By Wendy Corr, Cowboy State Daily
Most of our impressions of life in the “Old West” come from movies. But they only tell part of the story.
Photographer Ivan McClellan is working to fill that gap in knowledge by showcasing the role of Black cowboys in the American West – not just from the past, but in today’s rodeos as well. And a new exhibit at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody celebrates that culture.
“I started shooting cowboys of color five years ago,” said McClellan, who is based out of Portland, Oregon. “I went to a rodeo in Oklahoma and I just fell in love with the culture. It wasn’t until about two years ago that I started posting them online, and then people were like, ‘This is amazing, I didn’t know anything about this culture.’ And I realized there was something important there that needed to be told.”
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Photographer Ivan McClellan grew up watching Western movies and Bonanza reruns, and going to rodeos with his family in Kansas City. But as a kid, he never saw earnest depictions of cowboys that looked like him. “I didn’t know a thing about Black cowboys,” says McClellan. Any depictions of Black cowboys he did see were as “a punchline”—Sinbad in The Cherokee Kid, or Cowboy Curtis on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. “What if a Black guy was.
Photographer Ivan McClellan grew up watching Western movies and
Bonanza reruns, and going to rodeos with his family in Kansas City. But as a kid, he never saw earnest depictions of cowboys that looked like him.
“I didn’t know a thing about Black cowboys,” says McClellan in a recent interview with the
Mercury. Any depictions of Black cowboys he did see were as “a punchline” Sinbad in
The Cherokee Kid, or Cowboy Curtis on
Pee Wee’s Playhouse. “What if a Black guy was a cowboy? It was like a joke.”
That changed six years ago when McClellan, who now lives in Portland, went to Okmulgee s Invitational Rodeo in Oklahoma, which is billed as the nation’s oldest African American rodeo. McClellan was invited by Portland filmmaker Charles Perry, who made a documentary about the rodeo. He was skeptical at first, but that changed when he arrived at the rodeo on a 105 degree day, and “saw Black people everywhere.”