is that the women are actually respected for being better writers they take better care of their horses they train them more carefully they're a little bit more technically savvy and so a lot of the times you'll hear the guys joking like I can't write as well as Peggy or I can't write as well as Pam because they've actually just taken more care to to perfect the skills a little bit better and I think you'll see in some of the pictures as well that some of the younger girls are learning to ride from either their aunt or their grandmother and so it's really special that they're passing it down to the girls as well I want people to care about rural America and to care about the diversity of cowboy and cowgirl culture I think more symbolically it's it's thinking about how history books in general have had been written including people of all different backgrounds in the the fabric of the history of the US and in many cases we haven't done justice to that history and on a small scale I hope that my project can shine a little bit of light on that [Music]

Channel: BBC Reel

Views: 19,427

Rating: 4.8458052 out of 5

Keywords: bbc, bbcreel, bbcnews, factual, features

Id: A-tTEVMFjL8

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019