In 1985, the Schomburg Center hosted a groundbreaking and highly publicized exhibition entitled “The Black West.” Longtime former Director of the Schomburg Center, Howard Dodson, and Black History Scholar, William Loren Katz, curated the 1985 in-person display.
Echoing that work, this digital project utilizes photographs, maps, film clips, works of art, and many other archival materials to tell the stories of Black frontiersmen, pioneers, cowboys, pathfinders, and so many more. They built lives for themselves on America’s western frontier, against all odds. Continue scrolling to experience their stories, preserved within these archives.
Given the eras of this project’s main focus, some of the historical materials presented here—to preserve and make available the historical record—reflect outdated terms and views. For more information about the library’s statement on potentially harmful content, click here.
→ Please note: this digital exhibition is best viewed in computer desktop proportions. Many of the visual materials in that original 1985 exhibition were sourced from peer institutions; similarly, we’ve supplemented this project with digitized photographs from archival collections across the country, mostly in the American West. Please refer to the footnotes and credit lines for item details. There are no AI-generated photographs or text.
As you scroll to experience this exhibition, note the extracted film clips from two 1939 Black cowboy films preserved by the Schomburg Center’s Moving Images and Recorded Sound Division: Bronze Buckaroos and Harlem Rides the Range. Both were superimposed onto the stages of two theatre photographs from the New York Public Library Collections. Maps and stereograph images of sweeping Western landscapes have also been included throughout to contextually place the lives of these Black Westerners within the lands they traversed.
★ DAYS OF OLD: Picturing the Black Wild West was curated and designed by Kimberly A. Henderson, the Schomburg Center’s Digital Curator. With research assistance from Kiahra Read and Assata David.
★ PICTURED IN EXHIBITION HEADER ★
INTRO FILM BANNER: Trimmed clip of Harlem Rides the Range (1939), overlaid onto an image of the State Theater, Cleveland, Ohio; Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library, Digital Collections. IMAGE ID TH-53167.
TITLE GIF: Collage of cropped, digitized archival images, details noted as they appear throughout the digital exhibition.
LANDSCAPE BELOW INTRO: 1941, “Scottsbluff, Nebraska.” The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. IMAGE ID 58977470.
★ Film clip, The Bronze Buckaroo (1939), Lucious Brooks plays “Dusty.”
*CLICK ANY IMAGE BELOW to begin exploring related photographs + resources ↓
→ Visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to explore materials in the featured reading lists and resources.
Refer to the footnotes for individual image credits, as many of the photographs were digitally loaned from peer institutions in the American West that preserve the physical photographs.
★ This digital exhibition was curated and designed by Kimberly A. Henderson, the Schomburg Center’s Digital Curator. With research assistance from Kiahra Read and Assata David.
→ Special thanks to the following collecting institutions for preserving, digitizing, and providing access to photographs and other visual materials that tell the story of Black life in the Wild West:
Montana State Historical Society
Kansas Memory, Kansas Historical Society
Denver Public Library
History Colorado Center
Oklahoma Historical Society
Nebraska State Historical Society
Greenley Museum, Colorado
Library of Congress
University of Montana, Mansfield Library
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library
Minnesota Historical Society
University of Texas at San Antonio
National Archives
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
Smithsonian American Art Museum
University of California, San Diego
Howard University
Ursuline Archives, Montana
Oregon Historical Society
Wisconsin Historical Society
La Plata County Historical Society
Amon Carter Museum of Art
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Historical Society of Forest Park, Illinois
★ PICTURED HERE ★
BANNER VIDEO ABOVE: Trimmed clip from the film, Bronze Buckaroo (1939), superimposed onto the stage of a photograph of the National Theatre, Washington, D.C. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library, Digital Collections. Image ID TH-57308.
c. March 1891, (Background Removed) Corporal in the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldier poses on his horse on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota. He wears a military uniform and has a gun in a holster on his belt. Snow covers the ground in the background of the original image. Denver Public Library Special Collections [X-31308].