A History Of Black Cowboys And The Myth That The West Was White
Brad Trent, “Ellis ‘Mountain Man’ Harris from ‘The Federation of Black Cowboys’” series for The Village Voice, 2016
A quick internet search of “American cowboy” yields a predictable crop of images. Husky men with weathered expressions can be seen galloping on horseback. They’re often dressed in denim or plaid, with a bandana tied ‘round their neck and a cowboy hat perched atop their head. Lassos are likely being swung overhead. And yes, they’re all white.
Contrary to what the homogenous imagery depicted by Hollywood and history books would lead you to believe, cowboys of color have had a substantial presence on the Western frontier since the 1500s. In fact, the word “cowboy” is believed by some to have emerged as a derogatory term used to describe Black cowhands.
An ongoing photography exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem celebrates the legacy of the “Black Cowboy” while chronicling the unlikely places around the country where cowboy culture thrives today. Through their photographs, artists like Brad Trent, Deanna Lawson and Ron Tarver work to retire the persistent myth that equates cowboys with whiteness.
Deana Lawson, “Cowboys,” 2014, inkjet print mounted on Sintra, courtesy the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery
One notable example of this erasure manifests in the story of Bass Reeves, a slave in Arkansas in the 19th century who later became a deputy U.S. marshal, known for his ace detective skills and bombastic style. (He often disguised himself in costume to fool felons and passed out silver dollars as a calling card.) Some have speculated that Reeves was the inspiration for the fictional Lone Ranger character.
Most people remain unaware of the black cowboy’s storied, and fundamentally patriotic, past. “When I moved to the East Coast, I was amazed that people had never heard of or didn’t know there were black cowboys,” photographer Ron Tarver said in an interview with The Duncan Banner. “It was a story I wanted to tell for a long time.”
Ron Tarver. “Legends,” 1993
In 2013 Tarver set out to document black cowboy culture, in part as a tribute to his grandfather, a cowboy in Oklahoma in the 1940s. “He worked on a ranch and drove cattle from near Braggs to Catoosa.” Another artist, Brad Trent, shot striking black-and-white portraits of members of the Federation of Black Cowboys in Queens, New York, an organization devoted to telling the true story of black cowboys’ heritage while providing educational opportunities for local youth to learn from the values and traditions of cowboy life.
Kesha Morse, the FBC president, described their mission as using “the uniqueness of horses as a way to reach inner-city children and expose them to more than what they are exposed to in their communities.”
Trent’s images capture how much has changed for black cowboys, who now dwell not only on the Western Front but on the city streets of New York and in rodeos held in state prisons. Yet certain values of cowboy culture remain intact. For Morse, it’s the importance of patience, kindness and tolerance.
Ron Tarver, “The Basketball Game,” 1993
Brad Trent, “Arthur ‘J.R.’ Fulmore, from ‘The Federation of Black Cowboys’” series for The Village Voice, 2016
Ron Tarver, “A Ride by North Philly Rows,” 1993
Brad Trent, “‘Mama’ Kesha Morse from ‘The Federation of Black Cowboys’” series for The Village Voice, 2016
when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”
“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME
they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.
and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS
come to think of it i’ve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like it’s even worse than the “where are all the farms” problem like where are people getting the cloth if no one’s doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???
THANK U
pro tip: what do you say instead? I gotcha.
In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before.
Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)
A poorer person is often seen in “russet”, a kind of rusty orange-brown color. Purple was famously reserved for royalty in many times and places, but its also just hard to do. We see a lot more magentas and fuschias for nobles or common middle class folks than we ever see of Purple- and not many of those. Deep blue was more likely on very rich people, but a light blue was common for even poorer folks. Yellow was popular with everyone, and so was green, and many shades of reds, including the color we now call orange (they did not- this is why redheads are called redheads and not orangeheads). Your vision of everyone in very drab brown and mud colors is from Hollywood- most medieval-ren folks have clothing with colors. Sometimes garish colors, to the modern eye. Traffic cone Orange and acid green was a popular combo in the 13th century.
Example medieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of as “denim colors.” There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldn’t afford the really good fixatives.)
Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red
Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice
Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldn’t - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.
Dying or re-dying any one piece of clothing was within most of their cost limits - dye itself is cheap; fixatives cost. But boiling your shirt for an hour with onion skins in a copper pot would re-color the fading fabric.
As an artist, you’ll have to draw turned heads countless times. But when the head is turned, drawing the far eye poses a special challenge. This is because we must foreshorten that eye more than we’re used to, and because we’re tempted to shape it like the near eye, which is less foreshortened. Therefore, it’s useful to practice drawing the far eye by itself, without the near eye to throw you off. Print these sheets, draw the eyes, and you’ll save yourself great difficulty later.
Note that all of these eyes are facing our left. You’ll need to practice right-facing eyes as well, so flop the sheets in Photoshop, print them again, and draw those also.
As an artist, you’ll have to draw turned heads countless times. But when the head is turned, drawing the far eye poses a special challenge. This is because we must foreshorten that eye more than we’re used to, and because we’re tempted to shape it like the near eye, which is less foreshortened. Therefore, it’s useful to practice drawing the far eye by itself, without the near eye to throw you off. Print these sheets, draw the eyes, and you’ll save yourself great difficulty later.
Note that all of these eyes are facing our left. You’ll need to practice right-facing eyes as well, so flop the sheets in Photoshop, print them again, and draw those also.
a new avatar print for melbourne supanova this weekend! let those who complained about sokka and suki’s absence in my last print consider themselves heard! (click through for details)
Zukka should’ve been canon I’m being dead fucking ass
Everyone always talks about zutara and the “poetic cinema” of it all and I love reading that stuff BUT
Sokka and Zuko are this special case where they’re almost complete opposites in every way, which might not work!! But it does work because in one way they the same: they are the less powerful sibling. And this is a defining factor in who they are as people. It’s kind of like the saying opposites attract (but only on small things, you need to be the same in your fundamental beliefs to work)
Zuko and Sokka both struggle with feeling inferior. This is shown throughout Zuko’s entire arc, but most notably during the Northern Water Tribe episodes when he finally captures Aang and describes his sister. Sokka is shown struggling when he loses his boomerang and begins learning how to use a sword. They are strong not because they try to best others using their own tactics, but because they are able to find strengths in other areas. They don’t play by others rules, they make their own.
Both lost their support systems at a young age they were forced to grow up quickly, but they handled it in different ways. Sokka is sarcastic and chooses to joke about a lot of really heavy things. Zuko, in contrast, takes everything super seriously and does not allow himself to feel anything other than rage for a VERY long time. This means that Zuko is oftentimes, unintentionally, hilarious. And Sokka, by comparison, makes you feel so deeply when he makes jokes about bad things he’s gone through.
Thas yin/yang shit luv
HERE’S WHERE WE BRING THEM TOGETHER OKAY PAY ATTENTION!!!
The reason they work so well together in Boiling Rock Part 1 and 2 is because they are perfectly equal. They balance each other. Sokka is the aloof sarcasm to Zuko’s blunt seriousness. When Sokka is freaking out, Zuko is able to calm him down and keep him in the present by reminding him of who he is. Sokka is able to keep Zuko focused by keeping him on track. And Zuko is the first one to bring up the fact that Sokka wouldn’t be able to leave his father behind if he knew he was there.
When Zuko fights Azula, it’s Sokka who helps guard him and they’re able to fight back and forth using their strengths. One of the best parts of the episode is when Sokka blocks Zuko from an attack from Azula and Zuko immediately steps in front after and continues fighting like 👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽 we love to see it
Also!!! I’m seeing a lot of “Zuko and Katara wear each other’s colors” um k
Also we could talk about the poetic cinema behind Zuko being his mom’s favorite and Sokka being his father’s favorite but both losing their one reliable parental figure that was left, resulting in them both feeling simultaneously jealous over their younger sister’s competence at their bending and guilty over the fact that their younger sibling was also forced into an undesirable situation by forces outside of their control but I’m tired
pick a character and make them ramble about their favorite thing
make up a fable, pretend it’s as famous as the Grimm fairytales. how does this fable affect the world and what would people reference from it? (i love this one because it can be as crazy and silly as you want)
make a commercial for something that really shouldn’t be sold at all. try to convince people to buy it.
ACRONYMS. but, like, try to have it make sense
make a poem about your story/something in your story
rewrite a classic but put your own twist on it
make up a detailed recipe
make a monologue with a plot twist or punchline in the end
create a ridiculously detailed timeline for a character
childhood memory (real one or make it up!)
improv rap lyrics
the story behind an inside joke
make up a mythical creature
pretend to be a commentary youtuber and pick a topic
the what if? pick a story and create an alternate ending to it
pick one scenario and several characters. how different are the reactions based on their personalities?
When talking about story writing, “writing skill” typically refers to everything that entails the creation of a story from brainstorming to drafting to editing, and while it’s fine to have a catch-all term for that kind of thing, it can be a bit misleading.
There’s a point many newer writers reach where they can tell that something is generally wrong but they can’t figure out what. To most effectively work on a skill you need to be able to identify what the problem is, and a good place to start is to take a look at yourself and ask if your skills are better as a writer or a storyteller.
(Editing is like a 3rd category because doing it well requires a good critical eye and strong technical skills, but for the sake of non-professional, personal editing, it can fit under “writing”.)
Writing and storytelling skills aren’t mutually exclusive. For very specific skills they’re divisible, but in general they affect each other and working on one tends to see some form of improvement in the other. Like with all skills, you can easily reach a point where you’re good at both, but most people have a natural inclination toward one or the other and it’s always good to know where you fall.
Writing skill is more technical. It’s concerned with elements like sentence flow, diction, structure, and other literary techniques. These writers usually work best with paper in front of them and practical application.
Storytelling skill is more conceptual. It’s concerned with plot, meaning, and entertainment. These writers usually work best in their mind and with theoretical ideas.
There are some signs that may help you discover where your natural strength lies, but remember that it’s possible to have a mix of skills and that some of the signs are situational and can be influenced by other factors. Mileage may vary on how rigidly these apply.
Signs of writing skills being more your strength:
Writer’s block may more frequently come from not knowing what to write or where to go, rather than not knowing how to write it.**
These writers tend to be good with essays or explaining ideas with the written word.
These writers tend to prefer planning stories before starting so they can focus on the writing rather than immediately making up where they have to go.
Editing brings out more issues with plot or story concepts rather than unclear writing or grammar.
They tend to write more detailed descriptions, better exposition, and have a good understanding of technical literary techniques like diction.
More likely to understand exactly what tweaking a scene needs to convey a specific concept or idea, particularity when rereading for editing.
Signs of storytelling skills being more your strength:
Writer’s block may more frequently come from not knowing how to write something rather than what needs to happen.**
Coming up with the sequence of plot events is easier than finding the words to describe it.
These writers tend to not need as much planning because their mind is wired to connect plot points and concepts on the fly.
Editing tends to brings out issues with poorer clarity of explanations, skeleton writing (not enough description; too much plot), or simplistic wording.
They tend to better understand plot cause-effect, tension and entertainment, and have a good understanding of thematic literary techniques like plot structure.
Ideas and plots are more naturally structured for the medium they’ll be used for, rather than frequently found to better off on TV or in another type of storytelling.
(**Writer’s block can be a complicated issue that, compared to the other points, has the highest level of variation for why it occurs.)
There’s no such thing as being too skilled in one area, but a severe imbalance can show up in ways like:
If writing skill is much higher than storytelling skill, the writing will be structurally sound and pleasant to read, but the plot may be full of holes and not that enthralling.
If storytelling skill is much higher than writing skill, the premise of the story may be interesting and well thought-out but the writing may be dull and/or disconnecting to the audience.
The exact implications of the imbalance will vary per story and per degree of issue.
In the end, there’s no such thing as a perfect writer. A division of skillsets doesn’t mean you can’t have varying abilities in both, but knowing where you tend to fall as a writer can be a first step toward finding better resources for what you need to improve. So take a look at which side of the fence you tend to fall on; your future progress will thank you.
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