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Short Stuff: Black Cowboys · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey you, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and there's Chuck who knows where Jerry is. But this
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is short stuff, so it doesn't matter because we can
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: handle it ourselves with a little assist by our friend
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Dave Kustan. Yeah, I don't think we We don't shout
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: out Dave enough, not nearly enough. As a matter of fact,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: let's just make this episode us talking about how great
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Davis right, the original Black Cowboy, that's right, um, but
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: totally wrong, but it was a it was a decent
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: attempt at a sea. Yeah, because we all know the
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: original black Cowboy was Sheriff Bart and Blazing Saddles. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I forgot about that movie. That's a that's is that
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a good one? I mean it's a classic. It couldn't
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: be made today, sure, but uh, you know, written by
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: mel Brooks and the great Richard Pryor and uh I
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: think there was one other co writer. But yeah, they
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: played that for comedy in that movie. But as it
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: turns out, there were a lot of black cowboys in
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the United States, and you just don't see a bunch
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of movies and TV shows where they're represented, shock, shock,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: But they were I mean, there are some statistics that
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: say or more of al all cowboys, Um, after the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Civil War in the wild West, were these black men
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: out there like doing cowboy stuff, working hard rope and cattle,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: doing all the things that you see in the movies. Yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: like that. The idea from what I can tell from
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: the research is that the popular conception of cowboys and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: cowboy life and what cowboys did is fairly accurate. But
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the the race of them is what was off that
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: that the just the fact that black people were not
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: at all represented among cowboys in the popularization of you know,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: cowboy life back east. Um, it's just that's the historical
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: misunderstanding and that um apparently, even before or the Civil War,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: most black cowboys, according to one historian of the American West, um,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: most of them, most of the cowboys were black, and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that it was a job that was um open to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: enslaved people basically, and that if you were white you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be known as a cowboy, that that
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: job was potentially beneath you or whatever. Even though it
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was all all about bronco busting and you know, hurting
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: cattle and lassoing and stuff like that, all the stuff
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: we think of with with cowboys today. Um, but that
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the that transition between it being from something that me
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: that was like beneath a white guy out west, to
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: something that was a coveted title among white guys was
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: when back East people started to hear about cowboys and
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: say that's that's cool, what a cool life. And then
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, white guys were like, oh, actually
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I'm a cowboy, now you can count me in. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I mean I think that that named uh, at least
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: according to this historian, is racist in nature because the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: white workers wanted to be called cow punches or cow hands,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and the black men were called cowboys. And like you said,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: once they once lor hit back East, they jumped on
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that cowboy train because I guess that word took and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it sounded cool. Yeah. The thing is, I went and
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: tried to corroborate that elsewhere, because it makes sense if
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you take it from that standpoint that oh is that
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: actually cowboy actually has um like a denigrading origin. But
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I did not see that anywhere else, and I couldn't
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: find the difference between a cow hand and a cowboy.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: They are completely interchangeable from what I can tell, definition wise,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but I don't know, maybe that just that etymology got
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: lost to history. You know. Well, Larry Kelly's runs the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Black Cowboy Museum in Texas and Rosenberg and uh, we
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: want to credit him with saying that since he's he's
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: where we got it. Yeah, here, Larry, here's the limb.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Let's go out on it. So the idea of UM
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: cowboys UM and cowboys in general really kind of came
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: out of this migration of UM Southerners, especially uh Southern whites,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: moving out west to Texas for the chance for cheap land,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: wide open spaces, the promise of a new chance for
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a fortune because the South had had really become industrialized
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: as far as a grarianism is concerned, and Texas had
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of opportunity, especially if you were willing to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: push UM Spanish settlers and indigenous people from Mexico off
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of their land. You could really make make a name
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: for yourself in Texas. And a lot of those UM
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: white settlers brought enslaved people with them, UM, and they
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: were the earliest black cowboys out there. Yeah, because what
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: happened was, you know, you're in Texas, you get roped
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: into the Confederacy and then these uh white people who
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: moved out west go back east to fight in the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Civil War. They left the people that they enslaved behind
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to you know, keep the ranch going basically, and those
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that was sort of the beginning of the black cowboy movement,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it really was. What's interesting is that it was triggered
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: by the Civil War, that that the Civil War created
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: that kind of um niche and require and need sorry
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that need for um cowboys of all stripes, but that
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: they that typically fell to African Americans, um, who who
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: were doing this work while the whites were off fighting
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the war. And then um, when the war was over,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: when the the white Confederates came back to Texas, they're like, hey,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you heard or not, but we're
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: free now. So you have to pay us for this work.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: And because a lot of herds had been broken up
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and lost, there was a lot of work to be
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: done getting these herds back in order and getting Texas
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: back up and running, um economy wise, especially with cattle herding. Yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: so maybe let's take a break and we'll talk about
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: some of the more famous of these black cowboys right
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: after this. All right, So, if you look at the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: history books and TV shows and movies. You hear a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: lot about while Bill Hillcock and Annie Oakley and all
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: these sort of legendary wild West figures, Uh, you don't
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: hear as much about the black cowboys who were also
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: legendary figures, just in the same way like they would.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: You know, some of them were bad guys who would
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: shoot up a saloon and have a gunfight in the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: middle of the street at high noon. Uh. Many of them,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: obviously were just regular cowboys who did hard work day
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and night, wrestling cattle. Some of them also chuck or
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: even lawman too. There was a guy named um Bass
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Reeves who was the first African American Marshal Us Marshall
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: west of the Mississippi. And he had a thirty two
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: year career and apparently was so um morally unimpeachable that
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: some people insist he was them the model for the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Lone Ranger. I know, and that crazy it is. And
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you I grew up on the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Lone Ranger of the two or three movie. Like the movie, okay, yeah, yeah,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it informed my childhood. I also watched the TV show Tune.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I had like a place that and everything, But I
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: was a big time into The Lone Ranger. I watched
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: that movie within the last couple of months. It is
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: one of the most boring movies I've ever seen in
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: my life. I was like, my parents must have been like,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: what is wrong with this kid? This movie is just
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: like watching paint dry. There's like five parts that are
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that are interesting and the rest is like just slowly
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: stringing together those parts. It's really weird. And the chemistry
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: is like baking soda and more baking soda. Like nobody
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: has any chemistry, and like it means that there's nothing happening,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: there's no reaction. I'll tell you what I love though
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: about that movie is that that color blue of his
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: uh outfit. It's the star of the movie. Basically the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: color of his hat too, because it was white, but
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: it wasn't stark white. It was sort of this creamy white. Yeah,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: he had a tinge of badness to him, maybe when needing,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: but I guess not. Another famous black coup away from
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: back in the day was a man named Bow's I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: card Um. He is in the on the Hall of
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Fame at the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: of Fame. God bless the people who founded that, I know.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And he was the right hand man to one Colonel
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Charles Goodnight. He was a big, super successful cattleman in Texas. Apparently,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: if you've ever read or seen Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: um sort of classic Western, the character of Joshua Deats
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was based on him. Played by it none other than
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Danny Glover, who was not too old for that? Dess
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: who is what? He was not too old for? That?
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: S getting too old for this? S oh man, that
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: was a great joke. I'm sorry I had to repeat it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: That's sight so um. There's another one named Bill Pickett
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: who was a very famous rodeo guy. He he was
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: one of the first African American rodeo uh man, I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: guess um. And he invented the the sport of steer wrestling,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: which is where you ride up alongside a steer and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: grab him by the horns and drag him to the ground.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: It's really awful, especially when you when you understand what
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: he came up with. It just called bulldogging, where it
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: was a technique that he would overwhelm the steer with
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: pain by biting its lip and he was inspired by
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: watching dogs heard cattle, so he tried it himself. He's like,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: this really works. But he was a genuine trailblazer in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the rodeo world. And uh despite the fact that he
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: was barred from competing in a lot of rodeos, even
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: though he was among the best that um, the rodeos
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: were segregated for a very long time, and if you
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: were an African American rodeo cowboy, you had to compete
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: either late at night or early in the morning before
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the actual rodeo started, or else you might have your
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: own rodeo altogether. I mentioned outlaws. There was a man
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: named uh isom or dart Uh. He was an enslaved
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: person who who went the other way, and he was
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a horse thief. Like so many other horse thieves. He
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: would steal horses and cattle in Mexico, drive him across
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that big old rio Grand River, sell him off in Texas,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and like so many outlaws he was he was shot
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: down by a hired gun in this case Tom Horn
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: And I'm thinking of movies. I think there have been
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a couple of movies where they did represent these black cowboys,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: but it always seemed like these movies were sort of
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: a not a trick, but just kind of like a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: like stunt casting, like, oh, we're gonna make a movie
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: with black cowboys, how different? Instead of wealth, This is
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: just a movie like any other Western, because this is
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: how it was exactly. And I'm sure that they were
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: all just left out of the history books because of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: some oversight. But I'm glad we're here correcting it today.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: We're trying our best. There's also we would be very
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: terribly remiss if we didn't mention the most famous black
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: cowboy of all time, one Nate Love, also known as Deadwood.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Dick's not no, it's not I. I specifically saw in
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a couple of places, and when I realified it, yeah,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: his name was. He was born Nathaniel um and I
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: guess they just didn't feel like adding the e, which
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: is significant because he was taught to read and write.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Despite being born enslaved, his father taught him to read
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and write, so he was educated enough that he actually
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: wrote his own autobiography in nineteen seven, teen oh seven.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I should have just kept at his nineteen seven. That
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: sounded kind of old timing, but Chuck, I think you
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: need to read everybody the title, and note that there
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: is not a single colon found in it. Yeah, it's
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Life and Adventures of Nat Love, and it's spelled in
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: a t in his the autobiography title where it's Nate. Well,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the book cover. I know I'm telling
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you it's pronounced Nate Okay, but there is no he.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I just want to point out to people Life and
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Adventures of Blank Love, better known in the cattle country
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: as Deadwood Dick by himself colon A true history of
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: slavery days, life on the Great Cattle Ranges and on
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the planes of the wild and Wooly West, based on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: facts and personal experiences by the author. There is a colon.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a semi colon. There's always a colon,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: isn't there, And it seems to be. But he was,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: like you were describing, like he would get and shootouts,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and he was kind of known as an abandon er
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and outlaw in some circles. But from what I can tell,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: he was just a legitimate, bona fide cowboy and he
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: led a cowboy life like any other cowboy would. Fantastic,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: It really is fantastic, very very big self promoter like
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: so many of those cowboys back then. Yeah, for sure,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: they say that they're not entirely certain where in fact.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Uh it departs from fiction in in his autobiography. But
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it's apparently a heck of a read, So go check
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: it out. Um and I guess I said check it out,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: which means that that short stuff is out. Huh, it's out.
• 13:33
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• 13:35
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