Black cowboys taught Teddy Roosevelt how to break a horse and showed Will Rogers his first rope trick. And black couboy Bill Pickett is considered the best rodeo performer ever. There are many great unsung African-American heroes of the Old West. Some were brave individualists, like fur trader Jean Baptiste DuSable who became known as the father of Chicago, and some were outlaws, like Cherokee Bill, the most nototious of all black desperados. But most were settlers who ran hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants, and gave birth to generations of cattlemen. This is their amazing story, told for the first time on video through live-action re-enactments, rare archival photography, and interviews with descendents of western pioneers.
