LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Whether it’s bull ridin’ or calf flippin’, cowboyin’ takes a special set of skills.
“It’s a good adrenaline rush,” said Da’rell Carmouche.
Carmouche is one of dozens of cowboys and cowgirls who competed in the Las Vegas Black Rodeo in October at Horseman Park.
“You gotta have strength and you gotta be smart,” said Carmouche, a Texas native.
Carmouche has been a cowboy all his life, and has competed in rodeos since he was 12. Yet, as a black cowboy, he said breaking into mainstream competitions is harder than breaking in a wild horse.
“You have your times when you have to go through some racism, or people look down on you because they feel like you don’t have a good horse so that only motivates me,” Carmouche said.
Like many African American rodeo competitors, Carmouche’s plight is ironic, considering the history of the cowboy.
Over centuries, the image of the Black cowboy has been overshadowed by his white counterpart in film and pop culture. However, white cowboys were originally called “cowhands.” During slavery and the plantation era of the South, the insult of calling African American men “boy” was a southern racial etiquette that followed pioneers out West. Thus, the term "cowboy" originated.
The strength, skill and spirit of the Black cowboy continued riding through the Civil War and beyond. In 1866, a year after the Civil War, Congress established six all-black regiments to help rebuild the country.
“They didn’t know what to do with them after the civil war so they sent them out West to tame the West,” said Virgil Macklin, the vice president of the Southern Nevada Buffalo Soldiers.
The Southern Nevada Buffalo Soldiers represent the 9th and 10th Horse Calvary. Buffalo Soldiers were the first forest rangers, they escorted stagecoaches, and they battled Indigenous people defending neighborhoods that black soldiers weren’t even allowed to enter because of the color of their skin.
“They were some of the excellent horsemen even though they had inferior equipment,” Macklin said.
Through the 1860s, historians estimate that 25 percent of cowboys were African American.
This history is passed on through Black Rodeo USA. The organization partnered with the Las Vegas Branch of the NAACP.
“We want to showcase all the talents that African Americans possess, especially in the arena sport,” said Lanette Camppell, the founder of Black Rodeo USA.
Black Rodeo USA travels across the country to share the history of African Americans of the Wild West and give Black cowboys and cowgirls a platform to professionally compete, many of whom had grandparents and great-grandparents who were excluded from local rodeos.
“There’s only a handful of us Blacks that travel out here, when we should have more because we have a lot of good black athletes," said Tory Johnson, a cowboy from Oklahoma. "They just won’t step out of their comfort zone.”
Johnson admits that he had to step out of his comfort zone before becoming the bull-ridin’, calf-flippin’, steer-wrestlin’ rodeo champion that he is. His ultimate goal is to compete in the National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas.
Until then, rodeo competitors like Johnson and Carmouche will continue with other black cowboys and cowgirls to resurrect rodeo traditions within the African American community.
