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Terra.Anatolia
  • 13 hours ago
Transcript
00:00If there were no black cowboys, then America would not exist.
00:21What, you want proof?
00:30The black cowboy was intentionally removed from the story so that we can create the myth
00:35of the American white cowboy.
00:37As soon as cowboy became a cool thing was exactly when they took that from us.
00:44You know, white people really got some nerves.
00:48When you say cowboy, I don't think a long ranger.
00:52I want to do this shit, baby.
00:54I have no love for John Wayne whatsoever.
00:56Fuck John Wayne.
00:58Land is everything.
01:02Land is freedom.
01:03Land is power.
01:04It was just stolen.
01:05That's a heist.
01:10Our history has been erased.
01:13When I came up, there was a whole lot of black jockeys.
01:15What you don't want to be known, you erase it.
01:19All this right here, y'all gonna have to rewrite that, rework that.
01:22Country music is black music.
01:24Has it been stolen?
01:25Has it been heisted?
01:27Is there anything black people have made that hasn't been heisted?
01:30I got this shit.
01:31You rewrote the history.
01:32We are just going back and straightening the story out.
01:35To reclaim what was stolen from us, we have to tell everyone.
01:39You know, I was really fascinated with this question of what happened to the black cowboy.
01:57The truth is, the black cowboy was erased.
02:09The black cowboy was intentionally removed from the story.
02:15Because it was uncomfortable, it was inconvenient, and it was not the story that they wanted to tell.
02:21The biggest myth about the American cowboy is that they're white.
02:24The term cowboy has some very, like, insidious anti-black roots.
02:32Historically, the term was only used to refer to black ranch hands.
02:36Cow, boy, a derogatory term designed to differentiate the enslaved black people from the white ones that also tended to and herded the cows.
02:46The white folks referred to as cowhands, while the highly skilled black horsemen were only afforded the discourtesy of being called boy.
02:53The proper term for the white cowhand was cowhand.
02:57The proper term for the black cowhand was cowboy.
03:00Because boy obviously meant lesser.
03:02Yep, because if it wasn't us, they would have said cowmen.
03:05That's how racist they are.
03:07They was niggas, so they...
03:08Hey, boy!
03:09Hey, boy!
03:10Boy, get off that cow!
03:12The original cowboy is black.
03:15The boy wants to relegate you to a lower level, to degrade you.
03:19Do you want to know just how black cowboyism is?
03:25Stock grazers from current-day Senegal were brought to the colonies specifically because of their horse skills.
03:34Black people's relationship to horses predates colonialism and slavery.
03:39There were black tribes on the African continent who were already going into war on horseback.
03:45So we're very, very skilled at what it means to work with animals.
03:49All of this was something that black people took great pride in long before they were forced to do it on an American's plantation.
03:57In South Carolina, they had cattle hunters.
04:00Men who they bought specifically from the plains of Africa, who were skilled horsemen.
04:05These human traffickers would advertise.
04:07And we see in the advertisement, they didn't call them cattle hunters.
04:11They called them cowboys.
04:16The black cowboy was always normal to me.
04:18I actually had culture shock when I saw white cowboys on TV the first time.
04:22Come on, baby.
04:23Come on.
04:25Hey.
04:26Come on, baby.
04:27Come on.
04:28I'm out of here.
04:29Come on, baby.
04:30Come on.
04:33Why?
04:34Okay, I'm riding in the juli with my boots and my spurs.
04:39I've been hunting out of winter, and I've got some new furs.
04:43Got a brand new girl without a care and a worm.
04:46I'm a brand new cowboy.
04:49Any man on a horse is a powerful thing, but a black man on a horse in particular is an
04:57act of defiance, it's power, it's control.
05:03You know, I think when white America sees a black man or a black person in general in
05:07any position of power, specifically the elevated position on a horse, it's like literally looking
05:13down on whoever they're talking to, it signals a reversal of hierarchy.
05:30The white person in that situation has to imagine what a black person would do if they
05:35were in power.
05:41That is something that terrifies white America, because when they were in the same position,
05:47they know what they did.
05:48We're in Richland Farms, Compton, California.
05:51You feel me?
05:52You got Compton on this side, California on this side.
05:54You feel me?
05:55Born and raised.
05:56Proud.
05:57Compton Cowboys is your typical horse club, equestrian club, the same way you might see a biker club
06:08or a car club.
06:09We are a horse club, a cowboy club.
06:11That's my baby.
06:15When the rain comes, we'll still ride home.
06:22It really kind of stemmed from growing up on a ranch with my auntie having an organization
06:29where she used horses to keep kids out of trouble off the streets.
06:32This is our life source right here.
06:34This is the reason why we get up every day.
06:36It's what keeps us motivated, keep us inspired.
06:39We just grew up together, riding horses, living a whole robust life just like cowboy activities.
06:45And so now that we're older, we just wanted to pay it forward by putting ourselves together,
06:49putting the brand on us, and getting out there in the world.
06:51Representation is important because a lot of these black children coming up, if they don't
06:58see it around them and they don't see it represented on TV, they might not know that it's possible
07:03for them to be a part of it.
07:05The Compton Cowboys were saying how if they can get the word out and teach these kids or
07:10let them know how to get access to this type of stuff, then it would change everything.
07:14I want to go to L.A. to meet the Compton Cowboys.
07:17They probably got something they could teach me and it'd just be nice to sit back and watch
07:23someone who looks like me, you know, do what I love to do.
07:26We'll still ride home.
07:31Erasure is particularly horrifying because it's a lie that affects the future and the present.
07:39From the perspective of a kid who grew up in New York City who didn't know any real cowboys,
07:45all I had was what I saw in movies.
07:48Hello, folks.
07:50I'm John Wayne.
07:52We'll be hearing a lot about our early history and making some discoveries.
07:57Try this one, partner.
07:59Looks like real.
08:02Sounds like real.
08:03The treasure of the American cowboy is in the image.
08:08It is something that has commodified the world over.
08:11All of American culture and all of these corporate empires have been built upon.
08:18From the music industry to the movie industry to the iconography of America.
08:25I need the help of every friend of the Lone Ranger.
08:28All of it relates to the black cowboy because that is the origin story of all of that.
08:35But black people have been excluded from using and being part of that treasure.
08:42Erasure ain't shit but a heist.
08:44The history wasn't vaporized into thin air.
08:48It was just stolen.
08:50Everything that was stolen that people thought they had no access to is actually theirs and they actually created it.
08:58What's gonna happen when all of those people find out that you've been lying to them for hundreds of years?
09:18Man, when I was growing up, you see somebody walk in the saloon, order a drink, never looked like me.
09:24Bartender didn't look like me.
09:26Nobody else drinking in the saloon looked like me, shit.
09:29If I was lucky, maybe the piano player, but that wasn't even a given.
09:39Basically, most of the TV shows back in the day were westerns.
09:42Gunsmoke.
09:43I'm that old, like I used to see a lot of Gunsmoke.
09:45I remember Maverick.
09:47Here comes J.R. Ewing and the television show Dallas, but never saw me.
09:52Never saw me.
09:53Never saw me.
09:57When I got to see somebody black on TV, I can remember it very clearly.
10:02It was Julia.
10:03It was Diane Carroll.
10:05And I cannot tell you how proud I was to watch that, but I didn't see black cowboys.
10:11That's a part of the erasure.
10:18We just thought that black cowboys did not exist.
10:22I didn't know the history.
10:24I assumed it was Wild Bill Hickok and Marshall Dillon.
10:28You know, that's what came on our TV, and that's who we rooted for.
10:31Yeah.
10:32You're the Lone Ranger, and I would no silver anywhere.
10:38The real Lone Ranger, you know, the romanticized version of it is a white man behind the mask, but the actual real Lone Ranger was a black man.
10:45I, Bass Reeves, would solemnly swear that I would faithfully execute all lawful precepts directed to the marshal of the United States.
10:55Yeah, Bass Reeves, baby, the real, the real Lone Ranger.
10:58Do your research.
10:59Read the book.
11:00Come on, kid.
11:01The Lone Ranger?
11:02The Lone Ranger?
11:03Hogwash.
11:04Just another early 20th century whitewashing of black stories because Hollywood couldn't seem to come up with anything compelling on their own.
11:11Bass Reeves was the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River.
11:15And legend has it, he arrested more than 3,000 people and killed 14 outlaws all without sustaining a single gunwool.
11:21That's a bad man.
11:24You can imagine how hard it must have been being a black cowboy trying to tell white boys what they were supposed to do back then.
11:30Salute, Bass, for representing followers.
11:33Because of his exploits, because of his bravery, he became a national hero.
11:39But because he was black, they changed his name and changed his story to the Lone Ranger.
11:49This lawman of the West, it was absolutely about Bass Reeves.
11:54But of course, the times that this came along, they weren't going to let a black man take that character.
12:01Why wouldn't they steal that?
12:02It's some cool shit.
12:03They didn't want to see black people doing it.
12:05Let's make it a white man.
12:06He got a mask too.
12:07Like, you know, they just tried to make it fly.
12:09But it's not hard to believe that that story was stolen.
12:13And, you know, it probably blew a lot of people's minds, even black people, because they grew up probably loving that show.
12:20I'm not going to do any killing.
12:22You will not defend yourself?
12:24Oh, I'll shoot if I have to.
12:26But I'll shoot the wound, not the kill.
12:29All right, now, y'all gonna stop playing with my man Bass Reeves.
12:32I'm sick of it.
12:33But the usurping of his story comes at no surprise given the time period.
12:37The height of Western films in the 1930s to 60s took place during primetime Jim Crow.
12:41So, with the romanticization of Western films, so too came the erasure of black faces.
12:46Out of the past, retreat to Hollywood.
12:48It's all this reflection of white male fragility and a need to be the coolest dude in the room.
13:00You must be the hero.
13:03I just remember that.
13:04A lethal weapon.
13:05Racist-ass Mellie Gibson.
13:07Hey, look!
13:08Got to be like, you know, unhinged and cool and be like a perfect crack shot.
13:15And Danny Glover had to be on the side.
13:17Talking about rigs, rigs.
13:18There's a bomb on the toilet.
13:20There's a bomb on the toilet.
13:23You're gonna die on the toilet, aren't you?
13:25Guys like you don't die on toilets.
13:27You have one of the greatest actors of all time.
13:30And Danny-ass Glover, and he's not allowed to save the day?
13:35Come on.
13:36One, two, three!
13:43As soon as cowboy became a cool thing was exactly when they took that from us.
13:49Once upon a time when a kid dressed up to play cowboy, he was just any cowboy.
13:54Today, more often than not, he's the Lone Ranger.
13:58The entire trope of the cowboy has at this point become so embedded with whiteness and white masculinity that there's no space for a black man here.
14:08They're not even a real one.
14:17Fuck Westerns.
14:21The impact of the lack of representation in film is something you're almost not aware of.
14:29It's the world you grow up in.
14:31It's the ecosystem.
14:37Edvard Muybridge was a photographer who devised a method of placing a camera across a path.
14:43And then he asked a jockey to run along that path, flipping each of the shutters as he passed.
14:52Mm-hmm, yes.
14:53That was the first moving image in the United States.
14:56And it featured an African-American rider.
15:02This is the first movie star, and we don't know who he is.
15:06And that, to me, was the horror story at the center of NOPE.
15:12Did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion picture was a two-second clip of a black man on a horse?
15:19No.
15:22Nope.
15:24Nope is about the illusion of the Western.
15:29Hey, it's gone.
15:31I can't see it anymore, guys.
15:34It's about the illusion of Hollywood.
15:37The Hollywood take on what the past of this country looked like.
15:42And the fact that that illusion is what I've been fed.
15:49Hollywood has been a tool for the erasure of the black American, of black history, and certainly of the black Western experience.
16:00I remember watching The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, really incredible movies.
16:06And I remember seeing Unforgiven.
16:07And I remember as a young person thinking,
16:11Oh, shit.
16:13There's a black man in a Western.
16:14Get your damn hands off my rifle, mister.
16:17Where have black people even been?
16:21Thought I'd check it for you.
16:24The history of the Western is one of, honestly, white supremacy.
16:29Why don't you finish the job?
16:31I think the frontier narrative relative to U.S. history, it's a very problematic genre for me.
16:40I don't know that anybody sat in a room and said, we want to make the Western white.
16:45That was just naturally what happened, because that's how they saw the world.
16:52Their world was white.
16:54I am a cowgirl in all my blackness, all my Westernness, all my joy.
17:12We gonna party today, y'all.
17:19I would say about 19, when I did Fort Apache, the Bronx.
17:23And they had to call me from Colorado.
17:25Well, what you doing in Colorado?
17:26I said, I live here with my family.
17:28My family's from Wyoming.
17:29Wyoming?
17:31Yes, there are black people in Wyoming.
17:34And so they were, wow.
17:37Tell me more.
17:38Paul Newman, I want to come and see your ranch.
17:41See your people.
17:43I learned from sharing my narrative with filmmakers.
17:48They wanted to know more.
17:50Come on, sweetie.
17:51Let's go.
17:53The Erasure of the Black Cowboy also includes the Erasure of the Black Cowgirl.
17:58I think Destiny's coming to you.
18:00Yep.
18:01Stagecoach Mary, or Mary Fields, first off, she was tough.
18:08Let's remind you what it is.
18:09The cigar smoking, whiskey drinking, shotgun toting.
18:14She was the first African American woman to run big routes out west for the United States Postal Service.
18:20She became such a good shot, they said that she could take a fly's wings off with a bullet.
18:24Go, girl. Stretch it out.
18:26Stretch it out.
18:27She left Ohio to follow a nun out to Montana to do laundry as a slave.
18:34And so what she did is she wanted to be outside.
18:37And they said, no, women don't do that. You can't do it. You can't hold all the leather.
18:41So she said, I can do it. I've been washing laundry so my arms are strong.
18:47Pam Greer. Talk about an icon.
18:50We almost got Stagecoach Mary made together.
18:52I wanted her as my Stagecoach Mary as I was going to produce and direct the show.
18:57And we came close.
18:58The studios thought that no one would come to see her or believe a black female Stagecoach driver even though we had the document, the narrative, the books and everything.
19:07There's less proof of what black people in different roles looks like and the success of it.
19:15People are scared to take chances where money is involved.
19:20It's all about money, the profit, filling the seats.
19:23Come on, that's joy. That's pure joy, man. It's just joy.
19:29We don't want to conflate movies and actual history.
19:40One of the problems in this country is it's too many people get their history from the movies.
19:48We need both actual history and we need the movies.
19:54Hollywood has a long history of deciding what the viewer sees and doesn't see.
20:00And one of the most standout examples would be D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a film that was made in 1915 that is horrifically racist and is really used to justify the idea of the Klan as a virtuistic group.
20:13When you think about all these ideas that have existed in America for such a long time, white supremacy, racism, now that film was at this level, you could promote some really reprehensible ideas that informed society far beyond the theater.
20:30It marks the rebirth of the KKK. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan become the new cowboy for the 20th century and a sense of protection against the dark forces that would challenge America.
20:40And those dark forces include black people.
20:44And then the president who would ultimately resegregate Washington, Woodrow Wilson, comes along and decides he's going to show this film at the White House, which gives it a stamp of approval from the highest level of government.
21:01My name is Patricia Kelly, and I'm the president and CEO of Ebony Horsewomen.
21:17Ladders, mount your horses.
21:20A little history about Hartford. Black people didn't live in this neighborhood at all.
21:25This was an entirely Jewish and Italian neighborhood.
21:29We lived in an area called The Bottom, which was near the railroad tracks.
21:33Back in the day, if you wanted to find the black community anywhere in the United States, you found the railroad tracks.
21:40When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was happiest and most centered on the back of a horse.
21:45One day, two little boys ran up to us and said,
21:49Lady, is that a horse? Is that a real horse?
21:51I was like, oh, my God. We got to do something about this.
21:54We asked you, Father, that we bring the riders and the horses back in the city.
21:58Amen.
21:59Have a good ride, guys.
22:00The kids today are completely ignorant of their history, of who we are, who we have been, who we always are.
22:12The pictures that run through their head are the pictures of white cowboys.
22:18They got to be erased.
22:19The Marlboro Man is who we think of as a cowboy that you most often see in Hollywood westerns.
22:34They were a breed apart.
22:37Philip Morris, the British company, needed something that tied them to the imagery of America.
22:43And they created a mascot called the Marlboro Man.
22:47Everybody knows the Marlboro Man.
22:53His job is to sit on a horse and look cool as hell and smoke a cigarette.
22:56I'm from Detroit.
23:01When I was a kid, looking at those images, the Marlboro Man, the cowboy was just something I couldn't identify with.
23:10When we were kids playing cowboys and Indians, I was always told that I couldn't be the cowboy because there was no such thing as black cowboys.
23:21So I always had to take a defensive posture when it came to that notion that I wanted to live out my dream.
23:29In the 70s, the cigarette companies decided that they wanted black people to smoke cigarettes more.
23:39And they started to put this figure in Ebony magazine.
23:44It was the exact same guy and the duster and the horse, but he just had a black face.
23:49And that was the only difference.
23:51Tom Burrell, one of the first black creatives who got a job at an agency, period.
23:58When he got Marlboro as a client, he saw the Marlboro Man and he felt that black folks wouldn't resonate with the image of a black cowboy.
24:06It was too foreign. There was no proof that this was a truth.
24:10The West, cowboys, we couldn't relate to that.
24:15So we took that cowboy and turned that person into a cool guy in the neighborhood.
24:24I think now if you saw a black man on a horse in a campaign, it would lead to pride and curiosity.
24:32And it would be an invitation to black folks rather than a threat or a lie.
24:36In 1972, the documentary Black Rodeo shows African American rodeo riders and a traveling rodeo right up in Harlem for a Harlem audience.
24:50Out of the blue, Muhammad Ali shows up. And so you're like, what?
25:00Even Muhammad Ali, he was like, I didn't know there were colored cowboys. Even he didn't know that. And that's Muhammad Ali.
25:08The rodeo brings in people from all over the country. And when you start seeing those black faces in those places where you didn't think they were welcome, black people realize, no, we've always been here.
25:22And once you realize that you've been here, oh, we're here now. Now you can't tell me shit because we're here now.
25:40It's getting serious right now, rodeo fans.
26:03If you haven't been to a rodeo before and you get a chance to go to a black rodeo, go.
26:18Welcome to my rodeo. Welcome to my rodeo.
26:22Thanks a lot. We're going to bring in the cowboys and cowgirls.
26:26When you nod your head and they open up the gate, it's just you and that horse.
26:31I want to take control. I want to cover the horse for eight seconds.
26:34It is man against beast.
26:40Rodeo is about grit. When life deals you a hand that knocks your face in the dirt, what you gonna do?
26:49You better get up as quick as you can.
26:54And that's a metaphor for life.
26:56Welcome to my rodeo.
26:59My name is Glenn Turman. I've been in the entertainment business, performing as an actor.
27:05I am a cowboy.
27:15I'm hands on on my ranch. I do the work around the ranch. I buck that hay.
27:19Unlike any other sport, rodeo came out of working on ranches.
27:34It's in the bloodline. It's in the history of the building of this nation.
27:38Breaking horses and roping cattle was such an everyday chore that no one gave it much thought.
27:43With the advent of barbed wire, cowboying went into decline.
27:47And a lot of cowboys didn't need to, like, keep the herds together and sort whose cattle was who.
27:53So all of these cowboys started doing exhibition of their cowboy skills.
27:58And they were big, exciting events, more like a circus than anything else that you would see.
28:04Bill Pickett was one of the early trick riders, rodeo riders, and traveled and performed with the Miller Brothers' rodeo circuit.
28:17He was also one of the first African-American cowboys in early silent films.
28:23Bill Pickett made a game out of throwing the tough longhorns around.
28:27And he invented the sport of bulldogging, encouraging the steer to cooperate by sinking his teeth into its nose.
28:33Bill Pickett was a cowboy who was fundamental to the formation of rodeo.
28:39He would jump off of a horse, onto a steer, bite it on the lip, wrestle it down to the ground.
28:46People start doing bulldogging as a competitive event in rodeo.
28:50But at the same time, Bill Pickett is not allowed to compete.
28:54Black people use these cowboying skills in their day-to-day jobs.
29:00And white people commodified it, turned it into a show, and did not allow black people to compete.
29:10Black athletes were not allowed to compete in mainstream white rodeos because of racism, because of Jim Crow.
29:18There's a cowboy named Jess Stahl in the state of Oregon.
29:22And he was so good at riding broncos that the white athletes didn't want him to compete because they know they wouldn't win any money.
29:30So Jess Stahl would be allowed to come to the rodeo as an exhibition act, but he never really got to compete for the money that his white counterparts did.
29:39Just because you may have been the best cowboy in the room doesn't mean that you would have gotten acknowledged for that.
29:46Black people's accomplishments were either being lessened or just completely erased.
29:51You couldn't let the public see a black man doing something as well or better than a white man, and that included being a cowboy.
30:03And so black people started their own rodeos.
30:07We ask all our cowboys and men to remove your cover as the African American flag comes into the arena.
30:14This flag represents the pride, history, and accomplishments of the African American community.
30:22I am the president and CEO of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo.
30:32That's a simple way of saying I'm the owner.
30:37My deceased husband, Zluva Zahn, went to a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming one day, and he did not see any participants that looked like him.
30:49There were thousands of black cowboys and cowgirls across the United States, but they were not given the platform to showcase their skills.
31:00What do you say?
31:05It's just like everything else in history.
31:08What you don't want to be known, you erase it.
31:11You don't tell it.
31:14We're leading the way and opening the doors for people to see that black cowboys and cowgirls can compete on the level of anybody else.
31:24Hey, everybody!
31:28Hey, Spanky!
31:30Oh, yeah!
31:33Woo-hoo!
31:34I've always been a city boy.
31:36I never knew back then that there were black cowboys.
31:41Then I went a little bit further and thought, how many black rodeo clowns are there out there?
31:46And I found out there's not many at all.
31:48We're bringing you the stair-wrestling event named after Bill Pickett.
31:53Whoa!
31:54That stair there just said, psych!
31:56I'll give him a Gatorade!
31:58I'm learning a lot about these iconic black figures.
32:03Bill Pickett, Bass Reeves, Stagecoach Mary, these famous Afro-American cowboys that helped shape America.
32:12That inspires me each and every day.
32:15And I think it's our job and our duty to show people of color this is the real history right here.
32:25The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo is the biggest, best black rodeo in the country.
32:37You ready?
32:38I'm going to do this shit, baby.
32:39Let's make it happen.
32:40Ready, like pretty.
32:42Well, look how she's riding in the saddle right there.
32:47This is from the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo from the Ladies' Bell Wrestling Champion.
32:56Kind of like big trophies that you can just wear on your belt.
33:01All right, here's the cowgirl, Paris Wilbur, Austin, Arkansas.
33:08I just love horses.
33:09They can understand your body language and how you're feeling and it just amazes me.
33:16When Paris was seven, she won all-around cowgirl.
33:21I mean, hat was hanging over her eyes, could barely see, you know, small, and I was like, wow, Paris is really good.
33:30She has a hashtag on her car, on her truck, and on her horse trailer.
33:37And it says hashtag black girl magic.
33:39Most of the time at the rodeo, I'm like the only black girl.
33:44And so when people see black girl magic, they're like, who is that?
33:47Who is that?
33:48And so when I come out and win, it's just like, yeah, I have black girl magic in me.
33:51Yes, yes, yes.
33:52The name is Paris Wilbur, the number one cowgirl.
34:00African Americans can do everything that they want to and I'm representing something so big.
34:10And it's something that I'm passionate about, something that I will never forget.
34:14It'll be a big history for me.
34:15Like, I'll just feel like, wow, I'm really that person to look up to in a far as an African American cowgirl.
34:22The thing about black cowboy culture is very soulful.
34:32You know, we got our own spin on things, you know, and we always had.
34:36When they wear that title, their chest is stuck out.
34:42They got a little cockiness about them.
34:45Give it up for Mr. Marcus first, sir.
34:47And they're saying, bring it on if you think you can do better.
34:57Better known as Greatest Show on Dirt.
35:07He told me nothing scares a white man more than seeing a black man on a horse.
35:13Why?
35:15Because they have to look up at him.
35:20We've had black westerns, we've had black cast films, we've had a robust, independent black film industry
35:27who've been telling different types of black stories even when Hollywood hasn't acknowledged our existence.
35:32Sidney Poitier got me into westerns when I discovered Buck and the Preacher.
35:38This 1972 film that was his directorial debut that he produced along with his co-star, Harry Belafonte.
35:46What the hell are you doing?
35:47Get down off your horse.
35:48So I was really excited. I was like, oh my God, there's a black western.
35:52And there's like Native American, African American coalition against the white supremacists.
35:58Like, how cool is that?
36:03Some of my favorite times was with Sidney Poitier.
36:07I would watch him quick draw in his dressing room as he was practicing.
36:12So I'd just sit on the floor and just watch him quick draw because I always wanted to be a cowboy.
36:18Black directors like Sidney Poitier were dismantling the myth by giving us a picture, a slice of history in these western stories, in these western narratives.
36:32When I first saw Buck and the Preacher, you know, and realized that this truly amazing piece of cinema and representation, you know, wasn't even taught to me as a young man, a further robbery in a way.
36:47Now we got movies that properly reflect what western culture used to look like.
36:54You got guys like James Samuel redefining genres back and forth, you know what I'm saying?
36:59You have movies where you see the black man being the hero.
37:02Look at the Magnificent Summer remake with Den-Z.
37:05Easy.
37:06I got a family, mister.
37:08They're better off without you.
37:10Progress.
37:12It's gonna happen. Change is gonna happen.
37:15I think that we're seeing a resurgence, at least in popular media, of black cowboys and black westerns partly because I think we're at a moment in society where blackness is being understood to be more expansive than most popular representations have depicted in the past.
37:35People are hungry to see blackness in all of its forms, blackness in all of its diversity.
37:40And in a way, black cowboy culture is one of the most underrepresented aspects of the black experience.
37:47I hope that it leads to reclamation across the board.
38:15I hope that younger black generations are inspired to learn about black contributions in all industries and all genres and all spaces.
38:24The idea that black people only exist in urban centers is a myth.
38:29be sure to make all conclusions.
38:34Thank you so much.
38:40This is a myth.
38:44Everybody has a bargain, tipsy.
38:50Everybody has a bargain, tipsy.
38:57Anything that can be grasped, once it is shown to be successful or something to be wanted or desired,
39:04black people's possession of it becomes only an invitation for it to be grabbed.
39:14Land is very important to the cowboy story.
39:19Buying land. I felt like that was essential to me and my legacy.
39:25We're seeing this return back to the land right now, and I think it is the boomerang of the Great Migration.
39:30But the idea of black people owning land, that is what keeps this, like, terror in white America.
39:37And so as America is convincing us that all cowboys are white, it's also pushing black people off of land.
39:43So it almost becomes true.
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