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Sunday, Apr. 11, 1999

Black cowboys have rich, respectful history in South Texas

Once an image of pride, ranch work now is considered menial labor by some

By DOREEN C. BOWENS
Staff Writer

   Gene Brown, 43, doesn't like his father calling him a drugstore cowboy.
   "I still choke steer down, tie them up just like they did back in the day," said Brown, who works at Tony Padilla Ranch in Refugio.
   But the ranching profession, which offered men like Brown's father and grandfather respect in earlier years, is now regarded as a minimal wage job.
   Brown, a fourth-generation black cowboy, likely will be the last in the family line. None of his three children -- two boys and one girl -- want that sort of life. They dream of being athletes or computer technicians or video game designers.
   But his father, John Brown, found more dignity working as a cowboy in the Southwest than as a sharecropper contending with Jim Crow laws in the South.
   John Brown, now 71, raised 12 children on what is now O'Connor Brothers' Ranch in Refugio. Two followed his trail as cowboys -- albeit newfangled ones. "They don't work cattle the way they used to," John Brown said. "They got all their trucks and trailers. . . ."
   Today's cowboys might use 4x4s, computers and helicopters to round up and count cattle, but Gene Brown said his work hasn't lessened.
   "We still are breaking horses," he told his father.
   In 1985, Gene Brown left rural Refugio to embrace the modern life in cities such as Houston and Dallas. He thought his quality of life would increase in the bigger cities, but he returned to Refugio in 1996.
   "There was so much violence in those cities, with drive-by shootings, . . ." Gene Brown said. "I didn't want my 20-year-old son to get involved in gangs."
   Gene Brown's 35-year-old brother, Ray, also abandoned Refugio to bask in Dallas' city lights. But he too had grown to admire his father's profession and found joy in rodeo bull riding.
   "My father made me want to be a black cowboy," said Ray Brown, who has won several belt buckles for bull riding in the African-American Rodeo.
   But bull riding took its toll. He suffered a broken back, legs and arms, and soon joined Gene at the ranch.
   

Black cowboy beginnings

   Joe Keese, ranch foreman at O'Connor Brothers' Ranch in Refugio County, said the ranch has few black cowboys today, compared with the earlier ranch days, when cowboys like Gene and Ray Brown were common.
   "There were blacks in this area after the war between the states," Keese said. "Black cowboys were one of the best sources for labor. There were Hispanics too, but they weren't in large numbers like they are today."
   Keese said the profession still holds allure for new immigrants who are willing to work hard for low wages.
   Many black cowboys began as ranch slaves. When Texas slaves were freed in 1865, many stayed as hired cowhands, according to Jack Weston's "The Real American Cowboy."
   

Days of hard work

   During the late 1800s and early 1900s, 25 percent of cowboys were black and 12 percent were Hispanic, Weston wrote.
   "My grandfather was a slave," John Brown said. "We were born and raised on the ranch."
   After John Brown's birth, his name was etched into the stone of the well on the O'Connor ranch, which at the time spanned 500,000-acres from the San Antonio River to Copano Bay to Mission Bay.
   Although John Brown's legacy stemmed from slavery, he and his family were regarded as equals on the ranch. Brown carried guns on a saddle, fought, ate and slept side by side with whites.
   "We all got along real good," said Brown, who raised nine daughters and three sons on the O'Connor ranch.
   Karl James Oliver, 84, remembers receiving the same wage -- 50 cents per day -- as a white cowboy in the 1930s.
   "That was a hard life," he said. "We worked to we can't see in the morning to we can't see at night. There were no eight-hour days."
   John Wayne or Clint Eastwood never would have made it, he said.
   "Those guys made it look easy," Oliver said. "It wasn't nothing easy about being a cowboy."
   They rounded up cattle from sunrise to sundown, weathering heat, wind and storms. They wrestled with large ornery animals as they broke wild horses and branded steers. Their work often meant eating and sleeping on horseback.
   "And we did all of that before breakfast," Oliver laughed with a twinkle in his eye.
   

Segregation

   Despite the hard work, everyone worked together, Oliver said.
   "There was no segregation here," said Oliver, who raised his four children on a ranch. "Everybody was friends. Everybody got along fine."
   He remembers in 1921 when the Ku Klux Klan was rumored to march in Refugio. Black cowboys lined up on the streets and the roofs of stores armed with guns waiting.
   "The KKK heard about this and never marched in our town," he said.
   Still, some societal segregation existed when black cowboys came to town.
   "Blacks didn't eat with white people," said Sephin "Tony" Lott, 92.
   Or at least not comfortably. Lott recalls his ranch boss asking him to eat with him in a restaurant. Folks stared and the waitress initially refused to serve him.
   "I could barely eat," Lott said. "I only took one bite of my chicken fried steak."
   

Working together

   While in town there were rules to follow, Lott said.
   Blacks had to move off the sidewalks and look down when a white person walked by. There were separate drinking cups for blacks and whites.
   On the ranch, however, the boss worked along with blacks and Hispanics, Lott said.
   "Once a cow was trembling from lying down all night long," he said. "We all had to pick it up together. That's how it was back then."
   Edward Jerry Garza, 80, grew tired picking cotton, corn and hauling horses in McFaddin, before he decided to move to Refugio to work at the O'Connor ranch for 50 cents a day.
   "I roped a lot of calves," Garza said. "I tied animals down, broke horses and I was a bull rider."
   Being half-Mexican and half-black, a 12-year-old Garza did well at the ranch because he could speak Spanish.
   "I was a cowboy," Garza said. "I wasn't one of the best, but I was some of the best."
   But horses with names such as Hell's Angel, Whiskey and Irene, left him with lifelong injuries.
   "A longhorn hit me in the middle of my palm," Garza said as he pointed to his left hand, which has only half a thumb. "I got four pins in my ankle. My shoulder was broken and my knee cracked from breaking in those wild horses."
   Garza said he would rather be cut, scraped and knocked around on the ranch than work as a sharecropper in the South.
   "I am free here," Garza said. "The people are more friendly and there are more wide open spaces for me to ride my horses."
   

Leaving the ranches

   But others thought the better life waited for them on the other side of the tracks.
   Higher pay on the railroads lured many black cowboys away from the ranches, according to Lillian Schlissel's "Black Frontiers." Railroad work offered more money and an opportunity for black men, who often hung up their spurs to work as Pullman porters in the late 1800s.
   "Pullman porters were the lead position for a very long time," Schlissel said. "They were the first unionists, which also was an elite organization."
   Porters served the sleeping cars that catered to the elite traveling by rail, Schlissel said.
   "Though porters didn't have a regular salary, they made money from the tips that people gave them," she said.
   And when these porters returned home to their southern small towns, they brought newspapers from big cities as well as tales about famous performers, Schlissel said.
   

Landowners

   There weren't many opportunities then for black men besides being ranch hands or Pullman porters, Schlissel said.
   But others decided to take advantage of their independence and purchased their own land.
   John Freeman Jr., 43, grew up on his great-grandfather's land in Limestone County in Mexia.
   "My grandmother's father was a pretty wealthy guy," said Freeman, district conservationist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Robstown office. "There were several black families that had substantial holdings."
   Freeman said his great-grandfather bought 1,000 acres of land in the late 1870s to set up a small operation that included farming and ranching.
   The Freeman ranch withstood the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the '80s recession and modern technology.
   But not without a fight.
   "The family had to look outside of the farm for the majority of their income," he said. "It was hard for blacks to get loans."
   

Younger generation

   Freeman's 74-year-old father had to seek work off the ranch as a teacher to maintain his grandfather's land.
   "We didn't live lavishly," John Freeman Sr. said. "We were really poor."
   John Freeman Jr. also sought work off the ranch, but he still wants to hold onto tradition by raising a few heifers and cows the old-fashioned way.
   His 15-year-old son, John Freeman III, likely will hang on to the family land, but he too plans a career off the ranch. And when asked what he wants to do he puts the off-ranch career first.
   "I want to be a CPA and a rancher," said the Calallen High School 10th-grader who competes in livestock shows in South Texas. "More likely my children will show steers, but it'll be different."
   John said that if he keeps the land he won't be timid in using modern technology.
   "Cowboys worked too hard back then," he said.
   From what Gene Brown's 16-year-old son, Antoine, has seen of the hard work that defines cowboy life, he wants no part of it. It's not a cool job. It's difficult. It won't make you rich. And the animals smell.
   "I used to clean out horse stables, feed the horses and steers and that kind of stuff," said Antoine, a freshman at Refugio High School. "I just don't like it. I'll make more money being a rap artist."
   Staff writer Doreen C. Bowens can be reached at 886-4334 or by e-mail at bowensd@caller.com
   

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.