👢 1 for the road: Rodeo honors Black cowboys

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Photo: Courtesy of Ivan McClellan Before there were white cowboys in the American West, there were Latino vaqueros, Indigenous cattle handlers and Black cowboys, Axios' Russell Contreras writes. Why it matters: That history, often forgotten in tales of the nation's frontier, is being honored by photographer Ivan McClellan, who has documented Black cowboys and cowgirls for nearly a decade. He has organized a Juneteenth rodeo in Portland, Oregon, tomorrow. McClellan tells Axios he launched the inaugural "Eight Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo" — named for how long a rodeo bull rider has to stay on for a ride to be scored — to provide a venue for Black cowboys and cowgirls to compete in a sport usually dominated by whites. Photo: Courtesy of Ivan McClellan McClellan grew up in Kansas. But he said that, like many Black Americans, he couldn't relate to cowboy culture because of how it was portrayed on TV and in movies. "What I had seen in film was John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and 'Tombstone' ... all of these white cowboys. The only Black cowboys I'd seen were kind of a joke, like Cowboy Curtis on 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse.'" That changed when he saw real Black cowboys in Oklahoma — and recognized similarities with his Kansas family. Go deeper.