Portland Photographer Showcases Black Cowboys in the Rodeo Capital of the World
Photographer Ivan McClellan grew up watching Western movies and Bonanza reruns, and going to rodeos with his family in Kansas City. But as a kid, he never saw earnest depictions of cowboys that looked like him. “I didn’t know a thing about Black cowboys,” says McClellan in a recent interview with the Mercury. Any depictions of Black cowboys he did see were as “a punchline”—Sinbad in The Cherokee Kid, or Cowboy Curtis on Pee Wee’s...