08/27/2026
Before rodeo had a hall of fame, a Black cowboy from Texas invented an event so daring that crowds could hardly believe their eyes. 🤠
Bill Pickett was born around 1870 in Texas, of African American and Cherokee descent, one of thirteen children in a family of former slaves. Working cattle as a young man, he developed a bold new way to bring down a steer, leaping from his horse, grabbing the animal by the horns, and wrestling it to the ground. The technique became known as bulldogging, and it is the direct ancestor of the steer wrestling event you can still see in rodeos today. He performed it across the country and beyond with the famous 101 Ranch Wild West Show.
Historians note that a large portion of the cowboys who worked the old cattle trails were Black, Mexican, or Native, though the movies almost never showed it. Pickett shared arenas with performers who would become legends, yet segregation often kept him from the billing and pay his skill deserved. In 1971 he became the first Black cowboy inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, a recognition that arrived long after his death in 1932. 🐎
The real West was far more diverse than the one Hollywood sold us. Which piece of that fuller frontier story would you most want to see told on screen?
