This photo story is from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here, or pick up the summer issue as one-off purchase here.
In 2024, I met a 14-year-old boy named Keagan outside a Walls Bargain Center in Grenada, Mississippi. He was training for rodeo competitions—the first in his family to ride horses—and shared the sense of peace he felt in their presence. “They calm everything down,” he told me.
Roy, Keagan’s mentor, has spent his whole life around horses. “They each have their own personality,” he explained. Tragically, Roy’s brother died in a horse accident. Yet rather than abandon the lifestyle, every November 9th, on his brother’s birthday, Roy organizes a special ride in his honor, sharing his passion with younger generations. For him, these are more than just gatherings—they are a way to breathe new life into something he’s loved since childhood.
In America’s Southern states, cowboys are guardians of a rich cultural history. In the case of Roy and Keagan, that history is a proud Black history, one that bears the scars of slavery, segregation, and the struggle for civil rights, but that is constantly evolving and keeping pace with the march of time, even as it is frequently overlooked.
The modern world has produced few archetypes more enduring than the cowboy. Immortalized by Spaghetti Westerns and Hollywood as rugged, grumpy sunburnt loners with tankard-shaped heads and eyes like gathering storms, it’s widely forgotten that by the late 19th century one in four cowboys was Black, just as people don’t tend to remember that the term ‘cowboy’ itself was originally loaded with racist connotations. In the slave-holding South, white men who worked with cattle were called cattlemen or ranchers, while Black men, relegated to subordinate roles, were referred to as cow boys, the diminutive “boy” emphasizing their inferior status.
In the 18th century, it was enslaved cowboys of African origin—with a long and proud history of herding in the Sahel region of West Africa—who worked the first French-owned ranches in Louisiana. After slavery was abolished, job opportunities were scarce, so many of these men stayed on in the cattle industry. Yet as cowboy culture grew into a defining symbol of the American identity, Black cowboys were largely erased from mainstream narratives. Still, some left an indelible mark: Nat Love, a freed slave, became legendary for his exceptional riding and shooting skills, while Bill Pickett invented bulldogging, a rodeo technique still practiced today.
“It’s widely forgotten that by the late 19th century, one in four cowboys was Black.”
It was within this historical context that I embarked on a journey along Highway 61, also known as the Blues Highway, to document the world of Black cowboys as it is today. It’s a road that’s known a colossal amount of pain, yet a new generation of riders are far from beholden to that.
Trail rides are large, lively gatherings that bring together not just horseback riding, but also music, cultural pride, and modern hedonism in the great outdoors. They’re an expression of a tradition that has deep roots in the rural South. Until abolition, Creole landowners and those who’d been freed from slavery were shut out of white-only rodeos. So, trail rides became a culture in their own right. Initially soundtracked by zydeco—a form of Louisiana Creole folk music that emerged in the early 20th century—in recent decades, elements of the genre have become fused with hip-hop, drawing in a younger crowd of city-dwellers to these soirees.
In 2023, I went on a journey through the South with my husband and two-year-old son. Planning the trip from France was no walk in the park. More often than not the weather in the region is unpredictable and the cowboys I wanted to photograph are elusive, tending to live day by day. Upon arrival, a Category 5 storm forced me to cancel my plans. Eventually, though, I found a small, intimate trail ride under a sky that burned like fire. People pulled up on horses next to ATVs—blasting music, dancing, drinking, romancing, and galloping off toward the Southern sunset.
This photo story is from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here, or pick up the summer issue as one-off purchase here.
The post Happiness Is a Hurtling Horse for the Black Cowboys of the South appeared first on VICE.
