The Black Cowboy

The 1987 film documentary Ethnic Notions directed by Marlon Riggs, identifies the evolution of African American cultural depictions through ethnic stereotypes and caricatures in American culture. I feel Ethnic Notions exposes the roots of false generalization from the beginning and presents a series of classifications for racial depictions that still are noticeable in today's society. These racial depictions identified with in this film begin in the mid 1800's and continue thought to the 1960's. I now after viewing Ethnic notions agree that there are generalizations and depictions that are exaggerated in American popular culture and entertainment.

In America, the lives of Africans did not get any easier. Once the demand for labor began increasing dramatically, more and more Africans were imported to America. Originally, white people and black people worked together in the plantations. As a result of the increase in Africans in these British colonies, less white people took jobs on plantations. Eventually, enslavement became based on race. Numerous slave codes were developed, which included denying slaves the right to be out past sunset and denying slaves the right to meet in groups of three or more. These Africans forced to live enslaved in America were treated as if they were inferior to white people. It is discouraging to think about the fact that this country, though it was long ago, once accepted this kind of social injustice.

Founded in 1965, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History showcases the world's largest permanent exhibit on African American culture. My visits there are always educational and profoundly moving. The museum has an incredible perspective on the past and the present journey of African Americans. At the same time, it takes us on a comprehensive journey of the African American contribution to the world. Today, I will take us on that journey and paint a vivid image of Charles H. Wright Museum.

Alberta’s historical record has many significant accounts of rancher and cowboy life in the late 1800’s. One of these cowboys was John Ware, who was known for his horsemen skills and his great strength. This man was well liked by his neighbours, ranchers, and other cowboys. The population of Alberta at this time was predominately Caucasian. John Ware however was an African American. Ware was not the only black cowboy from the United States who settled in Alberta. The late 1800’s was not a time of racial tolerance in the western States, nor in Alberta. What the historical records do indicate though is that John Ware was an individual worth recognition despite discrimination based on skin colour. Ware was not literate. What we know of him

In the early sixteen-hundreds there were nearly equal opportunities for blacks and whites in the New World, most specifically in Virginia. One African-American man in particular exemplifies this fact. Anthony Johnson escalated in society from being a slave1 to becoming a wealthy landowner with slaves of his own.2 The successes of this man both economically and socially provide a rather important window into the lives and opinions of the peoples in Virginia at the time, especially the black community and their treatment by their fellow white agriculturalists.

From 1803 through 1850 westward expansion was occuring in the U.S. bringing a variety of issues along with the expansion of the country. As a result of westward expansion, Native Americans were being forced to leave their homes that their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years along with tensions increasing between the abolitionist North and the pro-slavery South due to slavery as well. Although many people were against slavery, white Americans still saw themselves as superior to other minorities including Native Americans and African Americans. During Westward Expansion from 1803-1850 “all men created equal” didn’t include anyone other than wealthy white men due to, Native Americans being removed and forced off their ancestral lands, and African Americans inferiorly viewed as property of white men because of their ethnicity.

In national myth and ideology, the West would long remain a sanctuary for the free American. To many, the settlement and exploitation of the West offered America a chance

The novel “Slavery by Another Name” by Douglas A. Blackmon tells of the hardships the newly freed slaves faced, as well as following the life of a young African American man by the name of Green Cottenham. Born in the 1880s to two former slaves, was then arrested for “vagrancy” in 1908, was leased out by the state of Alabama to work in a U.S. Steel coal mine, where he is

In Life, you can inspire or be inspired. Whatever you dedicate yourself to and become successful in what that plan, it is important to represent yourself, leaving a legacy for others to follow in your footstep. Many people of different backgrounds, race, and cultures all have a story to tell, a story that will be told years from now and impact someone to do even greater things in their time. As black history month approaches, a time where we acknowledge those who had great accomplishments, and how they impacted others as well as their community. Many African-Americans in Florida’s history, are not recognized as often as they should. One person, in particular, would be Joseph W. Hatchett.

Many African American’s stayed in the south or in a sense, got stuck. Lack of money, help and education would keep many in the same place as they were throughout the 1800’s. Many didn’t have the means to escape Jim Crow and the south. They simply didn’t have the means or assets to go anywhere. To some, considered the “first migration,” roughly a million African American’s are going to leave the south for economic opportunities in the north at the start of World War I.

Many recognize the classic image of the cowboy in an old western movie: the fearless, stoic hero that stays calm in moments of crisis. In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, readers witness the protagonist, John Grady Cole, attempt to revive this famous archetype. Beginning as early as when the first pilgrims came to the new continent, Americans have always had a desire to “settle” Native American lands. In the time that followed, the West became a sort of proving ground for the Europeans and their decedents. During the nineteenth century, the image of land being settled by men on horses, who literally took the law into their own hands through their shotguns, became pervasive in the American mind. By

In 1865, when the civil war ended in America and slavery was abolished, the African American population in the South faced many challenges related to their new found freedom. Following the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, white supremacy resurfaced in the South (A&E Television, 2015). Beginning in the early 1900s through 1970 there was a mass exodus of African American 's from the South to the North in America. Although some African American 's were known to have moved from the South as early as 1850, there were two major waves during the 1900s (A&E, 2015; Gates, Jr., 2013). The Great Migration brought new opportunities to African Americans, but not without significant challenges.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

The southwest is a region of the United States that makes our country unique. Without the southwest, we would undoubtedly lack the spirit, hope, beauty, and truth that this vast region brings to the rest of the United States as a whole. The southwest represents many things, such as journeying, racism, violence, the clashing and cooperation of cultures, and spirituality, as well as primitivism and pastoralism. All of these elements that the Southwest is comprised of is perhaps the reason why the rest of the country feels so captivated by it; why the southwest is considered a place to “find yourself” or to “regenerate”; and why literature and film regarding the Southwest has been and continues to be of the most popular genres. The western film was one of the most popular during the first half of the twentieth century. Audiences far and wide were mesmerized by actors such as John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and their roles as heroes who fought to tame the American frontier. This very concept, ‘taming the frontier’, gives way to a larger theme that was prevalent in many western films and literature of the southwest: ubi sunt, or rather “where are those who came before us?”. Director Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue portrays this idea better than any other western film; the concept of ubi sunt is undeniably the film’s overarching theme, clearly seen through its components.

Saunders of the Texas Trail Drivers Association that of the 50,000-75,000 cowboys who helped to created the West, 25 percent were black (Porter, 1971). However, to merely state that there were 13,000-19,000 Black cowboys is inaccurate simply because the American definition of a cowboy has become distorted. To understand the role of the blacks in the West, one must first comprehend what the cattle-industry workers or cowboys truly did.