Forget the “Wild, Wild West” you thought you knew.

The history of the American West has long been told through images of rugged frontiersmen, dusty trails and wide-open plains. But for generations of Black cowboys and cowgirls, the story has been far more complex, shaped by extraordinary skill, racial barriers, community pride and a determination to preserve a legacy too often left out of the historical record.

That history takes center stage in Black Cowboys: An American Story, a special exhibition at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum that opened to the public Oct. 9 and runs through April 18, 2027.

The exhibition explores the lives of enslaved and free Black men, women and children who worked on Texas ranches and joined cattle drives before the Civil War through the turn of the 20th century. It also follows the lasting influence of Black cowboys on rodeo, entertainment, country music and film, challenging the familiar images of who belongs in the American West.

For historian Dr. Ronald Davis II, a history lecturer at Texas State University, the exhibition offers an opportunity to examine a chapter of American history that has often been overlooked in popular accounts of Western expansion.

The story does not end with the cattle drives of the 1800s. Black Western traditions remain alive in communities across Texas and the nation, carried forward through generations of ranchers, riders, rodeo competitors and families determined to keep their heritage visible.

Among those families is the legacy of the late Cleo Hearn, a Lancaster, Texas, cowboy widely known as “Mr. Black Rodeo.”

Hearn, who died in 2025, co-founded the American Black Cowboy Association and founded the Cowboys of Color Rodeo, helping create opportunities for Black rodeo competitors and preserve their place in Western history.

A special section of the Dallas exhibition honors Hearn’s life and work through personal artifacts, including a prize saddle, cowboy boots, spurs and family photographs.

For his son, Harlan Hearn, seeing that history preserved in a museum carries a meaning that extends beyond his family’s accomplishments.

“This is all about the recognition,” Hearn said, reflecting on the importance of preserving the achievements of Black rodeo competitors.

The sentiment captures the exhibition’s central purpose: ensuring that the people who helped shape Western culture are not forgotten simply because their stories have too often gone untold.

Reclaiming the History of the American West

Black cowboys have been part of Western history for generations, yet popular portrayals of the cowboy have frequently obscured their contributions.

The exhibition confronts that omission by placing Black ranch workers, riders, ropers and rodeo champions at the center of the narrative.

Long before the modern rodeo became a fixture of Western entertainment, enslaved Black Americans performed much of the labor required to sustain ranching operations in Texas. They tended livestock, cared for horses, developed cattle-handling skills and contributed to the growth of an industry that would become closely tied to the state’s identity.

Following emancipation, Black cowboys continued working across the West, bringing agricultural knowledge and livestock-handling skills to ranches and cattle drives.

Their expertise became part of the working West, even as racial discrimination limited opportunities for recognition and advancement.

The historical framework explored by Davis helps place these experiences within the larger story of Texas and the American West. Black cowboys were not newcomers to Western culture or exceptions to an otherwise white tradition. They were among the workers who helped build it.

The exhibition also examines how the skills developed on ranches eventually became part of rodeo culture, creating opportunities for Black riders and ropers to demonstrate their abilities in competitive arenas.

That influence extends beyond livestock and rodeo.

Visitors can explore the Black roots of country music, the rise of Black rodeos and the influence of Black Western culture on entertainment and film. These connections challenge the idea that cowboy culture belongs to one race, region or generation.

The tradition continues today through events such as the annual Cowboys of Color Rodeo in Fort Worth and the Texas Black Invitational Rodeo at Fair Park in Dallas.

For North Texas residents, these events are reminders that Black Western history is not simply something preserved behind museum glass. It remains a living part of the region’s cultural identity.

When Talent Met the Barriers of Segregation

Some of the exhibition’s most consequential stories concern the tension between athletic accomplishment and racial exclusion.

Harlan Hearn points to his family’s rodeo history as evidence of both achievement and the obstacles Black competitors faced.

His grandfather, Bud, won the steer-wrestling event at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo in 1962. His father, Cleo Hearn, won the tie-down roping event at Denver’s National Western Stock Show in 1970, becoming, according to Harlan, the first African American to win that event at a major rodeo.

Those victories were significant in their own right. They also unfolded against a broader history of segregation in Western sporting institutions.

Harlan recalls a time when the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo was segregated, underscoring the contradiction at the heart of the cowboy’s legacy: Black competitors helped sustain the traditions of the American West while confronting institutions that restricted their participation and recognition.

“You did the work, but you didn’t get the recognition,” Hearn said.

The statement is as much a historical assessment as it is an explanation of the exhibition’s purpose. A trophy or photograph can document a victory, but it can also expose the circumstances that made that victory harder to achieve.

Cleo Hearn’s career reflected that struggle.

Beyond his own success as a rodeo competitor, he devoted much of his life to expanding opportunities for Black cowboys and cowgirls. Through the American Black Cowboy Association and the Cowboys of Color Rodeo, Hearn helped establish spaces where Black competitors could showcase their talent and celebrate a culture that had too often been excluded from mainstream Western narratives.

His work also helped connect younger generations with a history that extended well beyond the arena.

The exhibition connects these local and family milestones to a larger story of Black achievement in professional rodeo.

Charles Sampson, who won the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s world bull-riding championship in 1982, became the first Black competitor to claim a world championship in the association’s history.

His achievement marked a significant milestone in a sport where Black riders had long faced barriers to visibility and opportunity.

Together, these stories challenge visitors to reconsider what they think they know about rodeo, race and the mythology of the West.

More Than Memorabilia: Objects That Carry a Legacy

The collection’s emotional force lies partly in its physical details.

A pair of custom-made ostrich-skin cowboy boots, described by Harlan as one of his father’s last pairs, offers a personal connection to a life spent in rodeo.

The boots are not simply examples of Western fashion. They are remnants of an individual career, objects that retain meaning because of the person who wore them and the experiences they represent.

Other items honoring Cleo Hearn include a prize saddle, spurs and photographs that document his decades of work in rodeo.

Together, the artifacts offer visitors a closer look at a man whose influence extended from the rodeo arena to the broader movement to preserve Black Western heritage.

A rodeo program featuring an illustration of Sampson provides another connection between the personal and the historical. Its printed image preserves a moment in rodeo history while giving visitors a tangible way to encounter a milestone that might otherwise remain a name in a record book.

Photographs provide a different kind of evidence. They show the people behind the achievements, documenting a community whose style, personalities and accomplishments deserve a place in the visual history of the American West.

One story Harlan recalled during the exhibition tour concerns Marvel Rogers Sr., a Black cowboy known for his distinctive presence in the arena.

According to Hearn, Rogers rode bucking horses in a starched white shirt while smoking a lit cigar, creating a dramatic puff of smoke each time the horse struck the ground.

The anecdote reveals something that statistics and championship records cannot fully capture: the personality and showmanship that helped make rodeo a cultural spectacle.

Swagger, style and individuality were part of the tradition, too.

By preserving these details, the exhibition moves beyond a simple record of who won which competition. It captures the character, creativity and community surrounding the sport.

A Family Album Becomes a Cultural Record

Among the most meaningful pieces in the collection is a family photograph dating to the 1990s.

The image features Cleo Hearn and family members, offering a reminder that the history of Black rodeo was built not only through individual achievement but also through relationships sustained outside the arena.

For Harlan, the photograph represents the importance of experiencing rodeo as a family.

He recalls traveling with his father for an entire month in the early 1970s, beginning in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and making their way to Calgary, Alberta, for the Calgary Stampede before returning through rodeo stops across the American West.76

The trip was more than a journey between competitions. It was time spent together, a firsthand education in the demands of rodeo and an opportunity to witness the people who made up its community.

The exhibition also reflects a broader network of influence.

Harlan describes growing up around Black cowboys whose careers helped him understand what was possible. He remembers watching men who resembled him compete and recognizing that their accomplishments could become examples for his own life.

That visibility matters, particularly for young people who rarely encounter themselves represented in the careers or cultural traditions they are encouraged to pursue.

The family’s legacy is also part of a multigenerational tradition.

Harlan points to contemporary cowgirls and cowboys whose families have participated in rodeo for four, five or even six generations.

Their stories challenge the misconception that Black participation in Western culture is unusual or recent. Instead, they reveal a longstanding tradition sustained through family knowledge, mentorship and community connections.

The exhibition’s family photographs and personal artifacts make that continuity visible.

They show that history is not simply something inherited from the distant past. It is something people continue to build.

The Cowgirls Belong in the Story, Too

Any account of Black Western heritage would be incomplete without recognizing the women who have helped sustain it.

The exhibition’s historical scope includes the experiences of Black women and girls whose labor contributed to ranching and livestock operations, as well as the women who carried those traditions into modern rodeo culture.

During the exhibition tour, Harlan points to Kourtnee Solomon as a prime example of a fourth-generation rodeo participant.

Her presence reflects the generational depth of Black rodeo culture and the importance of recognizing women as participants in that history.

Cowgirls are not supporting characters in the story of the Black West. Their contributions belong alongside those of the men whose names appear in championship records and historical accounts.

Including their stories also expands the cultural significance of the exhibition.

It recognizes that Western traditions have been carried forward through entire families and communities, not exclusively through individual male competitors.

The photographs and memorabilia serve as reminders that this heritage encompasses different generations, experiences and paths through Western life.

Some participants compete professionally, while others sustain the culture through family connections, ranch work, organizing and community involvement.

Preserving that breadth is essential to representing the tradition honestly.

Preserving the Past to Expand the Future

For Harlan, the exhibition’s value extends beyond historical recognition.

He sees it as an opportunity to introduce young people to possibilities they might not otherwise consider.

A child who encounters photographs of Black cowboys and cowgirls may begin to imagine a future involving horses, ranching, veterinary medicine or agriculture.

Even if that child never enters a rodeo arena, seeing those possibilities represented can challenge assumptions about which careers or communities are accessible.

Harlan hopes young visitors will recognize that they do not have to remain within the limits of what their surroundings suggest is possible.

He describes the choice as either breaking out of the box or making the box bigger.

That philosophy gives the exhibition a contemporary purpose.

Preserving Black Western history is not only about correcting omissions from the past. It is also about ensuring that young people have a fuller understanding of the people, professions and traditions that have shaped American culture.

The same principle applies to the broader community.

Historical knowledge can help people recognize connections they might otherwise miss, building a more complete understanding of the country’s cultural inheritance.

For families who have carried these traditions forward, preservation is an ongoing responsibility.

Harlan says his family hopes to pass the knowledge to the next generation, which can then introduce it to their own children.

Each generation adds to the record.

That work becomes particularly important when the people who remember earlier eras are no longer able to tell their stories firsthand.

Cleo Hearn’s death in 2025 makes the museum’s tribute especially meaningful. His boots, saddle, spurs and photographs now help tell a story that future generations might otherwise know only through family memories.

An exhibition gives those memories a place to remain visible.

It allows visitors to encounter the past through objects that once belonged to real people, each with a career, a family and a story worth preserving.

Beyond the Exhibition: Bringing Black History Into Conversation

The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is also extending the exhibition’s themes beyond its galleries through a community discussion centered on Black Western history.

On Thursday, Oct. 29, the museum will host Together We Dine: Black Cowboys, a facilitated conversation examining race, ethnicity and the ways history shapes how people understand one another.

Beginning at 5:30 p.m., the program will bring strangers together over a light dinner to share personal experiences, listen to different perspectives and discuss themes raised by Black Cowboys: An American Story.

The gathering is designed to encourage open dialogue, build trust and deepen mutual understanding through structured conversation.

The event also reflects the broader questions raised by the exhibition: Whose stories are preserved? Who gets recognized for shaping American culture? And what happens when generations grow up without knowing the full history of the communities around them?

For Dallas, a city with deep ties to Black ranching, rodeo and Western culture, those questions carry particular weight.

The exhibition offers an opportunity not only to learn about Black cowboys but also to consider how their experiences connect to larger conversations about race, belonging and historical memory.

The West Has Always Been Bigger Than Its Mythology

Ultimately, Black Cowboys: An American Story offers a different way to understand the American West.

It presents Black cowboys and cowgirls not as footnotes to a familiar story but as essential contributors to a living cultural tradition.

Its photographs, rodeo memorabilia and family artifacts document achievement while revealing the deeper relationships that sustained it.

They tell stories of discrimination and perseverance, but also of joy, style, mentorship and belonging.

The collection’s significance lies in that combination.

It acknowledges the barriers Black competitors faced without allowing those barriers to define the entirety of their experience. It celebrates the people who came before while making room for those who will carry the tradition forward.

For Harlan Hearn, that continuity is the point.

The cowboys who inspired his father helped shape his own understanding of what was possible. His family, in turn, hopes to ensure that future generations have access to those same examples.

For the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, the exhibition provides a space to bring these histories into public view, connecting the experiences of Black ranch workers in the 19th century with the families, performers and rodeo competitors who continue those traditions today.

The exhibition preserves more than the history of rodeo.

It preserves the evidence of a community that has always been part of the American West, even when popular culture failed to show it.

And in making that history visible, it gives the next generation a broader view of the past and a bigger sense of what the future can hold.

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Visit the Exhibition

Black Cowboys: An American Story

Location: Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, 300 N. Houston St., Dallas

Dates: Oct. 9, 2026, through April 18, 2027

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Admission:

• Museum members: Free
• Adults: $19
• Students: $12
• Select groups: $17

Community event: Together We Dine: Black Cowboys, Thursday, Oct. 29, at 5:30 p.m.

For exhibition details and ticket information, visit dhhrm.org.