By A. Bruce Crawley
Okropong 1
President, Millennium 3 Management, Inc.
While perusing the Internet recently, I happened upon the following citation in Wikipedia taken from a 2011 essay by Tracy Owens Patton and Sally M. Schedlock entitled “Let’s Go, Let’s Show, Let’s Rodeo: African Americans and the History of Rodeo” published in The Journal of African American History which states, “In Antebellum Texas, White ranchers referred to White workers as “cow hands,” with Black people in the same position referred to with the pejorative “cow boy.”
Who knew?
An article by Reina Gattuso entitled “Race and the Pop Culture Cowboy” published in the January 2023 edition of Curationist, a free online arts and culture resource, provided even more background information.
“As part of Euro-American colonization, cowhands or cowboys drove cattle across the terrain,” the article read. “White cowboys dominated perceptions of the Wild West in much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Popular culture depicted ‘cowboys’ on postcards, in advertising, and in cinema. These images portrayed White ‘cowboys’ as ideal settlers. They were often shown as macho guardians, killing Native Americans and ‘saving’ white women and property.”
“These popular depictions largely erase the fact that Native American ‘cow hands’ and vaqueros, ‘cow hands’ from Spanish colonies in what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States, actually preceded their White colleagues,” the article went on to state. “Approximately 9,000 Black ‘cow hands’ lived in the late 19th-century West. They were largely erased from popular depictions.”
I realize that, if I am not very careful, long-hidden facts such as these, once finally uncovered, might make me very angry.
As I have always believed, however, they do remind us all, once again, that those who control the “narrative” really are the world’s “de facto” historians, even down to memorializing and twisting the facts about who the “cowboys” actually were.
We recall now, that even as we, in our neighborhood, played what seemed to be the All-American game we called “cowboys and Indians,” we had no idea that the very name of that childhood past-time was derived from a racist, condescending insult to the original Black “cow hands.” Would we still be as happy playing what seemed an innocent game, if we had known the entire story?
Discoveries such as this, for Africans in America, remind us that having a solid command of research, and of writing, is fundamental to learning about and remembering who we really are, and about all that we have contributed to the United States.
When faced with these almost-daily examples of disrespect for our true heritage, I. always draw strength from the words of the visionary poet, journalist, and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who wrote, “The truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.”
Thank God for our peoples’ inherent gift of self-control…and for their exceptional, and excessive patience.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, The Philadelphia Sunday SUN, the author’s organization, committee or other group or individual.
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