Some cowboys come in Hummers instead of on horseback now, but the impetus behind the Black Cowboy Festival remains the same: to honor the Black Western pioneers underrepresented in history and popular culture. For this annual weekend of horsemanship exhibitions and amateur competitions, thousands of people from hours away come to tiny Rembert, South Carolina, less than an hour east of Columbia.
I learned about the festival the way most folks do, by word of mouth. In 2016, I was covering the Chitlin’ Strut in Salley, South Carolina, and I shared a plate of the event’s namesake with a man who told me about the celebration, full of country pride and riding contests. He promised the food was always good, and the music even better.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that my home state, though
