Many stereotypes of the American cowboy are more deeply rooted in Hollywood than in reality.
We’ve talked about black cowboys and the black rodeo scene before, but a new book called The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America is one of the first to tell the story of the black cowboy experience in America today.
Ron Tarver, the author and photographer behind the book, was a guest at the Texas Standard to talk about his work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity:
Texas Standard: I heard you grew up just across the Texas border in Oklahoma, but you worked for a long time at the Philadelphia Inquirer. It’s not necessarily the first place that comes to mind when you think of cowboys, but one of the reasons we have this book today is an experience you had a few decades ago when you saw black cowboys in Philly.
Ron Tarver: Oh, yeah. I was working on a story for the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine, about drugs and the heroin epidemic. I had been working on it for about a year and a half, and I was so burned out after that story that I wanted to find a story that was mostly in color — and a little bit fun. I thought it would be an easy story for the magazine.
And so I told my editors about these black cowboys. It’s a scene in Philadelphia where you see these guys riding up and down the streets and parks and squares. So I thought, well, I’d just like to check it out and see what’s going on. And that’s how the whole story started.
But then you started getting a flood of emails—I suspect many of them were from before email—from readers who were simply overwhelmed by the images you had taken.
Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Oklahoma. My folks had ranches and farms and stuff, and there was a rodeo right down the street from me. We spent our Saturdays going to the barn and stuff. I thought it would be a nice story, but I didn’t expect the surprise our readers would get.
I mean, people were saying, “Is this real? I can’t believe it. These pictures are so beautiful, where did you take them?”
And after that, I said to my editors, why don’t we go out and continue this story for Black History Month? And they let me do it, and National Geographic picked it up and it just went from there. And it’s been a 30-year journey.
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You have collected over 15,000 images. How did you reduce the number?
There were about 15,000 slides. These are all transparencies, so long before the digital age. And during COVID, I went through them and reached out to a friend who used to be an editor at Geographic and was just a great editor.
And she sat down with me and we worked through it and whittled it down to, I think, about 5,000, and from there another 2,000 to 1,000 to get it down to a manageable size of, I think, 500. And then we settled on 120 or 150 for the book.
I think I have to ask you, though, if you can share your thoughts on what the existence of cowboys means in today’s society, and particularly the experience of black cowboys.
But I have to say right at the start that it’s interesting that these images, the way they’re structured, don’t feel like there’s a narrative behind them. I think that was intentional.
Absolutely. One of my favorite books of all time is by a photographer, William Allard. He wrote a book years ago called Vanishing Breed. And it was just one of the simplest and most beautiful books about the life of a cowboy.
And it had no narrative structure. It was just these really beautiful images that highlighted the romance of this lifestyle. And that’s what I based the book on. I didn’t want a narrative structure.
There’s something emotional happening here. I mean, there are several images that I just can’t get out of my head. One of them is, I think it must have been backstage at a rodeo. And I think it’s kind of like the shadow outline of a cowboy. And in the background you see this brightness from the area where the action is. I think you call it a concrete canyon.
Yes, that was actually a parade. When I finished the story about the cowboys in Philly, they went to a parade. They met some of the black cowboys in Harlem and walked down Fifth Street in Harlem.
And I was sitting behind him on a horse and I was photographing this guy. It reminded me that these guys aren’t riding to the big canyons in the West, they’re riding to concrete canyons. So it’s more poetic and metaphorical of their experience as urban cowboys.
It’s hard to ignore that this book comes out at a time when black cowboy culture is taking on a new place in popular culture. Think of “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé’s latest album, and especially the fact that you see a lot of it in music. What do you think is going on?
It’s so funny. I mean, I tried to get this book published years ago. I had previously written a successful book about black veterans. And I took these pictures to the editors – this was 20 years ago – and said, “Hey, how about we do a book about this?”
And my editors said, “Oh, there’s no such thing as black cowboys.” It was really disheartening because I got so much negative feedback about it.
I don’t know if the stars were aligned or what, but this book couldn’t have come out at a better time. Because the whole idea of black cowboys, the song by Lil Nas X and “Concrete Cowboy,” the film with Idris Elba and the Bass Reeves show and of course Beyoncé. It couldn’t have come out at a better time.
» MORE: With “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé reminds us that she “has always been country”
When you talk about the resistance you faced earlier when you were trying to get this book published, I think a lot of people just don’t know the history of black cowboys. When you talk to people about these images and about the experiences of black cowboys, how do you convey that?
The book, as I said, celebrates the Western heritage of African Americans. And that’s nothing new; we’ve always had a Western heritage.
If you look at where a lot of people came from the South to the North during the Great Migration, they brought all of these traditions with them and set up stables and things like that in big cities. That heritage has always been here. It was just invisible, like a lot of black culture was invisible for so many years.
I think you just have to open the box, look inside and say, “Look, this has always been there. Black people have always had a Western experience. This is not a fad. This is not something that just appeared out of nowhere. It’s always been this way.”
What do you hope people take away from this book?
I just hope that people enjoy looking at the photos. I hope that people look at them and just take it in, because all they’re trying to do is say, “Look at this lifestyle and look at these people and look at where these people are.”
They’re in the cities, they’re in the suburbs, they’re on the ranches. They’re everywhere. There are children, there are older people. They’re not trying to be anything other than what they are. They’re just meant to be images to enjoy.
