‘This Isn’t Just A Sport. It’s A Whole Way of Life’: Ivan McClellan On Documenting Black Cowboy Culture In New Book ‘Eight Seconds: Legacy In Motion

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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October 26, 2026

Marty Bowser, The Black Wall Street Times

Image provided by: The Black Wall Street Times

The American cowboy has long been cast as a rugged white loner riding across the frontier. But that image leaves out a vital part of the West’s history; the Black cowboys and cowgirls who raised families, competed in rodeos, cared for horses and the land, and kept Western traditions alive across generations.

Acclaimed photographer and director Ivan McClellan is working to change that narrative. Through his lens, Black Western culture takes center stage, capturing a legacy that has always existed but has too often been left out of the story. His new photography book, Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion, features 91 previously unpublished photographs that celebrate Black cowboys and cowgirls not as supporting characters in someone else’s Western, but as icons in their own right.

Read about the intriguing often forgotten legacy of Black Cowboys and Cowgirls.

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