Entertainer Sustains Memory Of Black Cowboys In Old West

BLACK COWBOYS didn’t show up in television or movie Westerns when Jimmy Collier was growing up, but his grandfather insisted they had been there, so Collier believed in them. He’s been a civil rights marcher, a longshoreman, an oil company executive, and even lost money running cattle and horses, but throughout his life, Collier never forgot his unsung black cowboy heroes. As a songwriter and entertainer today, he makes it a point to see that they don’t remain unsung.

Entertainer Sustains Memory
Of Black Cowboys In Old West

By David Bowser

PAMPA , Texas — When Jimmy Collier was growing up in the early 1950s, his grandfather, John Cravens, told him that there had been black cowboys on the frontier, but to Collier there seemed to be little evidence of the fact.

At a time when the mythic American legend reigned in the movies and on television, all the cowboys in the mass media were white.

Even when black cowboys were depicted in movies, they were often portrayed as white.

"In the western movies back in the 1950s," Collier says, " Hollywood would take some of the characters that were black and make them white."

Collier remembers seeing a movie in which a white actor played Jim Beckworth, a black frontiersman. He considers it typical.

"You would never have known he was black," Collier says. "There was no reference to it in the movie."

Jim Beckworth was a mountain man, Collier explains. He rode with Kit Carson and others.

"He discovered a pass that was just north of Donner Pass in California , that was actually a little bit lower in elevation, but it was never developed," Collier says.

There's a town near the pass now named for Beckworth, complete with a museum.

Today, Collier says he feels his grandfather, John Cravens, has been vindicated.

"Because my grandfather told me that there had been black cowboys, I believed it," Collier says.

Historical records indicate that cowboys in the 19th Century included not only caucasians, but blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans as well.

"It's been documented," Collier says. "More and more stuff comes out every day."

Where once there was little information on black cowboys in the West, Collier says he now has a growing library on black cowboys.

Born in 1944 at Fort Smith , Ark. , Collier grew up with passions for the old West and music.

"I lived with my grandparents," Collier says. "I was raised by my grandparents."

It was from his grandparents that Collier inherited a love of music. Both had been musicians in the 1930s.

"My grandfather played about anything," Collier says.

At one time, his grandfather had run a nightclub.

Collier's grandmother had a penchant for rhythm and blues, but they also listened to country music.

"I listened to country music on the radio," Collier says. "I grew up listening to that kind of music."

Collier remembers going to dances as a child and listening to the music, and he remembers the ceremonial dances of the Choctaw members of his family.

He also remembers going to the rodeo and the gaudy western clothing.

"I hate tacky western shirts," Collier's wife Cathy says.

Collier still dresses in cowboy garb, but now it tends to be the clothing of a working cowboy, or that of a cowboy from a century or more ago, rather than that of a rodeo cowboy.

Collier, sitting in Pampa on a cool fall morning with a black cowboy hat pulled low over his face, talks of his experiences growing up in Fort Smith , his love of western lore and his love of music.

Fort Smith is much more of a western town than a southern city, Collier says.

Situated on Arkansas ' border with Oklahoma , Fort Smith was the jumping off point for Indian Territory in the 19th Century. Since the federal government was responsible for order in Oklahoma at the time, law enforcement fell to Federal District Judge Isaac Parker and his band of U.S. marshals, several of whom were black.

Today, the National Park Service operates a museum on the federal complex at Fort Smith where Parker once held court.

"I loved going to the museum," Collier says. "There a commissary building was the museum when I was growing up, and that was it. That was all that was there."

He says the last time he passed through Fort Smith , he stopped at the new museum that has been expanded by the National Park Service. A ranger there took him back to the commissary that had been the museum of his youth.

"I remembered it being this huge place," Collier says. "I remember going in there, and there was nothing in there about blacks."

Later, when he went back, there were new displays that included blacks.

Races were segregated in his hometown when he was growing up there, Collier says, but the color lines weren't as blatant as in other areas of the country, as he was to find out later in life.

"We were aware of that," Collier says. "You have these experiences of growing up."

He remembers going to the lunch counter at Fort Smith 's Woolworth store and sitting on a stool there until they ran him off.

"I was just a little kid," Collier says.

The schools were segregated when Collier was growing up. Desegregation started with his younger brothers and sisters.

"All my brothers and sisters went to integrated schools," Collier says. "They started integrating schools one grade at a time until they got all the way through."

But there wasn't a large black population in Fort Smith , and there weren't many problems.

"The black population at Fort Smith was small, so I think it wasn't as big of a threat," Collier says.

Collier grew up on the edge of the black community in Fort Smith . Across the alley from him were white families, and all the kids used to play together, usually cowboys and Indians.

When he was 15, Collier lied about his age and joined the Air Force. Two years later, after he got out of the Air Force, he went to Chicago where he stayed with his uncle.

"I started going to school there," Collier says. "That's how I got involved in the civil rights movement."

After he got out of the Air Force, he was still fascinated by the western culture, so he started dressing the part.

Even in Chicago I dressed like this," Collier says, touching the brim of his hat. "I don't know what compelled me. I had some sense that it was true, and somehow I could help it become known."

He didn't always get the response he expected.

"People would usually think I was Spanish," he shrugged. "Wherever I would go, people would speak Spanish to me."

Black people would accuse him of trying to be like white folk.

"Sometimes, I would be at different historical things and people would say, 'Well, what are you doing here?'" Collier says. "People just didn't know. They hadn't made any connection. It was almost like a joke seeing a black guy with a cowboy hat on. That's why I've always made sure that whatever hat I've worn had been the real thing."

He says it had to be authentic.

Even that, he laughs, has led to problems.

Living near Yosemite National Park in California , Collier says his place in the country is surrounded by small ranching operations.

He says one night he'd stopped at a local cafe for a cup of coffee and a cowboy came in and sat down next to him and struck up a conversation.

"He said 'What ranch you working?'" Collier says.

Collier says he explained that he wasn't working at any of the local ranches, and that while he had some horses, he wasn't a ranch hand.

But the cowboy sitting next to him wouldn't take no for answer, pointing out that the cowboy hat that Collier was wearing had a Montana block to it.

"He said, 'With that hat, you must be a ranch hand,'" Collier laughs. "We almost got into a fight over it. I finally said, 'Okay, I'm working down here on a place.'"

Over the years, Collier's love of history has led him to join a Civil War reenactment group.

Collier went to Boston to participate in a re-dedication of a statute of the white officer who led a black infantry regiment, as portrayed in the movie "Glory."

"Colin Powell was there," Collier says. "You had about 500 black reenactors from all over the country. We marched down the main street in Boston ."

A number of the reenactors had appeared in the movie.

"If you go to cowboy reenactments, you find Native Americans dressed in traditional dress," Collier says. "You have mountain men. You have black cowboys."

The West then, as now, was diverse.

Collier became involved in the reenactment movement through his music.

"I got real interested in the banjo," Collier says. "I'd had one for a long time. I love the banjo."

The banjo, he says, is of African origin.

"In the civil rights movement in the South," Collier says, "a guitar was hard to maintain. A banjo was a more durable instrument."

For that reason, he carried both a banjo and a guitar during his civil rights days. In fact, he says, a photograph of him in a civil rights march carrying a banjo was later to provide Collier with another surprise.

"One day about 10 years ago, I was in a music store in California," Collier says, "and a big guy walks up to me and looks at me. He was so big, I was intimidated."

He kept looking at Collier, and when Collier left the store, the man followed him outside.

"He stopped me and said, 'I know you,'" Collier says.

"He'd been following Jimmy around the store, and Jimmy was starting to get nervous," Cathy interjects.

It turned out that the man, Curtis Wright, had seen the photograph of Collier with the banjo in the march.

"He said it'd inspired him to learn how to play the banjo," Collier says, "and he's good."

"He's very good," Cathy adds.

"We have a little group called the Range Riders," Collier continues. "It’s Curtis, me and Bruce Chan — who also looks kind of strange wearing a cowboy hat — but here we are, two black guys and an Oriental guy with cowboy hats and spurs. We didn't look like we were working in a laundry."

Meeting Wright, Cathy says, really put pressure on Collier to learn to play the banjo.

"I kept telling him it was just for a photo op," Collier laughs.

"Curtis plays really old-time music," Cathy says.

The Range Riders now play on a regular basis in San Juan Batiste, a California mission town near Collier's home.

"The information we have is that black cowboys would play a little bit of the blues," Collier says, "but they would blend in the more traditional cowboy songs. The tempo of the songs still had the purpose of calming the animals. The thinking is they played a lot of the kind of bluesy things and learned to play the Irish reels and that kind of thing."

Collier has pictures of early cowboy bands with a banjo, a trumpet and a bass that would play for dances in small towns throughout the West.

That was before electric guitars, so they tended to use banjos.

"Guitars weren't loud enough," Collier explains.

The other reason he went to a banjo, Collier grins, is that it freaked people out.

"A black guy with a banjo," he says, "it's almost like I'm carrying a machine gun."

He says he used to do school programs with a banjo. Now, he carries a banjo and an 1850s musket.

"Just so I wouldn’t look so much like a victim," Collier says. "My purpose was to try to give respectability back to the banjo."

He gives Pete Seeger credit for the popularity of the banjo.

Collier is in Pampa to join Seeger for a concert to benefit the new Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center. Seeger traveled, sang and wrote songs with Guthrie in the 1930s and 1940s.

"Pete made the banjo an instrument that fit the time and place," Collier says.

Collier had been in Chicago a year and was going to college when he met Seeger.

"I had gotten involved in the civil rights movement, and I was writing songs then," Collier says.

Collier's songs were stories of the human condition set to music in the Woody Guthrie tradition.

When Seeger was in Chicago for a concert, a mutual friend told Seeger about Collier's talents.

"Pete is always encouraging people," Collier says.

That day Seeger did two amazing things. After listening to his songs one afternoon, Seeger invited Collier to come backstage that night at the concert.

"I figured I'd probably get to the door and they'd say, 'Who are you?'" Collier says, "and run me off."

But when Collier got to the stage door, the security officials let him in and showed him the way to Seeger's dressing room.

"Then he does the second amazing thing," Collier continues. "He says, 'I'm going to ask you to come out and play.'"

Over the years, Collier went on to work on Martin Luther King's staff, but he always had thoughts of the West and of music rolling around in his head.

After spending time on the East Coat, Collier headed to California, where he worked as a longshoreman before joining Phillips Petroleum Company.

Eventually, he worked his way up to an executive position, where he was responsible for sales west of the Mississippi. He retired after 20 years and is now involved with a company that makes parts for the space shuttle.

Musicians, like cowboys, he laughs, sometimes have to have a day job.

Throughout his life, he says, he's continued to write songs.

"I'm writing more now," Collier says.

While he writes and records cowboy music, he also does spirituals.

"One my latest CD, I have one song called Black Heroes of the West," Collier says. "It talks about some of the early characters that were part of the exploration of the West."

Very much the traditionalist, Collier says he tries to reflect the heritage of the West in his music.

"I do a lot of the traditional cowboy songs," Collier says. "When you get to cowboy songs, you're either doing the songs that they would have sung then or you're doing modern cowboy songs or Hollywood songs."

He doesn't do many Hollywood cowboy songs, but he does do "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and some of the old Sons of the Pioneers songs.

His wife, as it turns out, is a big Bob Wills western swing fan.

As for his cowboying, Collier says he raises a few animals on his place, but he refuses to call it a ranch, though he has tried ranching.

"I was a real ranching cowboy, unsuccessfully," Collier laughs. "I've run cattle. I've been in the horse business."

He and a partner at one time were going to raise endurance horses. They built their herd up to about 25 head and spent a bunch of money on an Arabian stud.

"I remember sitting around and waiting for people to come by to buy these horses," Collier says, shaking his head. "The only people that ever showed up were the vet and the farrier, and they wanted to be paid."

With a broad grin, Collier says he's still learning about being a cowboy.

Questions