Black Cowgirl Legends teach through example about resiliance and empowerment!
African American women played a significant role in the progress and cultural development of the Western regions. They were involved in constructing towns, founding charitable organizations, establishing schools and churches, as well as undertaking risky tasks like mail delivery. These women excelled as property tycoons, authors, renowned cooks, investors, and pioneers.
In America’s “Old West” mythology, the cowgirl is almost always a white woman and the cowboy is a white man. But history tells a much different story: Experts believe that historically one in four American cowboys were Black even the trerm "Cowboy" was an assignation reserved for Black men who worked for ranchers who were known as cattlemen or Rancheros. When white ranchers left home to fight in the Civil War, they depended on slaves (Cowboys) to take over in their absence. The phrase "Remember the Alamo!" was about remembering the whites who fought to make Texas a slave territory!
After the Emancipation Proclamation, many of those white ranchers were forced to hire now-free Cowboys who had essentially created the invaluable skills like roping, wrestling, and herding cattle. Black cowgirls worked alongside the enslaved and freed men (as slavery made no differentiation as to gender when it came to doling out the difficult tasks to men and women) to help take care of ranch animals. They the black trail riders who worethe slave cloth pants later nown as Blue jeans, transferred those skills into Wild West shows and, later, Black rodeos. Even the red bandana was representative of the Maroons who fought against slavery and the Black pirates of the Barbary coast who brought it to the Americas!
Susie Sumner Revels, born in 1870 in Mississippi, was the daughter of Reverend Hiram Revels, the first African American elected to the United States Senate. After completing her college education in 1896, Revels married Horace Cayton, the owner of a newspaper, and relocated to Seattle with him. Horace Cayton had established the Seattle Republican newspaper in 1894, and Susie actively contributed to its content as Associate Editor. The publication catered to a diverse audience, attracting both White and Black readers, and eventually became the second most widely circulated newspaper in the city. Engaging deeply in civic affairs, Susie also founded the Dorcus Charity Club and effectively led boycotts against businesses that practiced discrimination towards African Americans.
Would-be mail thieves didn’t stand a chance against Stagecoach Mary, who sported men’s clothing, and prided herself on having a bad attitude and two guns to support it. Mary Fields was the first Black woman, and the second woman in the U.S., to carry mail, and she was known for hard-drinking and fast draw quick-shooting. She was born into slavery in 1832 in Hickman County, Tennessee, the details of Mary Fields’ early life are somewhat uncertain but Tennessee was known for being a harsh place to be slave companies advertized routinely for slaves and the state of Tennessee gave away slaves as young as 3 years old as prizes in the state lottery.
Tennessee had a ban on interstate slave trading beginning in 1827 but it was broadly flouted and repealed in 1854. Memphis, Tennessee was one of the central hubs of the illegal interstate slave trade. It was during this time that Mary learned to be a deadeye shot with rifle and pistol! Mary gained her freedom after the Civil War, which is when she started working as a groundskeeper at the Ursuline Convent of the Sacred Heart in Toledo, Ohio. But she got in an argument and the nuns kicked her out. In 1895, she got a contract from the postal service to become a star route carrier. Her job was to protect mail on her route from thieves and bandits and to deliver mail.Mary was an imposing figure, with a shotgun across her lap and a revolver on her hip. She scared off would-be thieves with her dead eye accurate shooting and drove the stagecoach even with a jug of whiskey by her side she never missed what she aimed at!
The Yellow Rose of Texas" is a traditional American song dating back to at least the 1850s. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time but have you ever wondered about the story behind the song? While many Americans are familiar with the song, “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” few know the story of Emily West, the African American woman who was the inspiration for its creation.
It is suggested by scholars like Martha Anne Turner that the song Yellow Rose of Texas" is not only about a woman, but specifically a black woman, likely composed by a black man as that was early Western music derived from Black plantation songs. The song is connected to its historical context, which includes the Texas war for independence from Mexico so that white illegal immigrants could own slaves in the teritory in the 1830s and a particular event in 1836.
The historical narrative is as follows: In 1835, a young Black Mullatto (Yellow light skinned in the vernacular of the day) orphan named Emily D. West traveled by boat from the northeastern United States to Texas. She ended up working as an indentured servant on Colonel James Morgan's plantation in the settlement of New Washington, later known as Morgan’s Point.Upon arriving, Santa Anna began burning most of the plantation, and killing several of its slaveholding inhabitants, Santa Anna discovered West and ordered that she be taken captive as his bedmate. When Santa Anna and his troops arrived in the region, he claimed West, who was described as very beautiful, with the intention of taking her to Mexico City to replace his wife. However, due to swollen river waters, Santa Anna had to send back the wife he was traveling with in a fancy carriage. Santa Anna was either with West or attempting to be intimate with her when Sam Houston’s troops arrived for The Battle of San Jacinto. This forced Santa Anna to flee in only a linen shirt and "silk drawers," West escaped to freedom but Santa Anna was captured the next day. Legend has it that West's potential separation from her true love and her presence in Santa Anna's camp inspired her lover to compose the song now known as "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
Anita Richmond Bunkley published Emily, The Yellow Rose, a novel based on the presumed incidents that spawned the fame of the yellow rose, that the fictionalized expansion of the facts encouraged a larger and quite different audience to become aware of the historical significance of Emily D. West, the original “Yellow Rose of Texas:”‘ This publishing event certainly re-centered the song and the incident in African-American culture, for over many years and numerous versions. Bunkley, herself an African American woman, researched the complex history of another African American woman and imaginatively recreated and reclaimed the Black Cow Girl Magic it for future posterity.
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