By Marcus K. Dowling
Photographs by Lafayette Barnes
Editor’s note: The Bitter Southerner adheres to the AP style guide in our journalism and generally uses black for color and African American for people. However, we wish to honor the multiple voices and styles of our writers, and at times, will defer to their usage of Black, if a change would interfere with the quality of their voice and the clarity of their writing about people of the African diaspora.
“Dude, you’re wearing the fuck out of those boots. I’m not even trying to be funny.”
"Uhhhh ... ohhh ... ummm ... thanks, man."
"You don't just see ... ummm ... Black guys doing that every day."
It was twilight on an unseasonably warm spring afternoon on the corner of 9th and U streets NW, in my beloved hometown of Washington, D.C. This stretch of blocks was once known as "Black Broadway" because since the roaring 20s, it was the cultural center for the city's African-American population. From the 1960s through the first decade of the 21st century D.C. was a majority Black city. I was wearing an Isaac Hayes T-shirt with "Black Moses" printed in Arial Bold font, a pair of skinny jeans, and jet black, vintage Tony Lama cowboy boots. Kris Kristofferson’s "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" was playing in my headphones. The person that nudged me from my deep listening was a bald, bespectacled white guy who appeared to be roughly half my age in a black shirt with "The District," for District of Columbia, written in Cyrillic font on the front.
Something about the whole moment felt thoroughly off-putting. While walking down U Street, I hadn't seen a Black face on Black Broadway in ten blocks. It didn't make me mad; it just strengthened my indomitable resolve. From childhood, I was taught to not allow the fact that I was the only Black person in a room to ever rile me to anger. I attended a private school for middle school and high school. Often, anywhere from 80-90 percent of my classmates were white. My mother advised me on how I needed to handle this issue, and it stuck with me: "You can make white people think, but never make them mad."
A month before this U Street encounter, I was sitting in bed, listening to Kristofferson sing "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)." It was the day after I'd buried my mother. She was 72 and a three-time breast cancer survivor at the time of her passing. There was something stark that struck me as I watched her body loaded into the hearse in front of the church that stood five blocks away from Black Broadway. There were as many sparkling new condo windows as there were cranes in the sky. Young white couples were pushing strollers and running down the street. Three things defined me best at that moment: I was motherless. I felt alone. And I was Black.
At that moment, Kris Kristofferson's words struck a stronger chord than ever with me.
But dreaming was as easy as believing it was never gonna end / Loving her was easier than anything I'll ever do again.
A month after my mother's passing, I was in a vintage store in D.C.'s Adams Morgan neighborhood. I’d seen plenty of cowboy boots before, but had never made the plunge to purchase a pair. I’m up to three pairs of boots now, but the first pair was the most significant transaction.
“Everything on those boots is original but the heels,” the saleswoman noted.
That was important. I wanted these boots to wear like they’d seen and felt some things, and already traveled more than a few trails. To me, a new pair of boots would not cause the right questions to be asked. They could quickly be passed off as a benign fashion statement. Comparatively, worn-in boots show a level of intentionality that I desired. The light scuffing around the toes and slight cracks on the sides near the pointed toes offer a wearily tough, no-bullshit aesthetic that could connect me to the 1970s-era outlaws like Kristofferson.
In my mind, this both resonated deeply with my humanity, and directly connected with the best way to approach living in D.C. at-present. My mother’s words echoed in my head,"You can make white people think, but never make them mad." By purchasing a pair of cowboy boots, I put her advice to good use.
I grew up loving country music and cowboy culture because when I saw them on TV. Outlaw country musicians always seemed relaxed in the face of pressure in bittersweet situations. I also loved an eclectic mix of sounds as a child that included the go-go of Chuck Brown, new wave bands like Culture Club and Duran Duran, the catalog of Motown Records, and Prince. However, of all the music I love, outlaw country speaks to my heart in the face of gentrification in Washington, D.C.
A friend of mine — who happens to be white — was looking at photos I had posted since my mother's passing, and asked me why I was wearing boots. My answer spilled out as, "You know my mom. ‘Can't make white people mad, so gonna make ’em think.’ I'm on my Lone Ranger Black outlaw cowboy shit, mayne. The city's different, and life's different. You know. Time to make a statement."
The response: "Damn. You’re crazy. I get it, but you’re crazy."
I wear cowboy boots because, to paraphrase Kris Kristofferson, dreaming that my mother — or classic, 70-percent Black Washington — could live forever does not help me deal with my present situation. Loving her — both old D.C. and my mother — was easier than anything I'll ever do again.
I'm not the first Black man to ever wear cowboy boots. Throughout American history — from Bill Pickett at a rodeo, a regiment of Buffalo Soldiers fighting out West, Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart in 1974 film “Blazing Saddles,” or yes, Grammy Award-winning Lil Nas X trap-rapping his way down the "Old Town Road" — there is historical precedent for my desires. However, as a native-born resident of Washington, D.C., I am a lonesome, urban cowboy. I'm 75 miles beneath the Mason-Dixon Line, navigating a gentrified terrain more devoid than ever of Black people. The Nation's Capital was once a place that was so heavily Black populated that George Clinton penned a joyous funk anthem about it called "Chocolate City." To feel protected while attempting to navigate an unfamiliar landscape, I wear my cowboy boots. Washington's current social and cultural conditions are not likely to change back to what they were. Therefore, I think it’s essential to contextualize the heritage of Black people in cowboy boots, footwear that I'll be wearing here for some time to come.
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Dom Flemons is a Washington area resident and the creator of 2018 Smithsonian Folkways Recording “Black Cowboys.” I called the American Songster and asked him, “What was the most significantly empowering notion to be gained by embracing the cowboy aesthetic?”
Flemons told me, "If you empower yourself by being a black cowboy, you have broken yourself out of the bounds of the past, the things that define you culturally. The cowboy is just out there, doing whatever they want to do."
My cowboy boots and I proudly walk in all four quadrants of the Nation's Capital. I have lived in all of the socio-economic conditions that define life in D.C. Though I may find it frustrating that the Black population in my hometown has dipped 25 percent in a half-century, I am resolved to stay.
Black flight is occurring en masse in D.C. Currently the gap between the city's African American and white population is less than 1 percent. The 2019 U.S. Census estimates have African American residents at 46.4 percent, white at 45.8 percent. The city's population has also exploded to over 700,000 residents, a level it has not reached since the mid-1970s. At today’s rates, roughly every time one African American person leaves, two white people enter. D.C.'s median household income has grown to $83,000, which is 38 percent greater than the rest of the nation. These residents are paying a median rent for a two-bedroom apartment of $1,550, and home purchases average $680,000. Those numbers are, respectively, 30 percent and 66 percent greater than the American median. Couple these figures with The DC Fiscal Policy Institute noting in September 2018 that black median household income in D.C. – now around $42,000 — is less than a third of the white median household income of $134,000.
If I am to think of myself as a Black cowboy, calling The Nation's Capital my "Wild West" is undoubtedly a logical leap. The one-time "Chocolate City" is 75 miles below the Mason-Dixon Line and was built by the labor of enslaved African American people. It is also home to Howard University, referred to by many as "the Black Harvard." As well, it's a place where Black people were so enraged by the 1968 murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that they burned down entire blocks of their city, leading to white flight. It's also a place where one in four Black residents currently live in poverty, and equal rights for Black residents are seen as an issue needing to be handled in the city's fiscal plan. The loss of the Black population makes it seem like a totally different city than the land I once knew.
Flemons is a Black man of African-American and Mexican-American descent from Phoenix, Arizona. He was an original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops when he lived in North Carolina. While part of his personal story and all of his research is essential to my understanding, I needed more viewpoints to define myself in my boots. "Everyone attributes the white horse, the white hat, the white face to the American West. But we all slept under the same stars," Harlem-based Black cowboy culture devotee Allan Harris noted to The New York Times in a recent story about the continuing legacy of Black cowboys in his blues- and jazz-inflected play “Cross That River.” In the same piece, Manhattan scholar William Loren Katz adds, "more than Europeans, pioneers of color pined for a home of their own, a place to educate children, protect women, and nail down elusive dreams."
My elusive dream is a return to a Nation's Capital, where wearing cowboy boots is more a sign of following fashion trends than treading with caution. I pine for the D.C. of my mid-’80s childhood where wearing concrete-colored Nike Dunk S.B. High sneakers was a show of solidarity with the Patrick Ewing-led, Black and proud Georgetown Hoyas. Washington would also be a city where wearing New Balance 990 running shoes, which retailed for the then enormous cost of $100, was a way to show an aspiration to Black middle-to-upper class economic success. And yes, it was also a place where wearing Stacy Adams dress shoes connected you to the Black excellence of people as diverse as the Super Bowl XXII MVP quarterback Doug Williams to the Time's lead singer Morris Day. Instead, I'm now in a very different situation. I frequently feel like what remains are me, my Black skin, black Tony Lamas, and a sad reality.
I've been thinking about my future in a more peculiarly different Washington than ever before. Regarding that future, I'm grateful for Dom Flemons' words of wisdom on how black cowboys navigated working in the American West. They have provided a template for my next, best, and booted steps. "The black cowboy would not just have to be a great worker; he'd have to be a great citizen. The impression he'd leave behind would stay with [non-Blacks] until they'd see another person of color come to town."
In a Texas Monthly article about Texans and their relationship to cowboy boots, Black Cowboy Museum founder Larry Callies echoes Flemons’ idea that my work while wearing my boots may never end. The Boling, Texas, native says, "The black cowboy never stopped working. We had our rodeos. My uncle helped start one of the first black rodeos — president of the rodeo association. We never stopped being cowboys. I quit wearing boots for a while in high school because it was so hard. I went back to it. After I started in college, I wore boots every day."
Texas-born music and culture icon Lyle Lovett best frames how I view myself, my boots, and what's next. He starts, "With a boot, you're sending a message. If you dress in an innocuous way, maybe you're saying, 'I just want to fit in.'" He continues, "For me, I'm just trying to communicate who I feel like I am. I'm not trying to assume a character. By wearing boots, I'm just trying to say, 'This is where I come from. I'm from Texas.'"
Unlike Lyle Lovett, I'm Black, and I'm from Washington, D.C. But similarly, I do not fit in here, anymore. Moreover, I'm not a character; I'm embracing the cowboy mystique. Ever since I blended my mother's wisdom with the words of Kris Kristofferson and began to navigate my hometown's streets differently, I'm a lone Black ranger in boots. I'm taming my terrain — retaining Blackness amid a gentrifying void.
Marcus K. Dowling is a journalist, broadcaster and entrepreneur. In the past ten years, via his conceptual vision and marketing expertise, Marcus has aided creative entrepreneurs in the arts and entertainment industries in earning over $25 million in gross revenue. He is currently a co-founder of the D.C.-based Afro-Latino ADOBO event brand, plus as a writer regularly contributes to the likes of DJ City, VICE, Pitchfork, DJ Booth, Complex, Bandcamp, Mixmag, ESPN's Undefeated, and more. Below is the playlist he compiled just for this story. “I thought it'd be fun to take people into my head as I'm walking around D.C. on any given day,” he said.
