Browsing by Subject "Cattle drive"
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Item "If it wasn’t for my damned old black face I’d have been boss" : Black cowboys in Texas from 1865 to 1890(2019-05) Davis, Ronald Wendell, II; Berry, Daina RameyThis master’s report examines the lives of Black cowboys in Texas during the era of the cattle drive. Drawing upon WPA narratives, autobiographical and biographical cowboy literature from the era, and numerous first-hand accounts of life on the trail, Black Cowboys interrogates each phase of the cattle drive, the labor of cowboys, wranglers and cooks, and the reaction of Black Cowboys at each juncture. Using these primary source documents Black Cowboys describes life on the cattle trail through the words of Black cowboys and reminiscences of other cowboys regarding the accomplishments, both mundane and exceptional, of Black men. It builds upon the scholarship of Philip Durham and Everett Jones, William Lorenz Katz, Terry G. Jordan, and Andrew Sluyter. Each of these scholars analyzed the lives and contributions of black cowboys in the West, but they did not examine the WPA narratives and the experiences of newly freedmen in Texas. It is the goal of Black Cowboys to provide a window through which scholars can see the lived experiences of black cowboys; through their voices and the writing of their peers; creating a new appreciation for the men that not only survived Reconstruction Texas but were some of the best cowboys in the American West