Black Cowboys in America: Photographs by Ron Tarver

From before the Civil War, Black cowboys played an active role in the building of the American West working alongside white and brown cowboys wrangling horses, branding cattle, and steering herds long distances on cattle drives. They lived a nomadic and often lonely life—one that helped shape the myth of the American cowboy in popular culture as a symbol of this country’s individualism and freedom. Yet, until recently, when Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album and Pharrell Williams’s Louis Vuitton collection shined a spotlight on the proud history of Black cowboys, their existence has seldom been acknowledged.

Through forty photographs, Black Cowboys in America illuminates this Black cowboy life on ranches, at rodeos, and in urban streetscapes—portraits of African Americans who share a Western heritage. In the early 1990s, Ron Tarver, then a photojournalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, set out to document the rich visual narrative of Black cowboy life. Tarver’s photographs are a tribute to a way of life both old and evolving. They capture the beauty, romance, and visual poetry of cowboy culture while reflecting a renewed interest within the Black community in reclaiming its Western roots. This exhibition affirms the thriving culture of Black-owned ranches, rodeo operations, parades, inner-city riders, and retired cowhands—and invites deeper conversation about what it means to be an American cowboy.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer, Ron Tarver distinguished himself in the fields of photojournalism and fine-art photography on the staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer for thirty-two years. He has exhibited his photographs nationally and internationally in over thirty solo and fifty group exhibitions and earned Guggenheim and Pew Fellowships. Though quick to point out that he is not a cowboy, Tarver worked on farms and ranches as a teenager, even rounding up cattle on a dirtbike. Currently, he is an associate professor of art at Swarthmore College.

Supported provided by New York State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader.

Exhibitions are made possible in part by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.