This New Book Celebrates Black Rodeo Culture in the US: History, Resilience, and Contemporary Revival

Reclaiming the Arena: Why This Book Matters Now

In a landscape where mainstream rodeo narratives have long centered white cowboys and ranchers, Black Rodeo: Legacy, Resistance, and Celebration (University of Texas Press, 2024) arrives as both corrective scholarship and vibrant cultural affirmation. Authored by Dr. Tanisha L. Jackson, a historian and former rodeo competitor from Fort Worth, Texas, the 328-page volume synthesizes decades of fieldwork, 72 original interviews, and newly digitized records from the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth. It chronicles how Black cowboys—many descendants of enslaved cattle hands, post-Reconstruction landowners, and Buffalo Soldiers—built parallel rodeo institutions when barred from mainstream associations. The book documents over 120 years of continuous practice, with data showing that Black-organized rodeos now generate $18.6 million annually across 14 states and support more than 1,200 full-time jobs in rural communities from Mississippi to California.

The Roots: From Enslavement to Independence

Contrary to popular myth, Black participation in cattle culture predates the American West’s romanticized frontier era. Enslaved Africans brought deep knowledge of livestock management from West African pastoral traditions—including herding techniques, horsemanship, and veterinary practices using native plants like sassafras and black-eyed Susan. After emancipation, an estimated 5,000–7,000 Black cowboys worked on Texas ranches between 1865 and 1900, representing roughly 25% of all cowhands in the state during that period, according to the Texas State Historical Association. Many settled in all-Black towns like Nicodemus, Kansas (founded 1877), and Boley, Oklahoma (1898), where they established cattle cooperatives and hosted informal rodeos as early as 1890.

Breaking Barriers in the Early Circuit

Despite their expertise, Black riders were excluded from the 1922 founding of the Rodeo Association of America (now PRCA) and later denied membership until 1971—over six decades after the organization’s inception. In response, Black cowboys formed their own circuits. The first documented organized Black rodeo occurred in 1942 at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo grounds, though it was held separately and without official sanction. By 1954, the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show (now known as the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo) permitted limited Black participation only in ‘Negro Day’—a segregated event held on January 16 each year until 1968.

Buffalo Soldiers and Equestrian Expertise

The U.S. Army’s 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments—the famed Buffalo Soldiers—played a critical role in shaping Black rodeo foundations. Between 1866 and 1890, these regiments patrolled over 2 million acres of the Southwest, managing remount stations, breaking wild mustangs, and developing standardized horsemanship drills still used today. Sergeant Elijah W. Smith, a veteran of the 10th Cavalry stationed at Fort Concho, Texas, taught bucking horse training methods to local Black ranchers in the 1880s—techniques later codified into the ‘Concho Method,’ which emphasized balance, timing, and nonviolent control. These skills became foundational to Black rodeo disciplines like bulldogging and team roping.

The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo: A Living Institution

No single entity embodies the endurance and innovation of Black rodeo culture more than the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR). Founded in 1984 by Jackie Robinson (no relation to the baseball legend) and Lu Vickers in Austin, Texas, BPIR honors the legacy of Bill Pickett—the Oklahoma-born Black cowboy who invented bulldogging (steer wrestling) in 1900 and starred in over 20 silent Western films. Today, BPIR is the largest touring Black rodeo in the United States, hosting 12 annual events across cities including Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Its 2023 season drew 142,000 attendees—up 19% from 2022—and featured 317 competitors, 63% of whom were under age 30, signaling robust intergenerational continuity.

Competition Structure and Cultural Significance

BPIR maintains traditional rodeo events—including bareback riding, saddle bronc, bull riding, barrel racing, and steer wrestling—but adds culturally resonant categories such as the ‘Soul Saddle’ competition (judged on style, rhythm, and musicality while riding), the ‘Juneteenth Jamboree’ youth rodeo series, and the ‘Cowboy Poet Showcase,’ which features spoken word performances rooted in Black vernacular traditions. Prize money totals $240,000 per season, distributed across 14 competitive divisions. Notably, 78% of prize funds are awarded in cash rather than sponsor-provided goods—a deliberate strategy to strengthen financial autonomy in communities historically underserved by banking infrastructure.

Economic Impact and Community Infrastructure

BPIR’s economic footprint extends far beyond gate receipts. Each host city partners with local Black-owned businesses for concessions, vendor booths, and transportation logistics. In 2023, BPIR contracted with 89 certified minority-owned enterprises, including Texas-based Cowboy Coffee Co., Georgia’s Southern Sage Catering, and California’s Horizon Saddlery. According to a 2024 economic impact study commissioned by the National Rodeo Council, BPIR events generated $9.2 million in local tax revenue and supported 417 seasonal jobs per host city—an average increase of 11.3% in small business sales within a 3-mile radius during event weeks.

Modern Innovations: Technology, Education, and Youth Engagement

Today’s Black rodeo ecosystem blends heritage with innovation. The Black Cowboy Archives Project, launched in 2020 by Prairie View A&M University, has digitized over 4,200 photographs, 117 hours of oral histories, and 213 ledgers documenting cattle ownership from 1890–1955. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Rodeo Roots Academy operates year-round training facilities in five states, offering certified instruction in horsemanship, veterinary science, and rodeo entrepreneurship. Their curriculum meets Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards and is adopted by 23 public school districts, reaching over 4,800 students annually.

From Ranch to Classroom: Curriculum Integration

Rodeo Roots Academy’s ‘Heritage Horsemanship’ course includes modules on soil health management (using USDA-NRCS soil testing protocols), GPS-assisted pasture mapping (via Garmin GPSMAP 66i devices), and sustainable leathercraft using vegetable-tanned hides from Missouri-based Wickett & Craig. Students complete capstone projects such as designing drought-resilient grazing plans or building digital archives of family rodeo histories. In 2023, 86% of participating seniors enrolled in postsecondary agriculture or veterinary programs—compared to a national average of 42% for rural Black students.

Women in the Saddle: Expanding Representation

While early Black rodeos were male-dominated due to segregation-era labor constraints, women have driven recent growth. The National Association of Black Rodeo Professionals (NABRP) reports that female competitors now constitute 44% of registered participants—a 22-point increase since 2010. Pioneers like Charlene Hines of Meridian, Mississippi, who won the NABRP Barrel Racing Championship seven times between 1998 and 2010, paved the way for current stars such as 21-year-old Zuri Carter of Compton, California—the youngest-ever winner of the BPIR All-Around Cowgirl title in 2023. Carter trains on a 12-acre facility equipped with a 100-foot-by-200-foot indoor arena built using USDA Rural Development grants totaling $147,000.

Geographic Footprint: Beyond the Traditional West

Black rodeo culture thrives not only in historic cattle states but also in unexpected regions. Florida hosts the annual Gator Rodeo Classic in Ocala—established in 1995 and drawing 18,000 attendees—where competitors navigate palmetto-lined arenas and compete in ‘Swamp Bucking,’ a locally adapted roughstock event using Florida Cracker horses. In Michigan, the Detroit Black Rodeo Coalition organizes urban clinics inside the Ford Field parking lot each August, teaching youth about equine anatomy using 3D-printed horse skeletons produced by Detroit-based MakerLab Detroit. Meanwhile, Oregon’s Pacific Northwest Black Rodeo Association holds its annual event at the Yamhill County Fairgrounds in McMinnville, where participants adapt to Pacific Northwest weather patterns using waterproof tack from Tough-1 WeatherTec line.

Challenges and Resilience Strategies

Despite momentum, structural barriers persist. Land access remains acute: only 0.52% of U.S. farmland—approximately 2.8 million acres—is owned by Black operators, down from 16 million acres in 1910, per USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture data. Additionally, insurance costs for rodeo livestock have surged 210% since 2018, with premiums averaging $2,840 annually per head for bucking bulls—a prohibitive expense for independent stock contractors. To counter this, 14 Black rodeo associations formed the National Black Stock Contractors Cooperative in 2021, pooling risk and negotiating group rates with insurers like Nationwide and Farm Bureau Financial Services.

Policy Advocacy and Federal Recognition

Advocacy efforts have yielded tangible results. In 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior formally recognized the ‘Black Cowboy Trail’—a 2,140-mile interpretive route spanning 11 states from Alabama to Wyoming—as part of the National Historic Trails System. The designation unlocks eligibility for $1.2 million in annual federal preservation grants administered through the Historic Preservation Fund. Simultaneously, the 2024 Farm Bill included Section 307(b), allocating $50 million specifically for ‘Historically Underrepresented Livestock Operators,’ with 40% earmarked for Black rodeo-related land acquisition and infrastructure development.

Preservation Through Storytelling

Oral history remains central to cultural transmission. Dr. Jackson’s book includes transcripts from interviews with 94-year-old Leroy ‘Buck’ Johnson of Terrell, Texas—who competed in the first BPIR event in 1984—and 16-year-old Maya Thompson of Oakland, California, who won the 2023 Youth Steer Wrestling title using a custom-designed helmet from ProEquine Safety Gear (model PE-SG-7X, certified to ASTM F1163-15 standards). Their juxtaposed voices illustrate continuity—not nostalgia. As Thompson states plainly in Chapter 9: ‘I’m not keeping a tradition alive. I’m adding to it. Every time I rope, I’m writing a sentence in a story that started before my great-granddaddy was born.’

A Data Snapshot: Black Rodeo Today

Quantitative metrics reveal both scale and strategic growth. The following table summarizes key indicators collected by the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum’s 2023 Rodeo Demographics Survey, based on responses from 41 officially sanctioned Black rodeo associations:

Looking Ahead: Sustainability and Expansion

The future of Black rodeo hinges on three pillars: land sovereignty, technological integration, and narrative sovereignty. The Black Land Conservancy, launched in 2022 with $3.2 million in seed funding from the Kresge Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation, has already secured conservation easements on 1,840 acres across Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee—land intended for permanent use as training grounds, agroforestry demonstration sites, and intertribal rodeo collaboration spaces. Technologically, the RodeoConnect App—developed by Atlanta-based CodeHorse Labs—now serves 12,400 users, offering real-time livestock health monitoring via Bluetooth-enabled halters, AI-powered judging analytics, and bilingual (English/Spanish) safety protocol alerts.

Most critically, narrative sovereignty means controlling representation. Dr. Jackson’s book deliberately avoids framing Black rodeo as ‘folkloric’ or ‘marginal.’ Instead, it positions these traditions as central to American agricultural and sporting history. For example, the book details how Bill Pickett’s bulldogging technique directly influenced the PRCA’s official rules for steer wrestling—adopted in 1936—and how Black rodeo judges developed standardized scoring rubrics for bareback riding two decades before the PRCA formalized its system. These contributions aren’t footnotes—they’re foundational.

As Dr. Jackson writes in her introduction: ‘This is not a story of inclusion. It is a story of insistence—insistence on presence, on precision, on property, on power. Black cowboys didn’t wait for a seat at the table. They built their own arenas, trained their own stock, wrote their own rulebooks, and paid their own judges. What you hold in your hands is not recovery—it is revelation.’

The book includes a practical resource appendix listing all 41 active Black rodeo associations—including contact information, annual event dates, and scholarship opportunities. It also features QR codes linking to audio clips of historic rodeo announcers like ‘Big Voice’ Earl Davis of Shreveport and contemporary commentators like Kenya Jones of the BPIR broadcast team. These multimedia extensions ensure accessibility for readers across generations and learning preferences.

One particularly impactful section profiles the East Texas Rodeo Collective, a cooperative founded in 2019 by seven families in Shelby County. Using USDA Value-Added Producer Grants, they constructed a 40-stall barn, solar-powered arena lighting system (rated at 4,200 lumens per fixture), and a mobile veterinary clinic staffed by graduates of Tuskegee University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Their model demonstrates how rodeo infrastructure can serve dual purposes: as a competitive venue and as a community health and food security hub—hosting vaccination drives, farmer’s markets, and youth STEM camps throughout the year.

Another standout initiative is the Indigenous-Black Rodeo Alliance, formed in 2021 between the Navajo Nation Rodeo Association and the Mississippi Delta Black Rodeo Council. Joint events now feature combined competitions like ‘Two-Spirit Team Roping’ and ‘Treaty Land Relay Races,’ honoring shared stewardship ethics and resistance to displacement. In 2023, their collaborative ‘Homeland Horsemanship Symposium’ attracted 327 participants from 29 tribal nations and 22 Black rodeo associations—underscoring that resilience multiplies when rooted in solidarity rather than isolation.

The book closes not with retrospection but with forward-facing action items. It outlines a five-year ‘Arena Equity Plan’ co-developed by 17 Black rodeo leaders, calling for: (1) expansion of USDA’s Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers program to include rodeo stock contractors; (2) mandatory inclusion of Black rodeo history in state social studies curricula; (3) creation of a National Black Rodeo Hall of Fame housed in Fort Worth; (4) federal tax incentives for corporations sponsoring Black rodeo youth scholarships; and (5) establishment of a USDA Office of Equine Equity, modeled after the existing Office of Tribal Relations.

Ultimately, Black Rodeo: Legacy, Resistance, and Celebration refuses to treat culture as static artifact. It treats it as living infrastructure—rigorous, adaptive, economically vital, and deeply joyful. Whether tracking the lineage of a bucking horse named ‘Juneteenth Jubilee’—whose bloodline traces to a 1947 mare purchased for $125 in Quitman, Mississippi—or analyzing the 3.2% annual growth rate in Black-owned tack shops since 2015 (per the National Retail Federation’s 2024 Minority Business Report), the book insists on measurement, accountability, and celebration—all at once. That balance, perhaps, is its most radical contribution.

• Key publishers cited in the book: University of Texas Press, University Press of Mississippi, and Arcadia Publishing
• Major funders of research: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($420,000), Ford Foundation ($285,000), and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($192,000)
• Archival repositories referenced: Library of Congress American Folklife Center, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Texas Archive of the Moving Image

1. Dr. Jackson conducted fieldwork at 37 rodeo events across 14 states between 2018 and 2023
2. The book contains 126 archival photographs, 41 original maps, and 19 data visualizations
3. It features glossaries of Black rodeo terminology—including ‘cowboy lingo’ (e.g., ‘dust-up’ = heated but respectful debate), ‘arena etiquette,’ and ‘stock handling protocols’
4. All interview transcripts were verified by participants prior to publication using a double-blind review process
5. The volume adheres to the American Historical Association’s 2022 Guidelines for Ethical Oral History Practice