Juneteenth RodeoJuneteenth Rodeo

"The photos in this book were taken between 1977 and 1982, during the years Sarah Bird spent shooting rodeos as part of her coursework in photojournalism at UT. At the time, rodeos were still largely segregated, and Bird was most drawn to the Black rodeo circuit of East Texas-Houston-the Gulf Coast. Not all of the rodeos took place on Juneteenth, but the majority of images in this book are from Juneteenth rodeos. Bird tried to publish a book of this work in the 1980s but was told there was no audience, so the photos were put away and largely untouched until they were recently digitized as part of her archive at the Wittliff Collection. As best we can determine, this is the largest cache of images of these rodeos in publicly available archives. The photo edit recreates a day at the rodeo. We see riders pinning numbers on one another, settling nervously into the saddle, and then actual steer wrestling, barrel racing, bronco busting, calf roping, along with lots of fans in the stands or milling about. The periphery--concession stands, mobile BBQ pits--are part of the day, too, which ends with a party that night. Demetrius Pearson, who has written the only book on this subject, has written a contextualizing piece about the history of Black rodeos in Texas. Bird's 10,000-word essay tells the story of this project, from her coursework at UT through the re-discovery of the images in 2021. The heart of the piece is her description of a typical Juneteenth rodeo, which sets up the sequence of images, and a tribute to rodeo star Rufus Greene, who was especially kind and helpful to her during her research"--Provided by publisher.