Black Cowboys: Black Cowboys in Pop Culture

Anyone confused about Beyoncé's newest foray into the country genre has only to visit her home state of Texas to learn about Black Cowboy culture.

African American artists are taking wild west style from the fringes to the cultural mainstream

Danielle Kurtzleben speaks with MEL Magazine's Zaron Burnett about the history of Black cowboys and why their stories are just now beginning to be told in popular culture.

Cowboys weren't all just gruff, white dudes.

Black westerns, and westerns featuring Black actors in general, are an important part of American cinema. They challenge the traditional, often white-washed view of the Wild West, highlighting the underrepresented role Black cowboys played in taming the American frontier. Black actors have portrayed these heroes and complex characters, some based on real-life individuals, for decades, bringing imagery rarely seen in the American landscape back to the forefront. These films allow Black audiences to see themselves reflected in a genre where we have been erased, living Western lives that haven't been praised in our historic American fabric. Here, we celebrate films that have boldly stepped beyond the bonds of Hollywood to tell our cowboy and Western stories as they deserve to be told.

Historians estimate that one in four cowboys was African American, though you’d never guess by looking at westerns. Are they finally about to get the Hollywood treatment?