“When I heard that there would be black cowboys, I knew we had to be here,” Lisa Thompson said as she scurried towards the exit to beat the crowd out the door after the Southeastern Rodeo Association’s inaugural St. Louis Black Rodeo Saturday night at Chaifetz Arena.
It was her and her young son MJ’s first rodeo, but you couldn’t tell by looking at them.
She was decked out in a red sequined cowgirl inspired ensemble with a shiny hat as the outfit’s focal point. MJ, who looked to be no older than five or six, had a miniature ten gallon hat, belt buckle that coordinated with his blue jeans and tiny cowboy boots.
“He loves cowboys and I wanted to give him the experience of seeing positive images of cowboys who looked like him,” Lisa said.
The show was over, but MJ still had a smile as big as the hat that almost covered his eyes stretched across his face.
“I loved when they did the bullriding,” MJ said before they hustled off and got lost in the crowd.
Everyone else loved it too.
When announcer Morris Frye made the announcement, “ladies and gentlemen, it’s bull riding time” signifying the final event of the evening’s festivities, the entire arena erupted.
Yes, there was an arena full of black people who came to see the rodeo.
It would be easy to assume that the African-American rodeo would be such a concentrated niche that it would shared amongst a small, but committed few who follow the culture.
But thousands poured into the arena, dressed in their soulful interpretations of the standard cowboy and cowboy attire, ready to get their rodeo on.
The black rodeo has its own flavor. A DJ spun classic and contemporary R&B as the rodeo’s soundtrack. The rodeo clown antics were overshadowed by a couple’s old school dance contest that culminated with a battle of the generations as gentleman of a certain age danced circles around a young man who dared to challenge him.
And then there was the rodeo action itself. In addition to Texas and Oklahoma, the cowboys and cowgirls came from places like Detroit, Chicago and even St. Louis.
Rodeo participant St. Louis native Terry Hewitt was introduced to the sport when he responded to a newspaper advertisement, according to his wife Zina.
“The man said he would teach him how to rope and he did,” Zina said. “That was 22 years ago.”
It was a lesson he passed on to his son T.J. – who was ten years old at the time – from the very beginning.
Now a man with more than twenty years of rodeo experience , T.J. was one of the calf ropers at the rodeo.
“That’s my baby,” Zina said. “Both of them eat, drink and sleep rodeo.”
The commitment to the craft was apparent from the men, women and children who mounted up as part of the rodeo. They roped calves, faced off in a “Pony Express Relay” race before going head to head with the bulls.
Even those young people who at first appeared to be dragged in took notice by evening’s end.
“This rodeo is lit,” one young man said as he watched cowboy after cowboy become casualty of the bulls. When he and a couple of companions (or relatives) first took their seats – apparently forced to the rodeo by elder family members- they seemed determined to remain tuned out by way of their phones.
By rodeo’s end, the crew was so engaged that all of their phones were put away as they leaned in waiting to see if anyone would win the battle of the bulls.
“Right now it’s bulls 8 and cowboys 0,” Frye announced with one rider left to go.
The bulls were ultimately undefeated, but their victory over the cowboys didn’t make the experience any less memorable.
“A lot of people don’t know that there were…that there are real black cowboys, and they need to come out and see it,” Zina said.
Dwight Sparks, who was born and reared in Mississippi before migrating to St. Louis, feels like the rodeo offers an important lesson to the next generation.
“I grew up around horses in Mississippi and these young people up here don’t really know much about that,” said Sparks, who is also a member of the Show Me Riders horse riding club. “I’m glad we had something like this to show them.
This is a part of our history too you know,” Sparks said. “A lot of people tend to forget, and plenty more just don’t know.”
