PENDLETON, Ore. — In bold orange cowboy clothes, George Fletcher mesmerized the Pendleton Round-Up Arena rodeo crowd as he charged around on his competition horse. It wasn’t just the bright orange rodeo gear that got him attention, it was also him being a Black cowboy in the early 20th century.

Spectators in 1911 disagreed with a judge’s decision to award the bucking title to Fletcher’s white competitor. The audience cheered louder for Fletcher to announce their frustration with the outcome. But because of racism, white men were wary of giving a Black man the top prize. Still, Fletcher went on to be inducted into the Pendleton Round-Up Hall of Fame and set a precedent for Black cowboys in Western culture.

When the Pendleton Round-Up was established, Black cowboys such as Fletcher were on the periphery. Fletcher and other cowboys of color left a mark on the culture and signaled a push for equal rights in rodeos.

“We depend on each other regardless of what color you are,” Wendell Hearn, a Black professional cowboy, said. “In rodeo we’re not competing against each other, we’re competing against the livestock.”

Through the generations

Despite Hearn’s philosophy, inclusion looked different in the past. Black Cowboys have been significantly underrepresented in the arena. Oregon has a strained history with its treatment of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. Black cowboys existed in the 19th and 20th centuries, though, and the growth of their movement continues to evolve.

In part, a measure of progress is reaching equity for all people — one of the Urban League of Portland’s main goals as a nonprofit advocacy group.

The league hosted a community conversation dinner in Pendleton during Round-Up week at the Vert Auditorium. The event honored the legacy of Black cowboys and cowgirls in rodeo history. To this end, the nonprofit assembled national Black cowboy organizations for its Sept. 12 conference.

One key speaker, Aisha McElroy, echoed the importance of storytelling between generations. At 33, she learned through a conversation with her grandfather that she comes from generations of ranchers, prompting her to step into her role as a fifth-generation Black cowgirl and now founder of the Black Cowboy Coalition.

Second-generation cowboy Wendell Hearn also spoke at the event, highlighting his father’s work as the founder of Cowboys of Color — an organization based in Texas that runs rodeos for nonwhite rodeo athletes.

“As a contestant I’ve been to rodeos where not only was I the only Black contestant, I’d be the only Black person in the city altogether,” Hearn said.

Hearn described his father’s time as confined to performing after the main rodeo was over. Through the determination of his father, Hearn said his life as a professional cowboy has faced less oppression. Although Black and other nonwhite cowboys still make up a smaller population, Hearn said he’s seen the numbers grow in recent years, particularly in Texas and Oklahoma.

Bridging the cultural gap

The experience of Black cowboys reflects the experience of other marginalized groups in society more broadly. Urban League President Nkenge Harmon Johnson said it’s important to highlight “the involvement of Black folk in rodeo because we always have been here from the very beginning.”

Movies and television don’t show the true history and diversity of cowhands, Harmon Johnson said, “but cowboys were Black and brown people, they were Native people, and still are in great number, but their stories don’t get told and shown.”

She added that one of the league’s goals at the Round-Up was to make it socially and culturally accessible to Black Oregonians. Harmon Johnson grew up attending the rodeo and didn’t realize other Black people may feel uncomfortable in a rural, white-dominated space.

“It’s cowboy Mardi Gras,” she said. “So many people don’t feel that this experience is accessible to them, and I didn’t know that, because I wasn’t an adult. But now, not only do I know it, I get to do something about it.”

League honors mayor-elect

Pendleton Mayor-elect McKennon McDonald welcomed the League to town. During the event, the League honored McDonald with a young professionals award — she is the award’s first ever honoree.

“We chose the mayor-elect for this award because she’s the first woman mayor in this community, she’s a young woman in politics and she’s not new, she’s not a fluke,” Harmon Johnson said. “It’s a very big deal, and I wanted to highlight her because it’s also not easy.”

McDonald said she was “humbled by the honor” and believes in the work the League is doing in the community. It also reflects what she does as an elected official, she said.

From the event, McDonald said she’s taking away that there are resources available from outside Pendleton that can help the community here as well as “the need to really make sure that all of our community is represented.”