The greatest show on dirt: Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo is a showcase for Black cowboys and cowgirls

In 1977, Lu Vason noticed an absence of Black cowboys and cowgirls participating in Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days. Led by his curiosity, Vason, a leader in the entertainment industry, spent a few years researching and found that there were thousands of active Black cowboys and cowgirls across the country. Motivated by a desire to give these cowboys and cowgirls a platform to showcase their talents, in 1984 he created an all-Black rodeo association named after the legendary Black cowboy, Bill Pickett.

The anthology collection The African American Experience in Texas contains an essay entitled “In Search of the Black Cowboy in Texas,” written by historian Michael N. Searles, which explains that Pickett originated the rodeo sport of steer wrestling, establishing himself as the most famous Black cowboy of the American West and the first black cowboy to be inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

Pickett’s name was resurrected when Vason adopted it in forming the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR). In 1987, the North Fort Worth Historical Society commissioned a bronze statue showing Pickett bulldogging a one-thousand-pound longhorn. The lifelike sculpture sits on the grounds of Fort Worth’s Cowtown Coliseum where Pickett had performed during its grand opening in 1908.

After Vason’s passing in 2015, his wife, Valeria Howard Cunningham understood the rich history of the rodeo and its importance to the community and answered the call to keep the BPIR legacy alive. I met Howard Cunningham last month at BPIR’s Fort Worth tour stop — where the rodeo has brought Bill Picket’s presence back to the Cowtown Coliseum — and immediately noticed that she was flanked by a Black woman-led team.

“I built a team of strong, determined, African American women that I could trust and who trust me, and working together, we knew we could get whatever we needed to get done, done,” she said.

Some of the women on her team are cowgirls who have been immersed in rodeo culture since they were children and know things that Howard Cunningham doesn’t, educating her along the way from their perspective. She looks to others for business savvy, like Margo Wade LaDrew, who started out as BPIR’s Los Angeles Coordinator and was promoted to National Development and Marketing Director. Billed as the “greatest show on dirt,” today more than 130,000 fans annually flock to BPIR and Howard Cunningham credits her team for elevating this era of the rodeo.

Now in its 38th year, the rodeo travels to more than 30 cities across the U.S. You can catch Black cowboys and cowgirls like Jhanii Hardin and Reneisha Hardin — sisters who have been on horses since they were in their mothers womb — at the 2022 Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo Finals, with stops including Atlanta, Georgia (August 6-7); Los Angeles, California (July 6-7); Oakland, California (July 9- 10); Fort Worth, Texas (August 20); and Washington, D.C./Upper Marlboro, Maryland (September 24).

Johnica Rivers is a writer, editor, and curator whose work explores race, place, and gender. She is particularly interested in the relationship between peripatetic ways of being and Black women’s cultural and intellectual production. Rivers lives and works itinerantly between New York, Mexico City, and her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. You can find her documenting her creative practice and travels on Twitter and Instagram at @johnica.

This story was originally published June 28, 2022 at 9:00 AM.