An accepted premise of recent black historiography holds that black cowboys were offered more favorable status and more opportunity for self-expression than any other black occupation group in nineteenth-century America.[1] Although occasionally subjected to discrimination and the target of racism, the black cowboy held an unusual position in the social and economic life of the frontier West. The majority of whites on the ranches and in the cattletowns realized the importance of all cowboys’ contributions and adjusted their prejudices accordingly. While cowboys were on the trail, the success of the venture depended on each man performing his assigned duties. The mutual interdependence left little room for arrogant displays of racial superiority or overt discrimination, no matter how ingrained, nor was there room for feelings of oppression and resentment. The intimacy of the job, the living conditions (where men slept or where they ate), and the long hours spent in each other’s company precluded the usual white-black attitudes.
In an age when blacks were stereotyped by the white community as either foolish or primitive and when their opportunities to advance, either socially or economically, were limited, ranch-related jobs offered more dignity and more opportunity for self-expression than any other job available. Few black men rose to positions of foreman or trail boss, even the all-black crews were supervised by white men, but on the trail the common rider or cook usually was not discriminated against in pay or work assignments. A few black cowboys complained that they were given dirtier, more dangerous assignments, but then some white riders also felt they were “picked on” by their bosses. Kenneth Porter observed: “Actually firsthand accounts of
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ranch and cattle-trail life indicated about as much segregation as prevailed on Huckleberry Finn’s and the ‘Nigger Jim’s’ raft before the appearance of ‘The King’ and ‘The Duke”‘. [2]
There are frequent references, in reminiscences and contemporary accounts, to the same favored position continuing once the trail crews reached the cattle towns. As long as Dodge City remained a wide-open cowtown, the black riders and hands appeared to be nearly as comfortable in town as they had been on the range and on the trail. (Just how relaxed a black trail-herd cowboy could be is illustrated by Col. Jack Potter’s description of the arrival of a cattle crew when “old Ab Blocker’s colored cook, Gordon Davis, marched into Dodge City, mounted on the back of his left wheel oxen, with fiddle in hand, playing ‘Buffalo Girls Can’t You Come Out Tonight.'”[3]) Few, if any, of the early hotels, bars, and restaurants were segregated. J. A. Comstock recalled his own error in trying to exclude “a young mulatto cowboy” from the Dodge House where Comstock was clerk. After the mulatto had checked in, Comstock assigned a drunken white cowboy to share the extra bed in the same room. The black didn’t mind sharing the room, but not with a drunk. When he ordered the drunk out of the room at pistol point, the man fled. Because of this action, Comstock’ s boss told him not to accept the black cowboy the next night. But when the clerk told him there were no rooms, the cowboy drew his pistol and waved it in Comstock’s face, saying: “You are a liar!” The clerk quickly rechecked his roster and found a suitable room.[4]
Nat Love, “the Deadwood Kid,” one of the West’s most notorious, at least most publicized, black cowboys, remembered Dodge as the place where all cowboys tried to drink all the “bad whiskey” and staggered to the task of painting the town a “deep red.”[5] This did not necessarily mean that the celebrating and carousing was done in the same bars and brothels along Front
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Street that catered to the white trade. By 1880 the black population was large enough to furnish its own distractions for the black cowboy. The weekly newspapers mention black-owned “bawdy houses” and “a sort of boarding house and dance hall.”[6] There were also respectable establishments where blacks were welcome, such as Aunt Sallie’s Restaurant, as well as black parties and dances they could attend.[7] The result was that the black cowboy just off the range found Dodge every bit as entertaining as his white coworker. The economic cost, if not a more tolerant conscience, was too great to allow much harrassment [sic].
Then, too, the white residents of Dodge were appreciative of the role the cowboy played and were well acquainted with the hazards and discomforts of a cattle drive. Any cattleman or cowboy was only too willing to expand on the theme in the Long Branch or Dodge House. The listeners were made aware that the black cowboys had “held point,” ate the dust of “the drag,” shared the night shift, helped hold off marauding Indians, and braved the dangers of river crossings. When the outfit reached Dodge, these experiences could not be forgotten immediately nor could behavior towards those who had shared the adventure be abruptly changed. Years after the trail drives were only memories, white participants recalled their gratitude for some past favor or aid that came through a black companion’s effort.
The relationship established through the cattle industry was frequently even more personal and longer lasting. Print Olive, one of the West’s toughest ranchers and a resident of Dodge who had killed both white and black cattle thieves with indiscriminate relish, had more reason than most to be appreciative of a black cowhand. Print’s constant companion, James Kelly, was at the saloon the night Print was shot by Jim Kennedy. As Kennedy stood over Olive preparing to empty his gun into the wounded ranch-
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er, Kelly fired one shot that brought Kennedy down and saved his friend’s life.[8] Kelly eventually left Print Olive’s service and was replaced by Sam Johnson. This lanky, taciturn black man accompanied Print on all his business trips as well as working closely with him at his ranch on the Sawlag. [sic] “There were few secrets between Print and Sam,” according to Harry Chrisman, and on occasion, the boss “poured out his plans to the colored man.”[9] John Slaughter’s hand, John Battavia “Old Bat” Hinnaut, played a similar role of confidante and bodyguard.[10] George Bolds had firsthand knowledge of another such relationship when, as a young man newly come to Dodge, he bedded down in the same room of the Dodge House with Colonel Draper and his black companion Zeke. Zeke stuck a knife in a doorjamb and another in the floor alongside a package which, Draper explained, contained $5,000. With these precautions, Draper said, “Goodnight, Zeke,” to his hand, and “Put out the lamp, sonny,” to Bolds. Bolds did as he was told, but spent a sleepless night conjuring up visions of bloody mayhem at the hands of what he considered two dangerous men. Frank Smith, a black cowhand who frequently followed a herd to Dodge City, was far more than a cook, reaching almost partnership status with one of Texas’ legendary cattle kings. At one point when his boss was sorely pinched for funds, Smith loaned Ab Blocker $4,000, which Blocker let ride at 10% interest year after year until a large fund had been accumulated. When Smith bought supplies for Blocker’s outfit in Wright, Beverley & Co.’s store, the bill of lading was made out to “Smith & Blocker.”[11]
Although there are only a few recorded clashes between whites and blacks, there are instances of white cowboys coming to the defense of a black companion.[12] In at least two instances, the white witnesses to a black cowboy killing a white man secured the killer’s release. Henry
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Hilton, who owned a small ranch south of Dodge was one who was involved in the death of both a black and a white man. In the latter case, the killing resulted from a white cowboy threatening to lasso Hilton. The black man warned him to stop. When the “horseplay” continued in a more threatening manner, Hilton drew his gun and shot his tormentor dead. The other cowboy witnesses saw the killing as a clear case of self defense and Hilton did not stand trial, dying in another shootout with a black man.[13]
William Allen’s killing of a white cowboy in a “Cow Camp” south of Dodge on the Cimarron River gives an interesting twist to such affairs. In the preliminary hearing before Dodge City’s Justice of the Peace R.G. Cook, witnesses testified both for and against Allen, although “the evidence for the defence tended strongly to justification of the homicide.” However, since the evidence was divided, Allen was bound over to the next session of the District Court.[14] Allen was defended by Harry Gryden and prosecuted by the County Attorney Mike Sutton, one of the cleverest and most tenacious attorneys to fill the position. Gryden secured a continuance and Allen continued to languish in jail. While waiting trial, two other prisoners broke jail and tried to persuade Allen to join them. Being confident of his favored position and the support of his white companions, he refused the offer, preferring to take his chances with the legal system. Gryden secured another continuance in January 1881 and finally secured his release, (although it was a close call when Allen was found guilty of murder in the third degree.[15]) In few jurisdictions would a black man charged with the murder of a white man been so confident of securing justice.
Did the favored position of the black cowboy and his more independent lifestyle carry over to other black residents of the cowtowns? Was there a heightened respect for and a noticeable lowering of racial prejudice against
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the black non-cowboy population? For instance, were blacks who settled in rural communities in the same area and at the same time subjected to more harrassment [sic] and fewer economic opportunities for advancement? In short, did the presence of black cowboys contribute to a freer, less prejudicial society?
Obviously, the restraints many black people experienced in the South were loosened when they migrated to the western frontier. In the roistering atmosphere of Dodge, Wichita, or Caldwell at the height of the summer season there were few inhibitions. Probably in no other setting of the 1870s or 1880s could a white man-about-town have lived openly with a black prostitute without drawing censure, ostracism, or worse. Yet, Bobby Gill, a white Front Street gambler did “cohabitate” with Susy Haden, “a beautiful Creole maiden.[16] Aunt Sallie Frazier, in whose “veins flowed the blood of many races” and who had a black adopted daughter, operated a fully integrated restaurant patronized by cowboys, merchants, dance hall girls, and permanent white residents.[17] These instances were covered, no doubt, by the mantle of black cowboy favor. However, as the town grew with an increasing number of permanent white families with mainstream American sensibilities and prejudices, the narrower the blanket of toleration became. Before the end of the cattle town era, segregation became more pronounced–even for the black cowboys as evidenced by the presence of all-black bawdy houses, dance halls, and rooming accommodations.
For the vast majority of permanent or semi-permanent black residents, the record is spotted at best. There is, for instance, little evidence of upward economic mobility by blacks. They were employed as servants, cooks, laundresses, porters, waiters, and laborers. Social and entertainment opportunities for blacks, other than that stimulated by Front Street catering to the Texas trade, was never well organized. Black religious expression
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was equally disorganized and based on small, individual effort. While it is true that schools, courts (including juries), and elections were open to all, the social development of the town became increasingly segregated.
In contrast, the colony of Kentucky blacks who came in March 1878 to Hodgeman County just north of Dodge, shared more of the rural social life and secured a more stable and diversified economic niche in the community than did the Dodge City blacks. The colony had intended to establish a town, Morton City, and a supporting farming community, but arriving in the midst of a prolonged drought with little cash and even less preparation for the rigors of frontier life, the town concept was quickly abandoned.[18] Most of the families homesteaded and the rest drifted into the small, rural villages along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Jetmore, the closest town became the major beneficiary, although several of the colonists found employment in Dodge City, Larned, and Kinsley.
By 1880 members of the colony owned and operated businesses in the three smaller towns: barber shops, livery stables, drays, and “a renovating and cloth cleaning establishment” in Kinsley. Two of the settlers held political office as a member of an election board and as the first elected coroner of Hodgeman County. They also held a variety of other responsible jobs as teachers, ministers, stone masons, carpenters, and, in one rare instance, reporter for the Larned Chromoscope.[19] Most filed on a homestead claim, accumulated a few cattle, horses, and farm stock, and maintained a subsistence operation. They tended to remain in the area and the 1895 Kansas Census listed 120 blacks in Hodgeman County alone, only 36 fewer than in 1885. Two of the original colony were residents of Jetmore in 1930.[20]
Community attitudes were more receptive and supportive in the rural villages than in Dodge City. Research on blacks in Jetmore, Kinsley, and
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Larned newspapers is not as simple as it is in the Dodge papers because the rural papers do not always identify individuals as “Negro” or “colored” as the Dodge papers invariably did. There is generally a tone of disparagement or ridicule (usually passing for humor) when black social events are described in the Dodge papers. The village papers give far more coverage of weddings, deaths, picnics, excursions, births, dances, and even gossip, and the coverage tends to be little different from that given to white activities. The Jetmore Reveille used the same oblique, bantering style of birth announcements reserved in Dodge for the well-known white leaders of the town.[21] The formal coverage of a black wedding in the Larned Chromoscope is quite remarkable for that day and age:
One of the most pleasant events which has occurred in colored social circles for some time transpired Sunday evening, being the marriage of Mr. Daniel Cabins of Texas, to Miss Lena Davis of Mississippi. The ceremony was performed in Garrick Hall by Rev. G. Hervey of the First Missionary Baptist Church of Larned. The Hall was handsomely decorated for the occasion, and long before the appointed time was filled with a select number of friends and relatives of the bride and groom. The approach of the wedding party was heralded by the playing of the wedding march by Mr. A.H. Mcveigh. The bride and groom were handsomely attired. Bishop Hervey made a few appropriate introductory remarks before performing the cermony [sic] which made the twain one. A reception was tendered the bridal couple at their residence, where they received the congratulations of their many friends. A.H. Mcveigh on behalf of a number of citizens of Larned, in a few well chosen words, presented the happy couple with a number of serviceable gifts. The marriage is a happy one, and we wish the couple long life and prosperity.[22]
Although Dodge enjoyed black entertainers, especially the minstrels, there is no community group comparable to the Jubilee Singers of Larned who performed for many white churches and organizations such as the GAR.[23]
Undoubtedly, the size of the black minority in Jetmore influenced acceptance, but probably as important was the sense of shared hardships and climatic conditions. The obvious economic importance of the black residents in the rural area placed them in the same sort of favorable relationship that the economic importance did for the cowboy in the cattle town. Dodge
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City merchants could count in hard cash the impact of black cowboys with the same wages and same spending habits as their white cohorts. In the cowtowns, black permanent residents held modest positions with less money to spend. On the other hand, white and black homesteaders had about the same income to contribute to the farm villages. If the individual black families’ purchasing power was small, the aggregate of all the black settlers could make the difference between a profit or a loss. Further, a stone mason, carpenter, or liveryman was far more important to the smaller, but growing, towns than dishwashers and porters were to Dodge City.
A second, perhaps even more significant, factor was the nature and character of the black residents of the two communities. The Hodgeman Colony brought three ministers with them who immediately established churches and served as role models for the black community. Rev. George P. Hervey’s neat, cream-colored frame home in Larned was considered one of the “ornaments of the town.”[24] The church leaders were active in securing public aid for those in distress and took a strong position in supporting the same Republican party as their white neighbors. Black churches remained as the social center and arbitrator of behavior for the black community. In Dodge, the same role was performed by the Front Street dance halls, gambling joints, and saloons. The results clearly were apparent to all.
Black children in Hodgeman County were sent to schools that were established soon after they arrived and some of these schools were taught by black teachers. Even the Dodge City papers conceded that the Hodgeman Colony was bringing a “better class” of black people–“an industrious class,” and one that caused the people of Edwards and Hodgeman counties to be “pleased with their dark allies, and will dwell together as brothers in unity.”[25]
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The highly mobile black camp followers of Dodge who were attracted by the cowboy trade presented no such favorable picture. Black prostitutes from across the West were drawn to Dodge by the town’s notoriety. Accounts of prostitutes, black or white, were always insensitively treated with scorn and abuse. The viciousness and meanness of their lives was covered over with sarcasm and, in the case of blacks, racist witticisms. Since the most frequent notice of blacks in the newspapers were the various escapades of the black prostitutes, there was created an unflattering stereotype of all black women, at least all young black women. Black musicians, pugilists, and gamblers added to the unsavory population.
Boxing matches, better described as “slug fests,” were sponsored by the sporting crowd which frequently featured black contestants. A shade worse than the prize fights, according to one Dodge City official, was a duel with whips, referred to as a “lap-Jacket contest” witnessed by a Front Street crowd. This “African national game,” as a white editor called the exhibition, pitted two men with bull whips toeing a mark and whipping each other for the championship and fifty-cent prize money. “Blood flowed and dust flew and the crowd cheered until Policeman Joe Mason came along and suspended the cheerful exercise.” To charge the black men with responsibility for such a brutalizing display because of their African origin was an obvious attempt to shift the onus for the local popularity of vicious sports.[26] There were no such exhibitions in the rural communities. Reported sports activities tend to follow that of the Kinsley editor who noted that a baseball game in front of his office was held every day with “no distinction of color.”[27]
In short, the favored treatment of black cowboys so frequently reported in anecdotal accounts, had little impact on black residents of Dodge City who were not cowboys. After the cattle trade ended in 1886, blacks in Dodge
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were given no special privileges and were subjected to the same degree of racism and segregation found in other Kansas towns. Blacks in the smaller rural communities in the region were considered by the white majority to be substantial contributors to the economic, social, and political life, and, consequently, held a more favorable and less prejudiced status. Although economic consideration had much to do with “place” in both types of communities, the nature and character of the residents was also crucial. Long before the Texas herds began bypassing Kansas, the majority of white residents in Dodge had tried to rid the town of the cowboy camp followers, black and white. The unfavorable publicity the black sporting crowd received added to the stereotyping that mainstream Americans had already attached to blacks. Eventually, the same sensibilities and prejudices were to come to both types of communities, but it was far more gradual and far less provocative in the small communities. The black cowboys’ favored status was to have no influence in softening the transition in cowtown Dodge City nor did the absence of Texas trail crews adversely affect permanent black residents in the small rural villages.
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NOTES
- Kenneth W. Porter, The Negro on the American Frontier (New York, 1971), 521-22; William Loren Katz, The Black West (Garden City, NY, 1971), 97-100.
- Porter, Negro on the Frontier, 495-515.
- Jack Potter, Cattle Trails of the Old West (Clayton, NM, 1935), 75.
- J.A. Comstock recalled the incident years later to Heine Schmidt, Dodge City Globe, July 28, 1933.
- Nat Love, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as “Deadwood Dick,” by Himself (Los Angeles, 1907), 105.
- Dodge City Globe, October 9, 1883; Dodge City Times, July 12, October 11, 1883.
- Dodge City Globe, September 2, January 22, 1878.
- Harry E. Chrisman, The Ladder of Rivers: The Story of I. P. (Print) Olive (Chicago, 1883), 122.
- Ibid., 167.
- Allen A. Irwin, The Southwest of John H. Slaughter, 1814-1922 (Glendale, 1965), 147-50.
- J. Frank Dobie, Cow People (Boston, 1964), 142.
- Porter, Negro on the Frontier, 517.
- Dodge City Times, October 11, 1883; Dodge City Globe, October 9, 1883; Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones, The Negro Cowboys (New York, 1965), 69-70.
- Dodge City Times, September 4, 11, 1880; Dodge City Globe, September 7, 1880.
- Dodge City Globe, January 25, 1881; Dodge City Times, September 11, 1880.
- Dodge City Times, March 24, 1877.
- Dodge City Globe, April 9, 1878; Dodge City Journal, May 20, 1950.
- Heinie Schmidt, “Slaves Find Freedom in Morton, Now Hodgeman County Ghost Town,” High Plains Journal, January 17, 1952; Corporation Books, Archives Department, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, II, 510-11; Hodgeman Center Agitator, April 5, 1879.
- Larned Chromoscope, February 3, 1882.
- M. L. Sterrett, “Negro Colony Among Early Settlers of Hodgeman County,” Jetmore Republican, April 25, 1930.
- See as an example Jetmore Reveille, February 15, 1882.
- Larned Chromoscope, January 16, 1885.
- Ibid., July 13, 1884.
- Ibid., April 11, 1884.
- Dodge City Times, April 27, 1878; January 8, 1881.
- Robert M. Wright, Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital of the Great Southwest (Wichita, 1913), 169.
- Kinsley Graphic, May 4, 1878.