Yeah, I had a white friend of mine years ago tell me there were no Black people in the West. It was all I could do not to punch him in his face.

Instead, I had to school him on what little I knew of the diversity of the West, particularly the abundance of Black cowboys which I'd learned from my relatively cursory studies on the subject.

There is a long and robust history of Black people in the West and significant scholarship on the matter and the fact that that has not been corrected via modern day cinema is a damn shame.


Spot on about Zahn McClarnon. He's like today's Wes Studi or Graham Greene.