“If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was hard for a black guy to be a cowboy,” says Kevin Woodson of Cowboys of Color, speaking in the 2013 documentary The Forgotten Cowboys. “But it’s not odd in the least bit. Historically, one out of every four cowboys was a black man. These are things that can go unseen, and then black people and white people think it’s odd for us to be cowboys, but it isn’t. It’s virtually impossible to have a true chronicle of the West and not mention the part that black people had in it. Even the word ‘cowboy’ is connected to black people, because you had the guy that took care of the horses, the horse boy, and then the water boy, the cabin boy and the cowboy. But back then it wasn’t a fashionable job; it was just the cowboy.”
The African-American Heritage Rodeo begins at 6 p.m. at the Denver Coliseum, 4600 Humboldt Street. For more information, visit nationalwestern.com.
Mon., Jan. 20, 6 p.m., 2014
