Dan Snow's History Hit - The Truth About Hollywood Cowboys

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

At the end of the American Civil War, thousands of African Americans ventured west to the frontier in a bid to achieve freedom and escape the prejudice they faced. Many of these frontiersmen became cowboys with up to 25 per cent of cowboys were in fact black. Whilst Westerns became big business in Hollywood this fact was largely been ignored by major film studios. Why is this? To find out Dan is joined for today's podcast by Tony Warner, a historian who runs Black History Walks in London and an expert on Black Westerns including the new Netflix film The Harder They Fall. He and Dan discuss the history of Black Westerns during the segregation era, the amazing real-life individuals that have inspired these films, the role of black cowboys on the frontier and why they have largely been ignored by history and Hollywood. 

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Everyone's very excited about the long-delayed release of the new Netflix film, The Harder They Fall. It's long-awaited, COVID messed with it, but thankfully it's here. Nat Love reassembles his former gang to seek revenge against the man who murdered his parents. It's a Western, folks. We love a bit of this. Nat Love's a real human being. The film's loosely based on a true story, which is Nat Love was a cowboy. He was a formerly enslaved person. And in the period after the American Civil War, he headed West and became one of the most famous heroes of the old West. It's a star-studded cast. It's got Idris Elba. It's produced by Jay-Z.

We're loving it. But what I want to know is the truth about black cowboys. Too often, I think our assumption is that the frontier was a white man's place where the white men fought against the Native Americans, the Indians. But in fact, it's not true. It's going to blow your mind in this podcast. Do you know the Lone Ranger was probably black? The person the character was based on was probably black. Check this tony warner is a historian he runs history walks around london black history walks and he's the historical consultant on the heart of a fool this is a eye-opening eye-opening episode of the podcast and it puts black cowboys back at the heart of the frontier where they belong it's awesome if you want to check out

our history documentaries please go to history hit tv. It's like Netflix or history. It's got hundreds of documentaries on there. It's got thousands of podcasts, all for a very small subscription. It can be yours. It's a safe place for true history fans. Please go and check it out. Go to historyhit.tv. If you subscribe today, you get 30 days free, so you can check it out, see if you like it. And I know you will. You're going to love it. So in the meantime, everyone, enjoy listening to Tony Warner and the truth about Hollywood cowboys. Tony, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Can we start? What was a cowboy? A cowboy would be a person who is looking after affairs to do with a ranch, and there are different types of cowboys, so to speak. So if you're a cowhand, you're a white man who would be looking after the same things as a cowboy would do, but a cowboy would normally be a black person. So even the term cowboy has a racial relevance. Is that right? So cowboy is in fact a racist term. That's amazing. Is that right? So cowboy is in fact a racist term. That's amazing. Well, it has a racial element to it because it goes back to, of course, the days of slavery in America, whereby if a black person is doing a particular job, then he's always referred to as a term less than the white person. So a cowhand white person, cowboy black person, normally.

Just the etymology of that word in that case, why did it suddenly become something that was in fact really glamorous and portrayed by the most sort of square-jawed white actors of their generation in Hollywood over the generations? Well, according to the American historians, up to one quarter of the cowboys were initially black. And actually, some people say that was bigger because when they did the census on the ranches, the ranch owners would often hide the number of cowboys they had because they had to pay a tax to reach a cowboy. So they'd send all the black cowboys out into the wilderness and then they'd only count the white cowboys or cowhands. So it meant that there was an underestimation of actually how many people were working on the ranch. But when it came to Hollywood now and they weren't telling these stories of these amazing fearless fighters of the West, they tended not to show black people in those kind of roles. In fact, they never did, really. So there was kind of a colour bar when it came to Hollywood. So when

they're making movies about cowboys, they became white and became very heroic. And all the black cowboys were hardly ever featured until very recently, actually. This reminds me, slight digression here, but it reminds me of Joe Biden's recent package for coronavirus relief measures. There was a bill in there for black farmers. And in parts of the right wing media in the US, there's like hilarity about the idea there might be black farmers. There had to be like New York Times articles written about people of colour who were farmers. It was extraordinary. There have been black farmers ever since there's been Americans, so to speak, because, you know,

if you go back to 1619, you had a number of African-Americans or Africans from Africa who were then used to work on farms and as laborers in tobacco plantations or tobacco farms or whatever. So as long as you've had America, you've had black people working on the land because indeed that was a whole basis of slavery. So when it came to sugar, cotton, plantation, etc., the majority of the workforce was African or African-American and they were doing all that work. So it's kind of a bit of a nonsense that black farmers are seen as something new or recent. Okay, so we've got lots of African Americans, enslaved Africans, working on southern

cattle farms in particular. As we go through the 19th century, we get to the era of cowboys as we understand it from the movies. That's where we get a lot of our history from, from watching movies. So you think about John Wayne and Audiephy and all those kind of movie stars that's what we think of as a cowboy but the real cowboys were a bit different to what we've seen on this extreme yeah well let's talk about that i mean obviously the movies kind of heart back to some like

arthurian point which the geography and the time is almost irrelevant but it's about a landscape it's about a lifestyle, it's about an idea of freedom and self-sufficiency. What would the reality have been as formerly enslaved people, people of colour moved west doing the things that they were highly skilled at, working with cattle? Would they have been part of this story of the frontier? Absolutely. I mean, after 1965, you have some black people in America actually moving west to escape the legacy of those racist slave owners because the slave owners still want to carry on and maintain their supremacy so they quite often oppress the local people in the area so a group of people called exodusters

they left the deep south and tried to go further west to avoid discrimination by the landowners so that's part of the story as well that's not that well known so exodusters are a real term and there's a whole bunch of history about that with people. And then of course you had black soldiers in the American army who were actually part of the kind of frontier expansion. So you have the Buffalo soldiers, which are all black units of white officers, and they were used to kind of patrol the frontier and control the frontier in effect. And sometimes they were used to fight against Indians, I'm sorry say Native Americans who actually owned that land so it's a really

interesting complicated story. There's nothing simple about US history and let's talk about cattle that was big business right I mean that was the economic driver the way that that expansion west was largely sustained I'm guessing before you could move crops and cereals over huge distances. Yeah, cattle was another huge business. I mean, all those Texas Longhorn Ranch, when you saw in the movies, they're based on real characters. In fact, they often would measure the size of the ranch by the number of cattle on that ranch. So if you had 300, 1,000, or et cetera, number of cows, then you needed an appropriate number of cowboys to actually manage those cattle. And then, of course, you have the famous cattle cattle drives where it'd be taken from the ranch they raised onto the

markets which involved traveling hundreds of miles etc through sometimes hostile territory which is where you find all those adventurous stories set in the so-called well west let's come on to hollywood turned to westerns i guess some stage, they just became hugely fashionable. My dad, as a kid, said all he did was watch Westerns. Why? I think I know the answer to this, Tony, but why were black people, why were they whitewashed? Why were they kind of written out of that? You see plenty of depictions of Aboriginal and Indigenous Americans and firing arrows and everything. Where are the black faces and why were they written out those movies? Even if you think about your classic western

who are the good guys who are the bad guys and the good guys are the white cowboys and the bad guys are the native americans who are in effect defending their land but normally if you watch a western it's always the native american is shown as the aggressor as evil as wicked and you see that over and over again the white characters are always good and the Native Americans whose land is being in effect stolen from them are shown as being wicked and evil and hostile but their land is being taken from them so it's kind of a weird inversion of history that you have those kind of stories being told but when it comes to black westerns we had black westerns going back to 1922-23 because of course you had this segregated American cinema going experiences where if you're black you went to one cinema if you're white went to another cinema and in those cinemas you also had black producers

directors people like Oscar Michaud who made black films and other directors who made black westerns so one western is called Crimson Skull comes out in 1922 another western is called Bill Pickett Bulldogger 1923 and Bill Pickett was a real life rodeo cowboy superhero who would actually he invented something called bulldogging which is basically when you actually were able to wrestle to the ground an 800 pound cow by biting the cow on the lip. It sounds ridiculous right just google Bill Pickett and bulldogging and you see he actually created a way of subduing these 800 pound cows by biting the cow on the lip and then arresting the cow to the ground. That's a true story. It's in the movie

Which Goods Better 1923. Listen, I know I'm just another middle-aged guy learning about the world and finding it very distressing. But like, I remember in the sort of noughties when they started putting black characters into quote unquote white westerns, it was regarded as the height of like political correctness. It was like, oh, it's all gone mad and the idea that was actually a slightly more accurate depiction of the past is something that i'm now super embarrassed about well bill pickett is a real character even now there's a bill pickett rodeo which tours america right now and it's full of a whole bunch of black cowboys and cowgirls. And speaking of black characters in movies, if we go back to the 70s, 72, I think it was 72, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte,

two of the biggest black stars at the time, got together to make this movie called Booking a Preacher, which was based on the real life experience of African-Americans who were part of the exodusting kind of movement in that the exodusters were leaving certain parts of South America, going west to avoid discrimination. dusting kind of movement in that the exodusters were leaving certain parts of deep south america going west to avoid discrimination and they had to negotiate amongst the native americans to get to the land where they could then be more or less free so in this movie with portie and bella fonte

they tell that story and of course don't forget bella fonte and portie were major leaders in civil rights movement major leaders at that time even So they're telling the story of a true African-American story in one respect. They're also referencing civil rights in the modern time as well. That film comes out in 72, and as I said before, Belafonte's Portia, they're like the Will Smith and Denzel Washington of the 1970s. So they're using their art to tell a story set in the past,

which is a true story, but they're also referencing modern-day civil rights, and that's 72. set in the past, which is a true story, but they're also referencing modern day civil rights. And that's 72. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about the truth about Hollywood cowboys. More coming up. Ancient history fans, this is our moment. Subscribe to The Ancients now to get your weekly goodness of ancient history. We've got the big topics. So through this material, we're actually looking at this entangled sum of hundreds and thousands, in fact,

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and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. it's amazing that even in the era of segregation there would be black westerns for a black audience which therefore have not become sort of mainstream classics i say with um inverted commas there's a

couple of films like one's called harlem on the range and one's called bronze brook route i think that's 1949 and these are kind of black westerns made for black audience that are shown in segregated cinemas so the image of the black man or woman in the western goes back at least to 1922 23 and it reflects the real fact that in history there were black men and women in the wild west another good example is a woman called stagecoach mary and stagecoach mary features in the film the heart of their fall and she's a real person there was a real black woman called mary fields and she lived in montana and she was the first black woman to have a mail route her mail route was 19 miles and she would

deliver mail along the 19 miles of you know hostile dangerous territory through wind rain and snow and if she couldn't get her six horse stagecoach to actually take the route if the snow was too deep she would walk the 90 miles in her snowshoes with the mail on her back and she helped to build a combo all by herself i mean she's amazing and so she's a real person that's featured in that movie the hard day for so you've mentioned a hard day full now tell me about this movie in the kind of historical context for it. Well, it's a kind of an action-adventure western set in the Wild West, but it actually has characters in the movie who are real people.

So I just mentioned stagecoach Mary. Another character in the film is a guy called Bass Reeves. And Bass Reeves was the first deputy US.s marshal and he arrested 3 000 outlaws and he had to kind of shoot another 14 of them and he was a crack shot expert horseman and he also spoke different native american languages because basically any outlaw would run away from the so-called civilized areas into the outlaw areas where there was less kind of law enforcement. So Bass Rees would be tracking these people down. So he was an amazing, legendary,

real-life historical character. And if you remember a TV show called The Lone Ranger? Of course, yeah, yeah. Well, it is said, with a lot of evidence, that that Lone Ranger character was based on his real-life exploits. What? Yeah. The Lone Ranger was black.

That's a bumper sticker. Yeah, you can Google it. It was even on Fox News. My God. It was even on Fox News that they said that the actual real Lone Ranger was a black guy called Bass Reaves. But if you just check out Bass Reaves' resume,

it's amazing. It's incredible. And he was such a, as I said, a legendary character. He inspired many other people. In fact, some of his relatives are still alive now and some of them are actual judges in law enforcement. And there's a whole bunch of books on him,

plus graphic novels. And there's talk of a film by the Oscar-winning Chloe Zell, who just did Eternals. And she's alleged to be involved with a film about Bass Reeves' life right now. And he's the sort of inspiration, you think, for The Harder They Fall with Idris Elba. Oh, not inspiration. He's got, in the movie, film about bass reeves life right now and he's the sort of inspiration you think for the harder they fall with idris elba oh not inspiration he's got in the movie there's a character called bass

reeves so it's like that's his name and he's a real person amazing i just mentioned bill pickett bill pickett is also in the heart of their fall he's a tabernacle eddie gattegi but bill pickett the man i just mentioned was a real life wild westo star, won his own rodeo show with his five brothers. Bill Pickett is in The Heart of Their Fall. So the director, James Samuels, obviously must know his history because he's put these real characters into his movie. So I suppose once you can Google those names, you'll see more about them. It's interesting that as you're talking, I'm thinking about how we associate the movement,

the great migration of African-Americans from the Cotton Belt, where they've traditionally been in enslaved communities, into the northern cities and Chicago and New York and places like that. And actually the Western frontier represented another place where they could have a measure of freedom. They could try and chart their own life.

They'd get some agency. Yeah, absolutely. That is one reason we have the whole exodus movement. It's also the reason why some black men joined the armed forces, the cavalry, because they want to kind of get away from the oppression. So one way of doing it was to join the army and then become part of the forces that were expanding west. So it had a lot to do with being free and getting away from, you know, systematic oppression in the deep south or any area where there was racism, basically. And I guess, you know, they're not going to be

allowed into some of those artisanal or clerical white collar jobs on the eastern coast as well because of the prejudice they face. So actually this was a pretty good option for them. Yeah, and don't forget there was segregation up until, well let's be polite, let's say the 60s and that included rodeos

so even if you were a very skilled black cowboy, you couldn't enter that included rodeos so even if you're a very skilled black cowboy you couldn't enter the regular rodeos because you were allowed to the same way you couldn't go to cinema and see a black film with a white audience because of discrimination so all that played a part and actually i should mention about films there was something called the hayes code h-a-y-e-s hayes code which ran from 1930s 1960s it was literally a list of things that you couldn't do couldn't show on screen which included misdegonation right which included you could not show white people as slaves so the hays code literally said you shouldn't show white people as enslaved people and it also said

that you shouldn't offend any race or creed but what it basically meant is that you would not be showing black people in heroic strong leadership positions and that's what you find in those movies up until the 60s you don't find very many black heroic characters be it a western or science fiction it's quite rare for few and far between actually harry valenfonte and sydney portia were the guys who actually began to break that barrier down in the 60s because of the civil rights movement in america and they were saying look we need to have accurate representation of ourselves on the big screen. And this is part of the story. What do you say as a Black scholar to the people who are finding this moment that

we're going through now, white people who are finding it difficult, they get upset when they see George III's wife played by a Black actor in Bridgerton or Anne Boleyn played by a black like there are people who find that troubling right what do you want to say to those people I just says I would suppose it's because you're so used to seeing this one very biased monochrome version of history for like 10 15 40 50 years that when you see an accurate representation it kind of shakes your viewpoint it kind of upsets you because you're just so not used to seeing it but when you actually do your own

research and check the history Bass Rees was real, Dej Kutzmer was real there's a whole bunch of, in fact in Bridgerton you know there's a boxer called Will Mondrich in the movie and the TV show Bridgerton he's based on a real character called Bill Richmond Bill Richmond was a real black boxer in 1800s London who had his own pub and was a champion

bare-knuckle boxer in the early 1800s. And that is a fact. You can just get on your phones now and just type in Bill Richmond boxer, and that's a real person. So what they did in Bridgerton, they just kind of reversed his name, called him Bill Mondrich as opposed to Bill Richmond, but he's based on a real person who was an incredible boxer and a very well-known and famous person in London in 1810 at a time when slavery was still taking place in the Caribbean so an amazing story which is in that Bridgerton TV series and it's just a fact what can I say it's just a fact yeah it's that strange fact when you're accustomed to privilege seeing athletes that look like me representing their country,

seeing politicians that look like me, prime ministers, actors, that equality can feel like an oppression. Like when you see more women in there, people of colour, whatever it is, it's not. If some artist wants to cast Anne Boleyn as a black person, that's okay. That's not oppressing me, I don't think.

Given that for generations, black characters, as you just said, have been represented by white people. The reverse has taken place. We just need to kind of relax a bit. generations black characters have you just said what have been represented by white people is the reverse has taken place we just need to kind of relax like it's not the end of the world i'll give you another example of how you have a history which is commonly absorbed and believed which does not reflect reality so you know a lot about world war ii you know that there were two and a half million indian troops from what we now call pak, Bangladesh and India from Sikh Muslim Hindu

backgrounds who were in World War II who fought and sometimes died defending this country in World War II, two and a half million of them. The question then would be is how often do you see a movie where the cast is majority Indian Sikh Muslim Hindu who were doing the fighting in World War II because they actually did their fight in North Africa, they fought in Italy, fought in Burma. So how come you don't see that representation on your big screen or small screen what's happened there they've been left out and that's deliberate and that's history you can easily verify okay so other question to you as a black scholar is that i've talked about the white people how difficult they must be finding this moment but what's this moment mean we're a long way off but

seeing that pendulum slowly shift back towards a slightly more realistic and equal representation of our past on big and small screens. It's cool. It's good. It's good to see. Again, it's not the first time we've seen this. Well, not the first time I've seen this kind of representation because back in 1993, I had a guy called Mario Van Peebles. He made a movie called Posse about black cowboys. The same director, James Samuels, made a film back in, I think it was 2012, called They Die By Dawn, which included the same bill pickett and stagecoach mary and star people like erica badu and i said before 72 in fact i'll tell you what do you remember a guy called jim brown and fred williamson from the 70s they made a whole bunch of black westerns in fact fred williamson

made a movie called boss n word the movie was The movie was called Boss N-Word, right? And in the movie, the premise is that this racist deep South town gets a new sheriff and new sheriff is black. So you can imagine what happens then. But there's been a long history of these black filmmakers making these movies about black covers. It's just that they don't get the exposure they deserve.

I suppose with this Netflix thing, because it's Netflix, it's going to get a lot more exposure and that's good well thank you very much indeed for coming on the pod and telling us all about it how can people stay in touch with you and follow your work the website is black history watch.co.uk just black history watch.co.uk and we run watch talks and films on black history each went four year long for the last 15 years thanks man looking forward to doing more in the future thank Thank you very much. No problem. I feel the hand of history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours,

our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks. You've made it to the end of our episode. Congratulations. Well done, you.

I hope you're not fast asleep. If you did fancy supporting everything we do here history hit we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods give a little rating five stars or it's equivalent a review would be great thank you very much indeed that really does make a huge difference it's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account so please don't do that can seem like a small thing but actually it's kind of a big deal for us so i really appreciate it. See you next time.