Who would ever think of looking for a pioneer wagon, one of those that a century and a half ago they sailed the Wild West, still in operation … a New York? Or meet some black cowboys on horseback, complete with boots and spurs, as in the impressive parades held in the city ​​streets to announce the arrival of a big circus? Up to a fairly recent past, cowboys could still be seen in the rodeos, although Whites and Blacks competed in separate competitions, as recalled a former black rodeo rider in his eighties. “Those like me they could enter the arena only after all the whites had left gone. Our life was hard, very hard." Being a Black Cowboy was really hard work, the rider continues.

For example, when it was time to brand the cattle, they introduced the cattle in the pen for groups of twenty, and it was the Black Cowboy's turn to capture them and pin them to the ground. Then the white marker arrived. In in other words, all the worst work fell to the Blacks. It was demanded of them often more than from a white person. Taming wild horses e preparing and saddling them every day for the daily work was often a burden to blacks. Even when, for example, it involved crossing an impetuous river, it was up to a Black Cowboy to enter first. Between them it existed, also out of necessity and not only for blacks but also for others ethnic groups, a sort of loyalty code that imposed equal responsibilities, teamwork, and mutual protection.

The cowboys who accompanied the cattle were interdependent with those who rode alongside them. They could have saved themselves mutually live or let each other die. There were times when it was. It was essential to have someone else at your side to assist and there were moments when one could not ignore the presence of black in a group of herdsmen because they were the ones cooking in the wagons and to...sing to tame the nervous cattle. Being a 'songster' it was a role that softened their harsh existence. However, if you think about the freedom he enjoyed, staying for days and days and even weeks, isolated in the great prairies to look after the livestock without having to undergo any supervision, the lives of cowboy was no worse than that of the black populations relegated to the I work in the tobacco or cotton fields. Thanks to forced coexistence with the whites and the service they rendered to them, the Black Cowboys could however, hope for a better relationship with white Americans compared to other ethnic groups, despite still being destined to suffer - again today - racist prejudices and discrimination. Even the cinema ignored the Black Cowboys; the vast majority of the protagonists of Western stories were white, none of them had a leading role, and many times, a black actor played a white to represent someone who in the true story had been a black cowboy. Who would suppose, for example, that the 1956 film Wild Paths, directed by John Ford, it partly retraced the story of a cowboy of color whose wife and children the Comanches had taken away? And who Was he impersonating the one who went looking for his niece? John Wayne! Now, the remake of the film The Magnificent Seven by director Antoine Fuqua, he seems to want to compensate with the imposing presence of Denzel Washington, the long period of oblivion in which the Blacks have been relegated Cowboys. And right in New York, there are those who are committed, in their own small way, to counteract this oblivion by making their story known. Set in an area the size of a football field, among tall  buildings and a major thoroughfare, right in Queens, the Federation is based dei Black Cowboys con le sue Cedar Lane Stables. Black Cowboys because the members of this federation are all black, and they intend to remember and make known their roots and own contribution to the evolution of the States. So, walking on foot for 1 mile from the subway A exit on Grand Avenue, you can reach it he federation headquarters on Conduit Av. Howard Beach. We are greeted affably by a smiling Mountain Man, main job chef, standing in front of his mobile kitchen wagon. The curious name, the cowboy explains to us, is a pseudonym because many of the members of the federation like to identify with nicknames. Mountain Man came north in 1970 from Virginia. After years of working with livestock and wild horses and participating in several rodeos,I  joined the Federation. “I saw that these people do an important job to make known history and break down prejudices. In schools in the States, they don't teach it truth about what life was really like in the West. I like teaching children, so I joined the Federation. But I also do the cook and any other job that belongs to a real cowboy, such as look after the horses, groom them, let them out into the paddock and bring them back into the box all sera. It is not easy to know the real name of the Captain, member, and co-founder of the Federation. Born in Louisiana, the parents of the new. When they arrived they were farmers and worked the land with horses. In life few aspects of daily life did not require the involvement of a horse, so the child grew up considering the horse as an essential element of one's identity. The truth that emerges by conversing amiably with these characters is that they are mostly people who emigrated from the deep south of the States looking for jobs that pay more than those held in tobacco and cotton plantations in South Carolina or Virginia to New York, they tried to rebuild a new life by becoming cooks, construction workers, or mechanics.