The Harder They Lie
Hollywood, Popular History, and the Diminution of African American Western History
A year or so ago I was invited to Prescott College in AZ to talk about Black adventurers. I chose the old West genre to talk about Bass Reeves, Stage Coach Mary, Deadwood Dick, Cherokee Bill, and Bill Pickett - adventurers that few Americans, White or Black, had ever heard of. So I was really pleased and surprised when one of the students knew of every single adventurer I spoke of. He explained that they had been featured in the recent western movie, Harder They Fall.
I’ve been a fan of westerns for my entire life and I was thrilled that some of these Black adventurers had been profiled in a modern day movie. So of course a spooled it up as soon as I could. I guess I should not have been surprised to have tuned into such a disappointing, fact-bending, Hollywood portrayal of Black Americans. Except for the one outlaw, all of these characters male and female, were people of both courage and integrity. And even the outlaw, Cherokee Bill, in his own way had courage and integrity. In the movie, though, they were portrayed as grandstanding, foolish, gang-bangers with low-slung holsters and a six shooter or two.
The quintessential American icon is the cowboy. History tells us that around 25% of all cowboys from the short heyday of the cattle era, were Black. You’d never know it from television or movies, the source of so many Americans’ history. And although John Wayne, Tom Mix, Gene Audrey, and Roy Rogers, all made movies on the cusp of the cowboy era, you would never know that a Black American had anything to do with America’s heroic heyday. We’ve always been written out of the cool stuff. But to be written in and then portrayed as a buffoon? Just another normal, frustrating day in America.
Eventually I forgot about the movie, but Bill Gwaltney didn’t. Bill is on The Civil Conversations Project Advisory Committee. I’ve known Bill for over two decades. Bill, with a federal Park Service career which included 15 years in law enforcement, is many things, one if which is a bona fide historian. Much of what I know about Black history and even of the hombres in the movie, began with Bill.
Bill was the consulting historian to Danny Glover and Denzel Washington in the Civil War movie Glory, featuring the Black 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Bill participated in standing up the Smithsonian African American Museum in Washington DC; founded the Massachusetts 54th reenactment regiment; and oversaw the care and curation from Paris of the Normandy Cemetery and Memorial as well as all of America’s war memorials in Europe and even Mexico. In between those gigs, Bill was superintendent of several national parks.
Our job here at The Civil Conversations Project is to educate, especially in light of the many school districts that are outlawing teaching about how race has shaped America. Maybe it’s true that ignorance is bliss. But I really don’t know and I refuse to believe that. In the interest of educating us about some of America’s most interesting heroes and villains, as well as in the interest of putting America’s Whitewashing - or should I say Blackwashing - of history on full display, Bill submitted this for a post for publication here on The Civil Conversation Substack.
As if recent attacks on the teaching of legitimate African American history under the guise of “Critical Race Theory” was not enough, there are other constant and well-funded attacks on the value of the African American past, often by those who believe that they are doing the right thing. In fact, they are doing exactly the wrong thing.
Hollywood projects such as the recent film, “The Harder They Fall,” take the images and icons of real African American historical figures, and “re-imagine” them as members of a 19th Century Street Gang.
History is history, simply because it requires no “Re-Imagination.”
Operating under the guise of creativity, movies such as “The Harder They Fall,” and shows as wide ranging as “Bridgerton,” and stage plays such as “Hamilton” change the facts and swap out characters without regards to the real racial barriers that existed in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, and with nary a nod of the head to the racial issues that continue to haunt our nation today.
One must ask, if the Institution of Slavery still comes up in “Bridgerton,” how exactly can Race not still be central to the plot?
The problem with Hollywood is the same problem experienced by Interpreters and others who conduct history-based programs for the public; “What happens when the public believes what they see?” Fantasy might be a great concept as it relates to creativity, but when so much of the African American past is lost, many are happy to replace it with whatever comes their way. Simply put, if you can change the past “artistically” in ways that suggest that the past was already “fixed” racially, you eliminate any need or responsibility to continue the work to make the future better.
Eliminating racism and segregation under the rubric of “Artistic Freedom” or “Fantasy” clouds an already difficult to understand set of issues that are complicated and conflicted in political, financial, emotional and cultural ways.
“The Harder They Fall” creates a false sense of an American Western past where every African not only knew each other, but felt compelled to become part of a criminal gang. It creates a Black West that is completely urban, revenge-driven and criminal-based in nature, perpetuating the myth.
This creates a West where there are no Black families, no wilderness, no striving, no communities, and no success. There is no need to deal with the violence and criminality that denigrates African American communities today, since the film would suggest that this is natural and normal, after all, it is “a part of the past, thus a part of the present.” It cannot be said that this film is the only one in the Western Division of “Blaxploitation” films. Others in this category include “Django,” “Posse” and “Soul Soldier” to name just a few.
Instead of being a depicted as a Black Cowboy, a man whose work in the open set him apart and away from the casual racism so common at the time, Nat Love is depicted as the head of a criminal gang. After the Civil War, the real Nat Love, along with thousands of other formerly enslaved people headed west to make a new life and explore what they hoped would be new possibilities.
The Love family tried farming, but finding the work difficult and the options limited, Nat left to find work in Dodge City, Kansas as a Cowboy. Following in the footsteps of many other African Americans who had tended to cattle before and during the war, Love developed an impressive catalog of outdoor skills. He excelled in riding, roping and shooting, and received the sobriquet of “Deadwood Dick.”
Always a quiet and industrious worker, when the cattle industry changed due to the expansion of the railroads, Love changed too, and became a Pullman Porter on some of the same railroad lines that altered his career as a Cowpuncher.
The conversion of the Classic Western to a kind of Hip-Hop Tale is amusing to no serious student of history or Historian that I know, and continues to obscure the real stories of real people hoping to forge a real life in what they hoped might be a new land, less steeped in the realities of racism, ostracism and segregation.
Other characters in the film, include Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) U.S. Marshall Bass Reeves, Cherokee Bill from Oklahoma, Texas Rodeo Cowboy Bill Pickett, and Montana U.S. Mail driver, “Stagecoach” Mary.
All are taken completely out of historic context in terms of their lives, occupations and locations to create a localized Western ghetto where gang violence represents the “Alpha and the Omega” of the African American experience.
In real life, Reeves was a dedicated, perhaps even maniacal devotee of law and order in Arkansas, capturing outlaws for Judge Isaac Parker’s U.S. Court that included most of Indian Territory. Upon his death in 1910, he received a backhanded tribute in the Muskogee Phoenix: “It is lamentable that we as white people must go to this poor, simple old negro to learn a lesson in courage, honesty and faithfulness to official duty.”
Cherokee Bill, in real life Crawford Goldsby, was the hard to manage son of a former Buffalo Soldier who deserted his post with the U.S. Army. Goldsby became a thief and outlaw and robbed banks, stagecoaches and stores and was accused of murdering at least six people, including his Brother-In-Law.
Bill Pickett was a hard-working and hard-bitten Rodeo Cowboy. Raised in West Texas, he learned early to rope and ride and soon worked on ranches to earn his keep.
The tricks he learned at amateur rodeos served him well. By 1900, he had become a Rodeo Show Cowboy and later signed on with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show as a showman.
Never an outlaw, he is known today for having either introduced or popularized a maneuver called “Bulldogging” where the Cowboy jumps from his mount, grabs the steer around the neck, falls over backward dragging the steer with him, and then bites down hard on the animal’s lip, forcing its head to the ground.
The real “Stagecoach” Mary was Mary Fields, a tough-as-nails Stage Coach Driver. Although Mary was a contractor who never worked officially for the U.S. Post Office, she determined that her mail would get delivered as promised. Like others, she was granted a Star Route Contract based on the lowest bid.
Mary enjoyed striding into a saloons and betting a shot and a dollar that she could knock out any man in one blow. When she died the Great Falls Gazette claimed that Mary had probably knocked out more men than anybody else is Montana.
The film also features a representation of Cathy Williams, known to history as William Cathay, a woman who portrayed herself as a male soldier in one of the early all-Black Infantry Regiments after the Civil War, is portrayed in the film as Cathay, a gender fluid person with no back story.
While there is solid evidence that Cathy Williams did in fact serve as a soldier until her gender was uncovered by an Army Physician, there is also evidence that what she changed about the Frontier Army was….absolutely nothing. Her temporary service in the Military created no change in policy, no easing of sex roles and no invitation to service for women by the U.S. Army until World War One many years in the future.
To the producers of “The Harder They Fall,” history does not seem to matter anymore than the real-life aspirations of these important African American figures. These misrepresentations create the impression that violence in African American communities is not only commonplace, but intrinsic and history based. The film seems to make no effort to select actors who resembled the original characters, and even less effort to dress them in authentic costumes for the movie.
History matters and facts count. Maybe it should even be taught in school.
Bill Gwaltney. Oahu, Hawaii