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Gallery Words from our former senior editor for photography |
While covering New York’s African American Day Parade for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I got stuck in traffic. A couple of African-American cowboys rode past on horses. A woman turned to me and asked, “Are there really black cowboys?” From that point on I had a story to tell. Many people don’t realize that African Americans helped tame the west—there were some five-thousand black cowboys in Texas alone following the Civil War. Many of their descendants have preserved the legacy, and that became my mission too. Since 1992 I’ve pursued the subject in five assignments for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a CD-ROM, and a traveling exhibit entitled “The Long Ride Home: The African-American Cowboy Experience in America.” My hope is to publish a book on black cowboys in the future. 
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