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The untold black cowboy experience
Discover how Larry Callies is bridging Western heritage with the black community, educating about the rodeo's impact, and showcasing the black cowboy experience, all while preserving history in Rosenberg.
ROSENBERG, Texas - You can’t rewrite history, but you can certainly make sure the full story is told and at the Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenburg, Larry Callies shares the often-untold stories of Black cowboys.
"I’ve always wanted to honor the black cowboys with something because I didn’t want they did to go in vain because if I hadn’t opened this place all of this would be lost," said Callies.
The museum’s doors opened in 2017, and inside, you find cowboy pictures and memorabilia.
"The first American cowboy came from the Houston area. They were black men, slaves and they were the first cowboys," said Callies.
Room by room, you learn about the history of cowboys, and it all ties back to slaves.
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"Black cowboys were hired, or forced in slavery to work cattle and they had a house boy, a yard boy to pick the cattle, called the cowboy, that’s where the word cowboy came from," said Callies.
"You bet not call a white man a cowboy in the 1800s, he’d say ‘I’m not your slave, I’m a cattle handler.’"
Yet when you watch Western film, rarely if ever do you see black people represented.
"A cowboy in the 1800s was a black man until Hollywood turned it white in the 1930s," said Callies. "I couldn’t even get in a rodeo until 1971, I couldn’t get into a rodeo, a white one, we had black ones."
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So Callies does his part to teach people like DaLyah Jones, Fox 26 caught up with her after she visited the museum to ask what brought her there.
"I’m thinking about the importance of narrative change and narrative shift and how we often do not know our power because we don’t know our stories. We don’t know an accurate depiction of our stories," said Jones.
Now, Callies uses his power to tell the full story.
"I am correcting history. I am saving articles. I am doing something that’s really important, you need to know your history, to know where you’re going."