The Long Ride Home - Black Cowboys in America

The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America is the first book to tell the story of the Black cowboy experience in contemporary America. Although Black cowboys have been a fixture on the American landscape and frontier since the nineteenth century, few people are aware of their enduring contributions to Western U.S. history and how their unique culture continues to thrive today in urban as well as rural areas all over the country. The book features Ron Tarver's beautiful, compelling, and often surprising contemporary images of African-American cowboy that not only convey the Black cowboy's way of life and its rich heritage, but also affirm a thriving culture of Black-owned ranches and rodeo operations, parades, inner-city cowboys, retired cowhands, and Black cowgirls of all ages, too. Tarver, who comes from a family of Black cowboys in Oklahoma, uses his artistry to question, if not upend, long-held notions of what it means to be a cowboy and, with that, what it means to be an American