Photos: Stock Show Celebrates Black Cowboy Heritage With MLK Rodeo

By Chase Woodruff, Colorado Newsline

January 18, 2022

Some of the top Black rodeo athletes from around the country gathered in Denver on Monday night to compete in the National Western Stock Show’s annual MLK Jr. African-American Heritage Rodeo of Champions.

The event, which featured Black cowboys and cowgirls competing in bull riding, steer roping, barrel racing and other events, is put on every year by the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, named in honor of the famous Black rodeo performer.

“Martin Luther King was all about freedom, and that’s what we celebrate here tonight — freedom,” rodeo announcer Lynn Phillips told the crowd at the Denver Coliseum.

Historians estimate that about 1 in 4 cowboys on the Western frontier were Black, according to the Smithsonian Institution. Promoter Lu Vason founded the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in 1977 to “challenge the false perception of an absentee presence of Blacks in the development of the West,” the tour’s website says.

Several Colorado lawmakers, including Sen. James Coleman of Denver and Reps. Leslie Herod of Denver and Naquetta Ricks of Aurora, were on hand for Monday’s event.

The National Western Stock Show, held annually at Denver’s National Western Center, is one of the country’s largest and longest-running livestock shows, attracting more than 700,000 visitors each year. The 2022 edition of the stock show — the first to be held since 2020, after last year’s event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic — began earlier this month and ends on Jan. 23.

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