It was 30 years ago that the Bill Pickett Rodeo first inspired Oakland native Valyncia Brooks to ride a horse.
The event, which is in its 41st year as it returns to the East Bay this weekend, has for decades highlighted Black American country culture across the US, making stops in several states on its annual nationwide tour. Winners of each rodeo have a chance to compete in the national finals in September in Washington, D.C.
The rodeo was still relatively new three decades ago when a six-year-old Brooks attended it for the first time with her mom in Oakland, where she grew up. It inspired a lifelong passion that began with her convincing her mom to enroll her in lessons at Oakland City Stables, and has led her to being a finalist in the Bill Pickett Rodeo five times.
She now lives in Manteca and competes in several rodeo events, including barrel racing, steer undecorating and breakaway roping. She is vying for another finals spot this year in September. At finals, the top competitors who rake in the most prize money throughout the year compete, so Brooks is aiming for top spots in steer undecorating, an all-female event where a cowgirl must remove a ribbon from a steer’s back, and breakaway roping, in which a cowboy or cowgirl ropes a steer bursting out of a chute, at this weekend’s rodeo.
Her brother, Brandyn Hartfield, also competes in rodeo, alongside their friend, Jonathan Higgenbotham, all of whom were born and raised in Oakland.
Though not family by blood to Brooks and Hartfield, Brooks’ three kids call Higgenbothem “Uncle Jon” and they call each other brother and sister. The group will also be joined this weekend by their friend, Hayward resident Jamir Graham, who will compete in the team roping event.
“We’re just a family that has come together. We just love roping,” Higgenbotham said. “It’s not the norm to have people with horses coming from Oakland.”
The group trains in Livermore at Basso’s Arena, tucked within the Tri-Valley’s rolling hills, where the agrarian lifestyle barely escapes the hustle and bustle of highway traffic and dense, multi-story buildings.
“Rodeo has always been important to me,” Brooks, 36, said. “It just stuck with me and it never died.”
This new generation of Black cowboys is exactly with the Bill Pickett Rodeo was designed to support and spotlight.
“It is a celebration of our past heritage, and uplifting our Black cowboys and cowgirls that stand today,” Bill Pickett CEO Valeria Howard-Cunningham said in an interview. “We continue to tell the stories that have been left out of the history books and the movie theaters of Black cowboys and cowgirls.”
Howard-Cunningham’s late husband, Lu Vason, founded the event over 40 years ago, after attending a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyo. At the time, he didn’t see a single other Black cowboy represented anywhere, so he decided to showcase the Black country lifestyle in his own event he dubbed the Bill Pickett Rodeo.
In 1972, the rodeo’s namesake man, Bill Pickett, was the first Black rodeo performer inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame. Pickett toured the world as “The Dusky Demon,” joining the 101 Ranch Wild West Show — which also featured Buffalo Bill and Tom Mix — in 1905. Though he was a popular draw, he was barred from many rodeos because he was Black. After retiring from Wild West shows and appearing in early Hollywood films, he died in 1932 at the age of 61.
Howard-Cunningham says that for a long time, “nobody told the stories about Black cowboys and cowgirls.” But times have changed.
Brooks said Black cowboy culture is on the rise, and she’s noticed Black people in the East Bay taking a new interest, pointing to her friend Brianna Noble, who got attention locally for bringing her horse, Dapper Dan, to a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.
Brooks also credits the reach of the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, a local educational group whose members are also known for riding horses throughout the Bay Area.
“I definitely see a resurgence of it. I think it was always there, it just wasn’t always at the forefront,” Brooks said. “Black cowboys have always been a part of the Western ranch culture, it just hasn’t always been known.”
Sometimes, she said, being a Black woman on a horse turns heads.
“I can’t tell you how many people are shocked that I ride horses because I’m Black,” Brooks said. “I think it’s easy to believe that this is just something white folks do.”
Hartfield, her brother and fellow rodeo competitor, is one of only a few Black cattle ranchers in the Bay Area. He lives in Livermore and owns 20 head of cattle and several horses. He said that while growing up, the only Black cowboys he saw were in parades.
He also competes in rodeo events such as team roping and calf tie down roping, where contestants must lasso and hogtie a calf. Hartfield said he started riding horses in the summer of 2012 at the age of 17. Both he and his sister had played other sports, such as basketball, football or baseball — but they were hooked as soon as they saddled up.
Rodeo, he added, has also shown him a more creative place to shine as a minority Black athlete in a predominantly white-run sport.
“I think it’s just not so mainstream, whereas a lot of people of color, when they think of sports they get into basketball, football,” Hartfield said. “They don’t realize that rodeo is a sport.”
The country life became his calling, inspired by his sister’s ventures into the rodeo world. For him, the independence and sweet, peaceful solitude of the open land comforted and fascinated him.
For his day job, he works on a cattle ranch in Milpitas which raises cows for meat production. Hartfield also raises his own cattle and sells them periodically at stock yards throughout the state.
Owning and caring for animals, he said, has provided him valuable life lessons that have hardened his spirit and strengthened his nurturing hands. He hopes that like the Bill Pickett Rodeo, he can be a guiding light for other Black cowboys who want to own livestock.
“In California, there still aren’t a whole lot of us, especially coming out of the Bay Area,” Hartfield said. “It’s definitely nice to feel like I’m a part of making a difference and being a difference-maker, a role model for other kids that will hopefully get to know that there are African Americans that are still trying to represent in positive ways that we can.”
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