The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America

For decades the idea of the American cowboy has been romanticized in books, television, and movies as a white hero. The Black cowboy, if recognized at all, is represented as an historical side note resigned to a distant memory. After emancipation, many formerly enslaved people traveled West in search of work. They found employment as ropers, trail cooks, wranglers, bronco busters, drovers, foremen, fiddlers, cowpunchers, cattle rustlers, singers, and riders. By the late 19th century, one in four cowboys were Black.

Taken between 1993 and 1997, the photographs in The Long Ride Home offer testimony to the lived experiences of thriving communities and a continued legacy of the diverse beauty, romance, and majesty of the Black West. Celebrating a wide variety of circumstances, from Black-owned ranches to big city riding clubs across the United States, Tarver’s images speak to Black joy, Black freedom, and Black resistance.

About the Artist:

Ron Tarver is an internationally recognized photographer and educator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Tarver received a BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. He is Associate Professor of Art at Swarthmore College, in Swarthmore, PA. Before joining the faculty at Swarthmore, he was a staff photojournalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 32 years. While at the The Inquirer, Tarver won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for a series documenting school violence in the Philadelphia public school system. During that tenure, he was nominated for three additional Pulitzers, and among other honors, received awards from World Press Photos and the Sigma Delta Chi Award of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Tarver’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many museums, corporate, and private collections, including the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, PA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY.

Tarver’s grandfather was a working Black cowboy in the 1940s.

About The Print Center:

The Print Center, a nonprofit gallery located in Philadelphia’s historic Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, encourages the growth and understanding of photography and printmaking as vital contemporary arts through exhibitions, publications, and educational programs. The Print Center is an international voice in print; their global outlook coincides with a strong sense of local purpose. Recognized as a locally significant and internationally respected gallery, an art education provider, and an artists’ advocate, The Print Center is known for supporting emerging and established artists; developing unusual and intriguing programs that attract a diverse audience; and making art accessible to all members of the community.