part of the American West for centuries. But mainstream cowboy culture long downplayed their contributions, even as they exist in the present day.

Today, we hear from some of them. Read the full transcript here.

Host: L.A. Times national reporter Tyrone Beason

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Black Californians have long celebrated cowboy culture. We’re just catching up

A proud group of Black Californians keep the traditions of the Old West and cowboy culture alive.

Excerpt: Cowboys in Compton find hope and healing on horseback

1d:T723,In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a hip hop track that reflected the experiences of a young man growing up in 1980s Compton. The song tells about the Los Angeles Police Department’s battering ram truck, an emblem of the city under Police Chief Daryl Gates, and which terrorized largely African American neighborhoods across Los Angeles under his watch. In To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America (Harvard UP, 2020), historian at San Francisco State University Felicia Angeja Viator describes how rap leapt across the continent from its New York roots in the mid-1980s and took hold in Los Angeles. Often gaining popularity by word of mouth and mobile DJ parties, local groups like NWA pioneered a new, harder-edged, style of hip hop music that reflected their experiences as youth growing up in Gates era LA. Viator explains how the r

What it means to be a Black cowboy