A Kansas City native started his own Black rodeo to celebrate the cowboys left out of Western...

In the heyday of cattle drives, blacks made up about 25 percent of cowboys. Another 25%-30% were Latino.
Sure not like the movies told it.

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel “I met him at a bar and we got to talking, and he said that he was working on a documentary about Black cowboys,” McClellan said. “I kind of laughed because the only image of a Black cowboy that I had in my head was Sheriff Bart in ‘Blazing Saddles.’”

In the mid-80s one of my rodeo travel partners and I were invited to compete in a Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in OKC. We met a great rodeo photographer named Spider (can't recall his last name) who later went on to be a PRCA photographer -- not an easy feat for anybody -- and was one of the first black PRCA photographers. "Mulie" was one of the bull riders there. He would light a cigarette before he got on his bull. I asked him how come he didn't go Pro since he was a great bull rider. He told me it was because the PRCA wouldn't let him smoke while riding, lol.