{"id":24936,"date":"2021-04-03T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=24936"},"modified":"2021-04-04T14:57:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T14:57:56","slug":"for-black-cowboys-from-inner-city-philly-to-small-town-texas-horses-and-riding-are-a-way-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/for-black-cowboys-from-inner-city-philly-to-small-town-texas-horses-and-riding-are-a-way-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"For Black cowboys \u2013 from inner-city Philly to small-town Texas \u2013 horses and riding are a way of life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nick Lehr<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photographer Ron Tarver<\/a> grew up in Fort Gibson, a small town in Oklahoma where horses, cattle and Wrangler jeans were embedded into the rhythms of everyday life. His grandfather was a cowboy admired for his roping abilities, and many of his family members owned ranches in the area.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he wanted, he told me, \u201cto get away from horses,\u201d and in 1983, he landed a job as a staff photojournalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he found himself drawn to a range of subjects, from storefront churches<\/a> to star jump-ropers<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in the early 1990s, he photographed North Philadelphia\u2019s drug culture<\/a>, spending periods of time living in heroin dens and crack houses. Burned out from the despairing subject matter, he decided that for his next undertaking, he wanted to do something that would lift his spirits.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes he\u2019d be walking around in the park, and he\u2019d see a guy come around the corner wearing a big cowboy hat, riding a horse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was just so unexpected,\u201d he recalled. In Oklahoma \u2013 sure, whatever. But in the city?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day, he approached one of the men and asked him if he could do a story on them.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome up to the stables,\u201d the man said, and with that invitation, Tarver gained access to Philadelphia\u2019s urban riding clubs, one of which is featured in Netflix\u2019s new film, \u201cConcrete Cowboy<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Tarver, who is now a professor at Swarthmore College, explains how his photographs of Philadelphia\u2019s urban riding clubs ended up becoming a broader project on the Black cowboy experience in America.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

How did these riding clubs operate?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, there are a lot of groups. The Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club has sort of become the one that everybody knows, because it\u2019s the one that was featured in [G. Neri\u2019s young adult novel] \u201cGhetto Cowboy<\/a>,\u201d and now the movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the one that I spent most my time with was this big one in Brewerytown, the Western Wranglers. They occupied an abandoned building called the White House that had been turned into the stables. It was big, with something like 15 or 20 bays of horses, and it was an operation. They would hold these impromptu parades through the city. Eventually the White House got turned into condos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Concrete Canyon.\u2019 Ron Tarver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A guy called Bumpsey \u2013 George Bullock was his real name \u2013 owned the White House with his sister. He seemed to sort of organize everything. He was so fit, and he looked like a cowboy, with the big bar mustache. Just an incredibly attractive guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got a call from him last fall, completely out of the blue. I hadn\u2019t talked to him in around 25 years. About a month later, he died of COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you know the origins of the clubs?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of [original club members] had grown up in the South and came up to Philadelphia, where there was already an infrastructure [for horses] in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philadelphia used to have a lot of stables because there were food carts, and people would put the fruit and vegetables on the horse-drawn carts and then go through the street to sell their wares. That sort of tradition died out, but the stables were still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who joined the clubs, it was their life. Older members passed knowledge down to younger ones. I guess you could equate it to skateboarding. I mean, you look at skateboarding \u2013 there are older people that skateboard, there are young people that skateboard. It\u2019s a lifestyle and a community, and it\u2019s what they did, day in and day out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the photos were published, how did readers react?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got a ton of mail. It was amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some wrote, \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as Black cowboys.\u201d They actually said that. I\u2019m like, \u201cThese pictures prove that! I\u2019m not making this up!\u201d They were just amazed that Black people could be cowboys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Legends.\u2019 Ron Tarver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And of course many were just happy to see the story because it kind of opened their eyes. Then we had a lot of mail from Black folks that read, \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve known this all along. I\u2019m just glad somebody is bringing it to the forefront.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to my editor and said, \u201cLook, we got so much good mail. I know that there are other stories out there across the country that we could do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They went along with it. So I went out and found stories in Texas and Illinois and California. National Geographic saw the stories and offered me a development grant to do it for them. I took a leave from the paper and went out and shot even more photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where did those stories take you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a big rodeo that happened in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. I went out there and photographed that. I found a Black couple who was actually getting married Western-style in Texas \u2013 instead of having the limo, they had a stagecoach. One woman came with her pet pig, and the pig had pink toenails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Woman and Pig.\u2019 Ron Tarver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I spent time in a little town, just south of Brownsville, Texas, out in East Texas. Every Sunday, these folks got together and they just had these impromptu rodeos: They threw money in the hat, and they did the bull riding, the calf roping, all that stuff. Then on Saturday they had these crazy parties until four o’clock in the morning near the rodeo arenas on their ranches. Just amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the George Floyd protests last summer, some of the protesters got a lot of attention for appearing on horseback in places like Los Angeles and New York<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, and that\u2019s great. But you know, I\u2019m most interested in the communities where that lifestyle is just part of who you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Dad and Son.\u2019 Ron Tarver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After [rapper] Lil Nas X became popular [in 2019], everybody got really interested in Black cowboys<\/a>. The Studio Museum in Harlem had an exhibition, and they invited me and some other folks who had made photos of cowboys. I went up and I didn\u2019t have a cowboy hat or anything. I didn\u2019t want to even pretend to be a cowboy, you know? But I went up there and there was one guy and he was dressed in a fancy Western getup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there are always going to be people that just like to wear the stuff, and that\u2019s different from the people that actually live it \u2013 the people in these little places I found down in Texas and California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a cousin, Donnie \u2013 he lives in Alabama now \u2013 and after Black cowboys started getting really popular, I asked him if he considered himself a cowboy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said, \u201cI wore the Wranglers. I wore the hat, had the cowboy boots. I would get up and feed the horses and cattle and all that. But I don\u2019t consider myself a cowboy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People like Donnie aren\u2019t doing it for show. I\u2019m not putting the people down that ride the horses in protests. I think that\u2019s great. But I\u2019m really interested in the small communities out there of Black people, where it\u2019s just the way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Petting.\u2019 Ron Tarver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nick Lehr<\/a>, Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Lehr, The Conversation Photographer Ron Tarver grew up in Fort Gibson, a small town in Oklahoma where horses, cattle and Wrangler jeans were embedded into the rhythms of everyday life. His grandfather was a cowboy admired for his roping abilities, and many of his family members owned ranches in the area. But he wanted, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":24937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[501,3081,6362,4222,484,5130,2327],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24942,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24936\/revisions\/24942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}