Bob Lemons (also spelled Lemmons) was born a slave around 1847, near San Antonio. In 1854, he moved with to Carrizo Springs, Texas. His owner freed him when he was around 17 years old. Lemons left his owner’s family and went to work for a nearby rancher named Duncan Lemons, whose name the teenager adopted. He would become a legendary cowboy, whose specialty was capturing and wrangling wild mustangs. He eventually bought his own ranch, where he raised cattle until his later years, when he lost his eyesight. Lemons died on December 23, 1947.
Bob Lemmons, photographed by Dorothea Lange, August 1936 (Library of Congress)
According to scholars, one in four cowboys in Texas during the golden age of westward expansion was black; many others were Mexican, mestizo, or Native American—a far more diverse group than Hollywood stereotypes would suggest.
The photos in an exciting new exhibit, “Black Cowboy,” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, suggest that that many common conceptions of what an iconic American looks like are wrong. Read more about the exhibit, and see more photos here.
Bill Pickett, born on December 5, 1870, was a Texas born cowboy who invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. His father was a former slave and so was his wife, the daughter of a white plantation owner. Bill was Afro-Indigenous, with both African and Cherokee ancestry. He became a popular performer, touring around the world and appearing in early motion pictures. In 1971 Pickett was the first African American to be named to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1932 after having retired from Wild West shows, Pickett was kicked in the head by a bronco and died after a multi-day coma.