"The photos in this book were taken between 1977 and 1982, during the years Sarah Bird spent shooting rodeos as part of her coursework in photojournalism at UT. At the time, rodeos were still largely segregated, and Bird was most drawn to the Black rodeocircuit of East Texas-Houston-the Gulf Coast. Not all of the rodeos took place on Juneteenth, but the majority of images in this book are from Juneteenth rodeos. Bird tried to publish a book of this work in the 1980s but was told there was no audience, so the photos were put away and largely untouched until they were recently digitized as part of her archive at the Wittliff Collection. As best we can determine, this is the largest cache of images of these rodeos in publicly available archives. The photo edit recreates a day at the rodeo. We see riders pinning numbers on one another, settling nervously into the saddle, and then actual steer wrestling, barrel racing, bronco busting, calf roping, along with lots of fans in the stands or milling about. The periphery--concession stands, mobile BBQ pits--are part of the day, too, which ends with a party that night. Demetrius Pearson, who has written the only book on this subject, has written a contextualizing piece about the history of Black rodeos in Texas. Bird's 10,000-word essay tells the story of this project, from her coursework at UT through the re-discovery of the images in 2021. The heart of the piece is her description of a typical Juneteenth rodeo, which sets up the sequence of images, and a tributeto rodeo star Rufus Greene, who was especially kind and helpful to her during her research"--
Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos.
Long before Americans began to officially commemorate Juneteenth, in the heat of East Texas, saddles were being cinched, buckles shined, and lassoes adjusted for a day on the Black rodeo circuit in honor of the holiday. In the late 1970s, as they had been doing for generations, Black communities across the region held local rodeos for the talented cowboys and cowgirls who were segregated from the mainstream circuit. It was to these vibrant community events that bestselling Texas writer Sarah Bird, then a young photojournalist, found herself drawn.
In Juneteenth Rodeo, Bird’s lens celebrates a world that was undervalued at the time, capturing everything, from the moment the pit master fired up his smoker, through the death-defying rides, to the last celebratory dance at a nearby honky-tonk. Essays by Bird and sports historian Demetrius Pearson reclaim the crucial role of Black Americans in the Western US and show modern rodeo riders—who still compete on today’s circuit—as “descendants” in a more than two-hundred-year lineage of Black cowboys. A gorgeous tribute to the ropers and riders—legends like Willie Thomas, Myrtis Dightman, Rufus Green, Bailey’s Prairie Kid, Archie Wycoff, and Calvin Greeley—as well as the secretaries, judges, and pick-up men and even the audience members who were as much family as fans, Juneteenth Rodeo ultimately seeks to put Black cowboys and cowgirls where they have always belonged: in the center of the frame.
Timeless photos offer a rare portrait of the jubilant, vibrant, vital, nearly hidden, and now all-but-vanished world of small-town Black rodeos.
