Introduction: "don't leave out the cowboys!" / Bruce A. Glasrud
Cowboys on the range
Before emancipation: Black cowboys and the livestock industry / Deborah M. Liles
Mathew "Bones" Hooks: a pioneer of honor / Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm
"Havin' a good time": women cowhands and Johana July, a Black Seminole vaquera
Cecilia Gutierrez Venable
Black cowboy: Daniel Webster "John" Wallace / Douglas Hales
Nat Love, a.k.a. Deadwood Dick: a wild ride / Michael N. Searles
Performing cowboys
Shadow riders of the subterranean circuit: a descriptive account of Black rodeo in the Texas Gulf Coast region / Demetrius W. Pearson
Oklahoma's African American rodeo performers / Roger D. Hardaway
The bronze buckaroo rides again: Herb Jeffries is still keepin' on / Mary A. Dempsey
Musical traditions of twentieth-century African American cowboys / Alan Govenar
Outriders of the Black cowboys
Mary Fields's road to freedom / Miantae Metcalf McConnell
"No less a man": Blacks in cow town Dodge City, 1876-1886 / C. Robert Haywood
Charley Willis: a singing cowboy / Jim Chilcote
Bass Reeves: a legendary lawman of the western frontier / Art T. Burton
Concluding overview: in search of the Black cowboy / Michael N. Searles.