Cowboy Up
Juneteenth Rodeo
by Sarah Bird.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2024.
128 pp. $45 Hardcover.
Reviewed by
Rebecca Scofield
In Juneteenth Rodeo, Sarah Bird provides an invaluable archive of photographs from dozens of rodeos in the 1970s that “didn’t fit the standard mold.” Dubbing them “renegade rodeos,” Bird takes the reader through Native, gay, and prison rodeos, focusing especially on the Black rodeo circuit.
As anyone who has seen the impact of flesh and bone on hardpacked earth can attest, rodeo competitions are stunning spectacles. From the sweat stains and the dirt-caked boots of competitors to the sticky fingers and joy-filled faces of spectators, rodeo renders hope, heartbreak, pain, and pleasure visible. Invisibility, however, has been the standard experience for many rodeo communities, especially Black communities, as American popular culture, mainstream rodeo associations, and Jim Crow segregation laws stripped anyone who was not a straight, white man of the title of cowboy. Taken in the 1970s, when American society ignored its diverse rural proletariat, Bird’s publication of these crucial images remains timely as the country continues to debate who can claim cowboy identities and country-western culture.
The work begins with Bird’s experiences in the summer of 1978 driving around Texas’s expansive rodeo scene. For Bird, the fact that the mainstream media ignored how Black cowboys were central to industrialized ranching, country-western music, and rodeo culture was both baffling and disheartening. Eventually stuffed under her bed in a shoebox, Bird’s photographs were further evidence of these communities’ marginalization.
Seventy-three pages of beautifully rendered black-and-white photographs make up the main portion of the book, each stunning in its own right. Bird captured an array of cultural memories in these photographs from the distinctive style of western wear to the passing of knowledge from one generation to another as children learned from their elders. She caught the relationship between horses and riders and the physical environment of rodeo grounds, including shaded creeks, hot tailgates, rusted buckets, and sliver-filled fences. Dedicating such a large section of the book to the images makes this a great historical document for both casual readers and people looking to find their own lives in center frame.
As she vividly evokes the “multisensory experiences” of the rodeos she attended, with images of smiling rodeoers with beer, plates of barbecue, and cigarettes, Bird expands rodeo beyond the riding and roping of the arena to the socializing before, after, and during. Noting the centrality of Juneteenth as “Cowboy Christmas” on the Black rodeo circuit, Bird ties together the history of emancipation with the that rangeland labor in Texas.
The afterword is penned by Demetrius Pearson, a leading scholar on Black rodeo history. His essay provides a broad history of Black participation in ranching and rodeo and is an excellent contextualization of Bird’s photographs. Particularly, Pearson traces how Black rodeoers have gone from riding “in the shadows of their white counterparts” with little access to the time, expensive tack, quality horses, training, and travel money required to professionally rodeo to gaining the respect and resources needed to open new possibilities. He notes, however, that Black rodeo remains a place where young people continue to honor and celebrate their communities’ struggles and successes.
Overall, this is a wonderful book to introduce new audiences to and honor the long tradition of Juneteenth rodeo. Written with Bird’s staple wit, this work asserts that while many people in the images lived through difficult times, “joy was the ultimate triumph.”
Rebecca Scofield is the author of Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West (Univ. of Washington Press, 2019) and co-author of Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (Univ. of Washington Press, 2023). She is also the PI for the Gay Rodeo Oral History Project and co-creator of the Voices of Gay Rodeo. A historian of gender and sexuality, she is an associate professor of American history and the Chair of the Department of History at the University of Idaho.