Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes From Harlem to Hollywood and the American West by Keith Ryan Cartwright

Author:Keith Ryan Cartwright [Cartwright, Keith Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Social Science, Rodeos, Ethnic Studies, Biography & Autobiography, American, General, African American & Black Studies, African American & Black, Animal Sports, history, SOC001000 Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, SPO065000 Sports & Recreation / Rodeos
ISBN: 9781496226105
Google: gThCEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2021-11-15T23:49:40.807812+00:00

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Larry Callies came along in 1970 and ’71, and like Williams, he was not allowed to rodeo in Wharton County either. In South Texas, racism still ran deep.

In the summer of ’68—a few months after Williams had won his second and third state titles—Callies, who was not even eighteen, at the time, went to see a local Charlie Pride concert. Pride was a Black country singer who had a national recording contract. Callies was a guitar player who fancied himself as the next Charlie Pride—“I could sing just like him.”

That summer night, he was the only Black in Wharton County to buy a concert ticket. Everyone else was scared. Callies should have been scared, too, but he wasn’t. Then a group of white men chased him away from the concert.

Callies is certain they wanted to hang him just like they did seven years later, “when they hung a Black man for dating a white girl.” They hung that man from the rafters of a barn outside of nearby East Bernard. Authorities claimed he hung himself, but Callies said the man was found with his hands tied behind his back.

“That was in ’75,” said Callies, who was also the first cousin of Calvin Greely Jr. “I was [at the concert] in ’68. Man, you know, they wanted to kill me.”

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