The History of Black Cowboys, Uncovered

19th February 2016

By R. Eric Thomas

It’s a quintessential American story.

The year is 1869.

Nat Love is 15 years old and he’s about to leave his family and hitchhike his way to Kansas. Having been born into slavery and struggling to survive as a sharecropper, he strikes out for new vistas and opportunities.

“It was in the west, and it was the great west I wanted to see,” Love would later write in his autobiography, Life and Adventure of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as “Deadwood Dick,” by Himself. One of the first black cowboys, Love worked for years as a ranch hand, making a name for himself wrangling cattle and, by his own account, escaping death on many occasions during altercations with white cattle thieves and Pima Indians.

“It was hard to think of leaving, but freedom is sweet.”

Love eventually settled in Denver, working as a pullman porter for Denver and Rio Grande railroads after an illustrious career brushing elbows with the likes of Buffalo Bill and Jesse James.

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