Bill Pickett Biography, outstanding black cowboy bulldogger.

"Explores the life of Bill Pickett, the African-American cowboy who invented bulldogging, from his childhood in Texas to his life as a working cowboy to his career as a rodeo star"--Provided by publisher.

Describes the life and accomplishments of the son of a former slave whose unusual bulldogging style made him a rodeo star.

Bill Picket was the first African American inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs. A superstar in his day, Pickett was a rodeo pioneer, credited with inventing the rodeo event, steer wrestling, also known as "bull dogging." His life story is as exciting and danger filled as any Western novel. A star on the Wild West show circuit, Pickett traveled the world and performed in front of thousands of spectators. His daring and deeds have put him in the record books and made him one of the most celebrated cowboys in Western lore. In his entertaining storytelling style, educator Malcolm Dickinson recounts how the inventor of "bull dogging" got his start and became a hero for generations.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses—men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. When the Civil War ended, black men left the Old South in large numbers to seek a living in the Old West—industrious men resolved to carve out a life for themselves on the wild, roaming plains. Some had experience working cattle from their time as slaves; others simply sought a freedom they had never known before. The lucky travelled on horseback; the rest, by foot. Over dirt roads they went from Alabama and South Carolina to present-day Texas and California up north through Kansas to Montana. The Old West was a land of opportunity for these adventurous wranglers and future rodeo champions. A long overdue testament to the courage and skill of black cowboys, Black Cowboys of the Old West finally gives these courageous men their rightful place in history. Praise for an earlier book by the same author: “Whether you are a history enthusiast or a lover of adventure stories, African American Women of the Old Westpresents the reader with fascinating accounts of ten extraordinary, generally unrecognized, African Americans. Tricia Martineau Wagner takes these remarkable women from the footnotes of history and brings them to life.” —Ed Diaz, President of the Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation

A fascinating account of the world of competitive steer wrestling and the talented, live-fast, bruise-hard rodeo cowboys who do it. Ty Phillips's Blacktop Cowboys chronicles the 2004 rodeo season through the eyes of several steer wrestlers trying to make it back to rodeo's version of the Super Bowl, the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas. Steer wrestling is an adventure that entails riding into an arena at 25 mph, sliding off a horse while taking hold of a 500-pound steer, and then throwing the animal to the ground. The best cowboys often accomplish all this in less than four seconds. The two main characters of Blacktop Cowboys are Luke Branquinho, a young carefree cowboy on a quest for his first title, and his best friend, Travis Cadwell, a veteran trying to make the NFR one last time. Much of Blacktop Cowboys unfolds in trucks, trailers, arenas, behind the chutes, casinos, beds and everywhere else cowboys spend their time. By taking the reader deep into the cowboys' lives, Blacktop Cowboys offers a true and intimate portrait of men having the time of their lives while living on the road in pursuit of the dream to be the best.

Thousands of black cowpunchers drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War, but only Nat Love wrote about his experiences. Born to slaves in Davidson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Love struck out for Kansas after the war. He was fifteen and already endowed with a reckless and romantic readiness. In wide-open Dodge City he joined up with an outfit from the Texas Panhandle to begin a career riding the range and fighting Indians, outlaws, and the elements. Years later he would say, "I had an unusually adventurous life". That was rare understatement. More characteristic was Love's claim: "I carry the marks of fourteen bullet wounds on different parts of my body, most any one of which would be sufficient to kill an ordinary man, but I am not even crippled". In 1876 a virtuoso rodeo performance in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, won him the moniker of Deadwood Dick. He became known as DD all over the West, entering into dime novels as a mysteriously dark and heroic presence. This vivid autobiography includes encounters with Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, a soon-after view of the Custer battlefield, and a successful courtship. Love left the range in 1890, the year of the official closing of the frontier. Then, as a Pullman train conductor he traveled his old trails, and those good times bring his story to a satisfying end.

A history of the early 1900s southern-born, white filmmaker and the silent films he created for black audiences. In the early 1900s, so-called race filmmakers set out to produce black-oriented pictures to counteract the racist caricatures that had dominated cinema from its inception. Richard E. Norman, a southern-born white filmmaker, was one such pioneer. From humble beginnings as a roving “home talent” filmmaker, recreating photoplays that starred local citizens, Norman would go on to produce high-quality feature-length race pictures. Together with his better-known contemporaries Oscar Micheaux and Noble and George Johnson, Richard E. Norman helped to define early race filmmaking. Making use of unique archival resources, including Norman’s personal and professional correspondence, detailed distribution records, and newly discovered original shooting scripts, this book offers a vibrant portrait of race in early cinema. “Grounded in impressive archival research, Barbara Lupack’s book offers a long overdue history of Richard E. Norman and the filmmaking company he established early in the twentieth century. Lupack’s ability to describe Norman’s films—and the work that went into their production—reanimates them for readers and stresses their role in shaping early African American cinematic representation.” —Paula Massood, author of Making a Promised Land: Harlem in 20th-Century Photography and Film “Thoroughly researched and crisply written . . . The first book-length work on Norman, Lupack’s monograph clearly delineates the Norman Company’s importance . . . [Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking’s] most profound contribution lies, perhaps, in how it illuminates the fraught economics of race filmmaking.” —Journal of American History “Lupack’s book provides a wealth of archival information about this vibrant moment in film history . . . [This] is a solid contribution to regional film studies and race film business practice, and will appeal to scholars, students, and film-buffs alike.” —Black Camera

They ride horses, rope calves, buck broncos, ride and fight bulls, and even wrestle steers. They are Black cowboys, and the legacies of their pursuits intersect with those of America’s struggle for racial equality, human rights, and social justice. Keith Ryan Cartwright brings to life the stories of such pioneers as Cleo Hearn, the first Black cowboy to professionally rope in the Rodeo Cowboy Association; Myrtis Dightman, who became known as the Jackie Robinson of Rodeo after being the first Black cowboy to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo; and Tex Williams, the first Black cowboy to become a state high school rodeo champion in Texas. Black Cowboys of Rodeo is a collection of one hundred years of stories, told by these revolutionary Black pioneers themselves and set against the backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the civil rights movement, and eventually the integration of a racially divided country.

More than five thousand Negro cowboys joined the round-ups and served on the ranch crews in the cattleman era of the West. Lured by the open range, the chance for regular wages, and the opportunity to start new lives, they made vital contributions to the transformation of the West. They, their predecessors, and their successors rode on the long cattle drives, joined the cavalry, set up small businesses, fought on both sides of the law. Some of them became famous: Jim Beckwourth, the mountain man; Bill Pickett, king of the rodeo; Cherokee Bill, the most dangerous man in Indian Territory; and Nat Love, who styled himself "Deadwood Dick." They could hold their own with any creature, man or beast, that got in the way of a cattle drive. They worked hard, thought fast, and met or set the highest standards for cowboys and range riders.