March 4, 2021 • 45 mins
Bass Reeves was the most lethal lawman in the wild west. Over his 32-year career Reeves arrested more than 3,000 alleged criminals, and killed more than a dozen of them. But the image of a formerly enslaved Black man riding around on horseback with a license to kill tended to make white people uncomfortable. Hear how Bass Reeves commitment to justice overcame racism, and even his own family bonds.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The year is eighteen eighty three. The last days of
winter are giving way to spring. The prairie of the
Indian Territory will soon be bright green, almost glowing with
new life. A black preacher named Reverend William Stewart tends
his land. He owns this farm spread located in the
Chickasaw Nation. The reverend plans to burn off what remains
of winter. It's common prairie management, something his native neighbors
(00:26):
have long used to prepare for spring. But the reverend's
intentional grass fire burns out of control. Soon it crosses
over onto nearby grazing lands. Forty five cowboys work that land.
There are a mix of Native, black and white cowboys.
The foreman's name is Jim Webb. He's not a decent
or kind man. He's quick to anger, and he's prone
(00:47):
to violence. He's also a bigot. As fast spreading wildfire
burns into the soft hills of grass, Jim Webb saddles
up and rides hard over to Reverend Stewart's farm. There's
little either man can do now. He dis mounts and
confronts the preacher. He spits hot words in the black
reverend's face. The reverend takes it for a while, since
he's the forgiving sort. But when he tries to calm
(01:09):
the cowboys, anger Webb flies into a white hot rage.
He will tolerate no back talk. He kills the black preacher,
and then Jim Webb leaves the Black Man of God
lying dead on the prairie, surrounded by the burning grass fire.
(01:37):
A federal warrant is issued for the Reverence murderer. The
law man bass Reeves is given the writ in charge
of dispensing law and order in the Indian Territory. Bass
Reeves was the first black man hired to be a U. S.
Marshal west of the Mississippi. Before Deputy Marshal, he had
been a tracker and guide in the Indian Territory. He
knows the land, he knows the people. Plus he speaks
(01:57):
a few of the languages of the five tribes of
the in territory. Above it all, he's fearless. As the
biographer of the Indian Territory D. C. Gideon wrote in
bass Reeves quote, fears nothing that moves and breathes. He
has good reason. He's deadly accurate with both his revolvers
and his winchester He stands six ft two with his
(02:18):
boots off, weighs around a hundred and eighty pounds. He's
a big man, known for his big voice, booming laugh,
and good time personality. He can talk, and he likes to.
He's particularly fond of his thick black walrus mustache. He
knows it makes him distinct. He also always wears a
black hat for the same reason. It makes him recognizable
(02:38):
from a distance. Bass Reeves has a strong hunch where
to find the outlaw, Jim Webb. He starts his man
hunt at Bywater's General Store. When Webb sees bass Reeves
ride up to the general store, he runs jumps out
of a window. The outlaw takes a Winchester rifle with
him and a revolver. He makes a desperate run for
his horse. Bass spots his prey lean. He spurs his
(03:01):
horse and cuts off Jim Webb's escape route. Webb turns
and sprints for some tall brush. He makes it about
five dred yards. Then he turns and fires his Winchester.
It's a fatal mistake. Here is how bass Reeves recalled
the end of Jim Webb. Before I could drop off
my horse. His first bullet cut a button off my coat,
and the second cut my bridle rein and two. I
(03:22):
shifted my six shooter and grabbed my Winchester and shot twice.
The outlaw, Jim Webb, falls to the earth, gut shot,
but he isn't dead yet. He calls out for Bass
Reeves to come closer. Bass was no fool. He tells
the gut shot outlaw to throw off his revolver and
rifle into the brush. Webb does as he's ordered, good
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to his word. Bass Reeves draws closer. Dying breaths, Jim
Webb pays his final respects to the law man who
took his life. Keep me your hand, Bass, you're a
brave man. I want you to accept my revolver and
scabbard as a present, and you must accept them. Take
it for with that. I have killed eleven men curiously.
(04:13):
When the Arkansas Gazette reports this story on July, there's
no mention of Bass Reeves. The shooting death of Jim
Webb is left vague. The black law man is not
given credit for killing the white outlaw. It's the same
sort of passive language familiar from officer involved shootings today.
A man named Webb charged with murder, engaged them in
a running fight and was fatally wounded, dying the next day.
(04:36):
Jim Webb was from Texas. He was likely white and
a former Confederate soldier, the sort of man who'd want
to give an honorable enemy his gun and scabbard. We
don't know this for sure. All we know for certain
is it was important that the American newspaper reading public
never really focus on the fact there was a black
law man shooting white men dead on the prairie. The
(04:56):
image of a formerly enslaved black man riding around on
horseback with a license to kill tended to make white
people uncomfortable. Over his thirty two year career, bass Reives
claimed to have killed at least fourteen men. We can
only confirm that bass Reie is officially killed five men,
but we have no reason to doubt him. He was
(05:17):
a man of his word, not prone to exaggeration or puffery.
We just can't corroborate his number with news accounts. But
if we do take him at his word that he
killed fourteen men in gunfights, then there's no debate at all.
The bass Reids was the most lethal law man in
the wild West. Think of it this way. His record
as a gunfighter was fourteen and oh he was undefeated.
(05:40):
No other law man comes close. Black or white, sorry whiter. Yeah,
this is a home. It's been a long role for us.
We'd take an ownership over everything else to us royalty.
We surrounded by a heritage. Are fist up because we
tried to be Ammericant. I'm Zaring Burnett. Welcome to Black Cowboys,
(06:03):
And I heard original podcast asked himself was really in
the name? Sitting on a Mustang Friday through the place Buffalo?
So did the King of the Range. We love for
the cowboy way. Chapter three. The law man Bass Reeves
(06:27):
No Pop. When I was young, you told me about
Bass Reaves, and he was this bad, bad man. In
my mind, he was just in formally enslaved black man
who frees himself. He rides around the West arresting and
even shooting white men dead in the name of the law.
But I was a boy. That meant something different to me.
What did it mean to you as a man father,
a black man in America? Bass Reeves had a singular
position in my personal history and my and in my
(06:49):
understanding of history. In order to understand bass Reeves. You
have to understand after the Civil War, everything was in flux.
Everything had changed, and Bass Reeves had left the slavery
before the war ended, so he made himself free. Then
when freedom came to the West, he was ready for it.
He was dedicated to freedom and justice as a natural idea.
(07:12):
In the same way that Stevie Wonder was born to
play music. Bath would have been a police officer and
a justice person wherever he landed, because that was in him.
Bass was amazing at taking people in. He only killed
fourteen people out of like three or four thousand and
he arrested. That's not many people. So he it was
like he was a bloodthirsty, crazy man. It's almost like
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he had a zeal like a minister has a zeal
to be a minister. He had his deal to be
a law man. In the same way his mother first
began to worry about Bass Reeves when he was a boy.
When he worked in the field. He loved to sing
songs about murder and outlaws. She wasn't sure where he
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learned the songs, know when she knew sang them. Bass
started his life as the enslaved child property of a
white family. He was born sometime in July in Crawford County, Arkansas.
He worked the fields as a child, but as he
grew bigger, he was picked to be a body man
to the son of his owner. He was a mix
of a valet and protection. Bass wasn't taught to read,
(08:15):
as he'd requested. Instead, he was taught to shoot. This
was rare for an enslaved person. He became so skilled
with a gun in his hand, his owner entered him
into turkey shoot competitions, which Bass typically one. When war
broke out, Bass accompanied his master to the Civil War.
He claims that he was at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Chickamaugua,
and p Ridge. There's no record for what the slave
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was doing in the war. All we have our oral histories.
According to oral history, this is when Bass Reeves got free.
As the story goes, Bass and his master were playing cards.
Some stories say they had wagered on his freedom, others
say they just got into a disagreement. What all the
stories agree on is what happened next. Bass Reeves knocks
his owner the funk out, and then he frees himself.
(09:00):
He sneaks out of the Confederate camp and he escapes
the Civil War. He goes on the run and flees
to the Seminole and Creek Nation in present day Oklahoma
for the remainder of the war. He stays there. He
soon learns the Muskogee language of the Creek and Seminole.
He also learns to speak some Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw.
There the five tribes of the Indian Territory. Bass reviews
(09:21):
is accepted by the tribes. He learns their land, their ways,
becomes a proficient hunter, trapper, guide, and scout. After the
war is over, as the nation stitches itself together, it
begins to look west. In eighteen seventy five, President Grant
appoints Judge Parker to the bench of the Federal Court
at Fort Smith, Arkansas. It's the official U S Court
(09:41):
for the Indian Territory. He soon becomes known as Hanging
Judge Parker, the same man who will twice sentence Cherokee
Bill to quote hang by the neck until he is dead.
He's also a two term Congressman who served on the
House Committee on Indian Affairs. He's sent to restore law
and order in the Indian Territory until kne Good men
to do it. One of the first men the newly
(10:03):
appointed Judge Parker hires as a deputy Marshal, is Bass Reeves.
Judge Parker understands the stakes at hand with a black
man dispensing justice on the prairie. According to his fellow
judge Paul Brady, he reminded Bass that he would be
in a position as deputy to show the lawful as
well as the lawless, that a black man was the
(10:23):
equal of any other law enforcement officer on the frontier.
He convinced Bass to join them and helping to establish
the rule of law over the rule of men, and
to bring law where there had never been any law before.
Few men of their day would have guessed it. But
these two men have a lot in common. Not on
the surface. One man is a judge, the other man
(10:43):
is an illiterate runaway slave. Yet over their two decades
of working together, they'll discover they are equally committed to justice,
dedicated law men, and consequently they become close friends. Unexpected
as it may be, The key is that they can
both trust the other to be good at their job
and true to their word. They are honorable men in
a place overrun with their opposite as a you know,
(11:07):
a formerly enslaved man who freed himself. Here he is
having the chance to not get revenge or vengeance, but
he can enact his will on these white people that
would have been possibly former enslavers. And yet he doesn't
ever enact vengeance that way. He sticks to the letter
of the law. Do you find that commendable? I do.
I admire it because what he is, he's not letting
(11:28):
external factors change his values. He's if he's a fair
and just man. So the fact that there are other
people who are not fair and just who had visited
their abuse upon him, that didn't change him to be
like them. You know, he was still a fair and justment.
He could still be trusted to go out and arrest
anybody from the judge to his son and bring them
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back with the same level of integrity. That's unheard of,
you know, man, that that's I mean not unheard of
because he did it, but as that's like it's very unusual.
That's a level of self assuredness and belief that could
only come from inside of him. You know, nobody taught
him any of that. That was in him to do right.
(12:09):
Last reads was a hard man and complex, a perfect
fit for the hard complex place that he called home.
A news story published in the early nineteen hundreds that
was eventually syndicated by the Washington Post described the land
as quote, there is not in all the United States
a place where a deputy marshal is such an important
figure as in Indian Territory. According to that same turn
(12:30):
of the century news story, when Reeves commenced riding as
deputy marshall, all of Oklahoma and Indian Territory were under
the jurisdiction of Fort Smith Court, and the deputies from
Fort Smith road to Fort Reno, Fort Sill, and Anadarko
for prisoners, a distance of four hundred miles. In those days,
the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad running south across the
territory marked the western fringe of civilization. Eighty miles west
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of Fort Smith. It was known as the deadline. And
whenever a deputy marshal from Fort Smith or Paris, Texas
crossed the Missouri into in Texas track, he took his
life in his hands, and he knew it. When a
deputy and his post man wrote out of Fort Smith
into the territory, neither he nor his friends knew whether
he would ever ride back again. Bass Reeves never let
any fear of what could or might happen cause him
(13:16):
to shrink from his duty. He was as fearless as
they come, and he preferred to rely on himself and
his own wits. Not to mention, he was a recognizable
figure on the prairie, a big target. The way to
get around his high profile, bass Reeves love to slip
into a good disguise. He seemed to revel in his
undercover work. He could use expectations that others had for
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black people against them, turn their prejudices to his favor.
One time, bass Reeves went out to search for two
outlaw brothers. Word was the men were hiding out somewhere
down by the Texas border. Bass Reeves leaves his posseman
behind and rides out alone to bring back the bad
men to justice. His plan is simple. He'll disguise himself
as a tramp, someone they'd never suspect was a lawman.
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Then once he's close enough, he'll pull his gun and
arrest them. He removes the heels from a pair of
busted shoes. He uses an old cane to walk. He
gets an old floppy ass hat. He shoots three holes
in it with some carefully applied dirt and stink. He's
ready for the game of subterfuge. Then he walks the
twenty eight miles to the outlaws hide out. When he arrives,
the outlaws aren't around. Only their mother is there. Bass
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changes tactics, knowing her sons are on the run. He
poses as a less fortunate outlaw who's also on the
run from a posse, and he begs her for a
hot meal. She feels for him and obliges. She invites
him in. As he eats, The mother conspires with the
undercover law man, saying it would be a good plan
that you and my boys joined forces, that you can
be a protection to one another. The irony is cruel. Sometimes,
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after darkness falls, the outlaw brothers ride up. They whistle
to their mom when she whistles back to let them
know the coast is clear. The brothers ride up to
their hide out and dismount. They meet their mother's new
addition to their gang. The brothers are fans of their
mother's plan. They like Bass. Later that night, when the
outlaw brothers and Bass Reeves go to sleep, they're all
in the same main room of the cabin. Bass waits
(15:04):
until the house is quiet save for the sounds of
two sleeping outlaws and their mother. Once the sounds of
sleep take hold, Bass springs into action. He sneaks over
and handcuffs the outlaws together. Somehow he doesn't wake them.
The next morning, the brothers come to urged awake by
bass reeves boot. He kicks the outlaws awake, and then
they learn with a rough shock that they've been captured.
(15:26):
Their mother feels cheated and lied to. She follows bass
Reeves and her boys for three miles, cussing out the
law man the whole damn time. A Deputy Marshall's job
is a mostly thankless one. Over his thirty two year
career as a lawman, bass Reeves arrested three thousand hardened criminals.
That's an average of ninety four arrests a year every
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year for thirty two years. In other words, for three decades,
he hunted the most desperate men in America, outlaws willing
to kill to stay free. As the Turn of the
century news story made plain to its readers, there were
three principal classes of outlaws. Murderers, horse thieves and bootleggers.
Added to the Indians and mixed Negroes and Indians were
the white outlaws that had fled from Texas, Kansas, and
(16:09):
other states. Whiskey was a legal and Indian territory. To
sneak in whiskey, sometimes cowboys would slide a bottle in
their boot, thus the term bootlegger. Profit minded cowboys were
also whiskey runners for the busy whiskey towns, the ones
just over the border from Indian nations. When a bootlegger
was busted, they were charged with the crime of introducing
(16:29):
that was short for a quote introducing spirituous liquor in
the Indian country. Other than the whiskey runners and moonshiners,
the rest of the hard men a deputy marshal dealt
with were primarily murderers and horse thieves, and many men
were both and equally Both men knew if they were
caught and they could be killed, so they were prepared
to fight for their lives. That was the job of
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a deputy marshal, and largely in the Indian territory it
fell to black men like Bass Reeves or Deputy Marshal
Grant Johnson, or even the shady sort of deputy like
Ike Roger who betrayed the outlaw Cherokee Bill. In the West,
the law, or what passed for it, was often a
black man with a badge and a gun. This is
due to the racial politics of the Prairie. The Indian
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tribes both trust and do not fear black men the
way that they mistrust and fear white men. The federal
government knows this. They know that a black law man
is more likely to go into Indian territory and come
back alive. This is a central dynamic for justice in
the West. We'll dig into how this came to be
in a later episode about the Black seminal Chief John Horse. Now,
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we often talk about the black cop in our modern context,
but bass Reeves is a very different black cop. How
do you, as somebody who has had issues with police,
respect a man like bass Reeves. We wouldn't be it
opposite ends that the spectrum. He would be required to
arrest me for things I've done, but he wouldn't see
them as things that were uh, immoral, unethical, that would
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just be illegal. That's a different threshold, you know, that's
just okay. The lawmates change, you know it was used
to be illegal for this. Now it is not, so
there's room for law man and law breakers to break
bread on areas that are not ill moral. My my
feeling is Bass has a job to do. I want
any cop who does his job to do it just
(18:15):
the way Bass did, without any consideration for who the
citizen is. That everybody should get exactly the same treatment.
My anger was always when that was in the case.
Instead of curbside justice, it would be curbside injustice and
that's not right. Whereas Bass barrass Reeves was to be
pitting me a consistent justice, I don't have any problem
(18:36):
with him. My prober with police is the hypocrisy and
the refusal to adhere to their own standards. When the
police officer kills somebody uh improperly, they need to go
to prison like everybody else who kills somebody improperly. Your
job should protect you from doing improper things, and Bass
Reeves has to meet the law head on. That's when
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the law man is arrested for murder. Bass Reeves stands
accused of murdering his cook after a fight. It's alleged
that the cook poured hot grease down a dog's throat
(19:19):
to get back at bass Reeves for an earlier incident,
or the dog was the cooks and Bassaris threatened to
kill it. It depends on which prisoner tells the story.
What all agree on is that bass Reeves at the
time was dislodging a shell from his rifle. It was
the wrong caliber. He claimed the rifle misfired. His defense
is that it was an accident either way, intentional or accidental.
(19:42):
A bullet caught the cook, a man named Leech, in
the neck. Bass reeves nephew was there that night. I
asked Leech if he was badly heard, and he said
he was. I heard Leech tell the doctor he did
not think Bass shot him on purpose. It always been
perfectly friendly. I've been with bass and Leech on the
trip about two lunch and I've never heard a cross
word between them. When the shooting happened in eighteen eighty four,
(20:04):
it was deemed an accident. But between then and when
Bassaris was arrested for it two years later, something curious
was going on in the country, something that would change
the way that justice has served in America forever more.
What was your conception of the West and the end
of the West and the tragedy of what was lost
at that time, it was complete. It was went from
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a place that had a bright future. They were creating towns,
they were creating futures for themselves, they were creating places
for their family. They believed in what they were doing.
And then when Rutherford Hayes cut that deal to win
the election, that said everything in motion, because part of
the agreement was they're going to take the Union army
out and and and reconstruction, and and that didn't happen
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in one day. The agreement happened in one day, but
it took about twenty years for them to fully accomplish
the removal and replacement of the systems that had been
put in by the Freedmen's Bureau and by the new
newly elected Congress. So it took from eighteen seventy seven
to eighteen ninety seven before they really finished it. In
eighteen ninety six was the Plesti versus Ferguson case, which
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was separate but equal. So that's that that's finished. That
finished the work of turning around reconstruction. That was the punctuation.
But it took a long time because all the white
people in those states were not in favor of doing it.
A lot of people were pleased that that slavery was over,
that now we can we can go back to being
decent people. And then decent people didn't go on about
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their business and start doing their work. And then the
evil people get together and make deals. And that's what
they did. And they got together and then they just
one by one took over the state legislatures. They compromised
people that the Ku plus plan went berserk, and the
North turned their heads. They turned the Northern States turned
their heads away for any number of reasons, all of
which were low down, you know, unworthy. But the net,
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the net result of that was that when reconstruction ended,
then the possibilities of the West ended. Well. We often
focus on Rutherford B. Hayes and his compromise of eighteen
seventy seven is the end of reconstruction. The spark of
Lincoln inspired hope for racial progress in America that was
articulated at the end of the Civil War. That last
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flicker actually died in eighteen eighty four with the election
of Grover Cleveland. He was the first Democrat president elected
since the Civil War. His election signaled the final death
knell of any remaining hopes of a restoration of America's
commitment to its founding idealism, and it marked the true
end of the more earthbound goals of equality brought about
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by reconstruction. Following the election of President Cleveland, lynchings of
black Americans went up dramatically, Hate crimes in general spiked.
The mood of the country changed. There was a new
dominant key of resentment aimed at the recent racial advancements.
This nationwide seas change was equally felt in the Indian Territory.
(23:03):
The newly elected President Cleveland appoints a new U. S.
Marshal John Carroll, a former Confederate soldier, now that he's
the chief lawman in the Indian Territory. Acting on his direction,
Commissioner Stephen Wheeler of Fort Smith charges bass Reeves on
the two year old murder rap many suspect. The charges
are racially motivated, and the legal process seemed to be
(23:25):
that way too. Bass Reeves recalls a run in that
he had with one of his white jurors. He said, yes,
I am a juryman, and if you want to save
your neck, you'd better make a statement to me. I
told him again, I had no statement to make. He
then said, you damn black son of a bitch, I'm
just as certain to break your neck because I have
this cane in my hand. Me and three others have
(23:47):
guided in for you. Witnesses to the exchange affirm bass
reeves recollection of events. Judge Parker ordered the juror to
appear before him or beheld in contempt of court. The
juror is eventually excused and the bass Reeves murder trial
carries on. In October seven, a Sunday night, the foreman
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of the jury, as instructed by Judge Parker, reads the verdict.
We the jury find the defendant not guilty. Bass Reeves
is once again free justice carries on the system the
bass Reeves believes in works, despite ugly racist attempts to
manipulate it. Was around May a man named Zachariah Thatch
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was killed by his traveling partner, a man named George Wilson.
Wilson is a career criminal has been released from a
Tennessee prison one year earlier. The night of the killing.
Wilson is spotted in the Red Dawg Saloon and Kyo
Cook Falls, Oklahoma Territory. It's a whiskey joint one mile
west over the border from the Creek Nation and one
mile north from the border of the Seminole Nation. It's
(25:00):
siice location was for legal reasons. Keo Cook Falls was
one of the most infamous whiskey towns on the prairie.
Later that night, after Wilson's stumbled out of the Red
Dog Saloon, two shots sounded in the dark. Witnesses said
they came from where Thatch and Wilson has set up
camp for that night. The next morning, a body is
found in Rock Creek. The corpse is Zachariah Thatch. He's
(25:22):
missing digits from two fingers blown off by gunfire. Worse though,
his head has been cracked apart like a melon split
open by an axe. Deputy Marshall bass Reeves arrives a
few days later, armed with an arrest warrant. It doesn't
take him long to track down Wilson, who is traveling
overland with Thatch, his wagon and all of his possessions.
Wilson claims to the law man that he's the nephew
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of Zachariah Thatch, and then he's merely watching the wagon
and all of his uncle's property while he's off hunting.
Trouble for the outlaw is bass Reeves has brought the
corpse of Zachariah Thatch with him. Wilson quickly identifies the body.
He even admits that George Wilson is not his real aim.
He was born James C. Casharego of Conway, Arkansas. But
(26:05):
he swears the bass Reeves that he did not kill Thatch.
So bass Reeves investigates. He finds a pair of Wilson's
pants rust stained with blood. The outlaw says he'd hunted
rabbit for dinner the night before, and he stained his
pants butchering the animal. Bass Reeves finds an axe in
Wilson's wagon hidden among thatches property. It's highly unlikely that
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Wilson butcher the rabbit with an axe. The facts begin
to indict the guilty man. The final clue is the
most difficult to discover, and thus is also the most damning.
Bass Reeves investigates the campsite and finds remains of two
camp fires. One of the fires burned right next to
a tree. That's a curious place to build a fire.
The Oklahoma soil is parched from all the dry weather
(26:49):
they'd seen lately. When bass Reeves digs into the campfire's ashes,
he turns over blood stained earth. He discovers the murdered
man's blood preserved in the soil. James C. Casharego of Conway, Arkansas,
a k a. George Wilson is taken to Fort Smith,
where he has tried, convicted, and sentenced to die. On
July thirty, at the six, bass Reeves ed Reid watched
(27:11):
James Cashirego step through the gallows trap. He's the last
man to be hanged at Fort Smith. The jurisdiction of
the Court of Indian Territory comes to an end of
September one. Bass reeves detective work is certainly cunning and commendable,
but the true highlight of the law man's career, at
least according to bass Reeves, is the man hunt to
(27:32):
capture the outlaw Bob Dozier. From what we know, Bob
Dozier started out as a farmer. He was smart, handy,
and productive. Then, for reasons only he could explain, he
decides to become an outlaw, a black outlaw in Indian Territory.
He's wildly successful at it. One key to his success
He's an outlaw jack of all trades. He operates land swindles,
(27:53):
he steals jewels, he'll rob a poker game that's all
big money gamblers. And meanwhile, on the side he runs
a gang that specializes and horse theft. Bob Dozier tends
to hit other criminals, which reduces the chances a U.
S Marshal or sheriff will ever get involved. He's smart also,
since he's known as a violent man, it limits the
number of people looking to bear witness against him. His
(28:13):
crimes often go unpunished, that is until Bass Reeves gets
a writ. The arrest warrant is to bring the black
outlaw Bob Dozier to Fort Smith to stand trial for
stealing a horse from a white man named Sam Stratton.
The theft occurred six months earlier, but six months later,
after no other Deputy marshals can find the outlaw, the
(28:34):
writ goes to Bass. He rides out in the dead
of winter to find Bob Dozier. It will require months
to track down the cunning bandit. You could think of
Bob Doziers like Omar from the Wire, but for the
Indian territory. Finally, Bass catches a cold trail. He works
it until it's a warm trail. He gets closer and closer.
Bob Dozier, here's word the bass Reeves is hunting him down.
(28:56):
The outlaw sends word to bass Reeves to stop looking
for or he'll kill the lawman. Bass Reeves, since we're back.
If Dozier wants to end things, he should just stop running.
A few more months pass, bass Reeves continues to stay
on the outlaws trail. Bob Dozier can't rest. He can't
stay anywhere more than a day. He must stay perpetually
(29:18):
on the move to avoid capture. The outlaw grows weary
as bass Reeves gets closer and closer. Finally, Bass tracks
the outlaw down to a canyon ravine in the Cherokee Hills,
but a storm starts to wash away the outlaws tracks.
It's the perfect place to lose the law man. As
(29:39):
a master tracker and former Army scout, bass Reeves knows this.
He decides to take a risky gamble. He leads his
posseman down into the ravine, giving up the high ground.
It's a nearly fatal gamble. A shot is fired from
an unseen rifle. His possemen scatters, leaving their horses in
the ravine and bass all alone. The posseman hides among
(29:59):
the tree line. Both law men try to spot their ambushers.
It has to be Bob Dozier and his men. Bass
Reeves stays in the ravine. He lets his eyes adjust
to the darkness of nightfall. He watches the trees, scanning
for any movement. He spies a figure as it darts
between the two trees. He leads it with his winchester
and then fires twice. The figure falls with a pained sound.
(30:25):
The gunfire gives away bass his position. A second unseen
man returns fire. Bass Reeves lurches to his side. He
makes an anguish sound and falls to the ravine ground.
He's back to his old tricks. Rain splatters next to him.
Lightning splits the darkness with flashes of light. Bass Reeves
lies there his trapped set, waiting for his man to
(30:48):
make his move. After a short way, Bob Dozier laughs
against the darkness. He's killed bass Reeves and he knows it.
He steps out of the trees to inspect his prize.
Once he's close enough, bass Reeves speaks. He orders Bob
Dozier to drop his weapon. The outlaw. Bob Dozier can't
(31:10):
believe he felt for such a schoolboy trap. Bass Reeves
orders him again to drop his weapon. Instead, Bob Dozier
drops low to a squatted fire at bass Reeves, who's
still lying on the ground. Bass Reeves is faster, he
fires first. The bullet tears into Bob Dozier's neck. He's
likely dead before he hits the dirt. This was one
(31:31):
of the last highlights of bass reeves long career, at
least as far as he was concerned. It happened around
the same time when everything officially changed, not just for
bass but for all of America. All persons born or
(32:02):
naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof are citizens of the United States and of the
state wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States. In eighteen sixty eight, a
(32:23):
few years after the end of the Civil War, the
United States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. It guarantees equal protection
under the law to all citizens of the US. Nor
shall any State deprived any person of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law, nor denied to any
(32:43):
person within this jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Of course, the law is one thing, reality is another.
By the time bass Reeves caught Bob Dozier, the case
of plus E versus Ferguson had made its way to
the Supreme Court. In short, a mixed race man in
New Orleans boarded a train and sat in a whites
(33:06):
only seat. When the conductor forced the man from his seat,
it was in direct violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights,
but the court decided the train company was well within
its rights to discriminate on the basis of race. This
was the beginning of separate but equal, and it was
the end of a black lawman enforcing the laws of
this land. How could he if he wasn't equal to
the citizens he arrested. For three decades, bass Reeves rides
(33:28):
as a federal law man. He risks his life and
limb for the law abiding people of the Indian Territory,
regardless of race, creed, class, or color. He lives according
to America's most deeply revered values, and he feels betrayed
when the nation's lawmakers and the justices of the Supreme
Court are the ones to put him back in his place,
and they dare to call it progress and the coming
(33:51):
of civilization. But do you feel the vast reason would
have felt that the Supreme Court portrayed his values. I mean,
here's the highest court in the law. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah,
there's the Supreme Court. But there there were a bunch
of a bunch of races. So you know, of course
(34:14):
they betrayed completely. He didn't die pleased with with the
way the country was moving. He couldn't because it was
it was moving backwards from where he had been moving.
It was when west, it was moving in an upward trajectory.
You know, he was bringing law and order and and
they had opportunity. If you were a freeman, a fair man,
and adjust man, there was work for you. And he
(34:35):
did that without any change of anything except people who
were making the decisions. Everything turning backwards because they betrayed
the country, not just black people. They betrayed the whole
country when they did that, because they turned the whole
country in a direction that we're still coming out of.
You know, the whole country got consumed with the industry
of bigotry, all the commercial activities that support bigotry is
(34:58):
what we're not stuck with, you know. So no, he
had to feel betrayed, but he also had to feel
that the country still had the potential to correct itself.
Judge Parker's court officially endsed session on September one. The
new federal appointees at Fort Smith are now increasingly Democrats.
(35:20):
They set about dismantling reconstruction fast as they can. A
few months after his last gavel strike, Judge Parker dies
on November se He was fifty eight years old. He
passes away eight months of the day after he watched
Cherokee Bill hanging from his gallows, the last great outlaw
he'd sentenced to die. After Judge Parker has gone, Bassarieves
(35:42):
operates primarily out of the Federal courthouse down in Paris, Texas.
It'll soon be time for him to move on, but
not before he makes one more attempt at ensuring justice
for black men in America. At one point, while Bassarieves
works down in the Lone Star State, a white rancher
named John Ashley shoots and kills his black neighbor. Soon
after that, Ashley's livestock starts to mysteriously die, Then his
(36:04):
house is burned down. To get justice of their own,
Ashley's neighbors go hunting for black people to punish. They
find a few black farmers out on the road. There's
no evidence that they're the guilty party. The crowd needs
no evidence. They hang the black men from trees, and
then they go looking for more. Most of the black
community flees the area as they attempt to reach safety.
(36:26):
The sheriff arrests six young black men he feels are responsible,
and he holds them in custody. In his jail, a
crowd forms, intent on more Texas justice. They plan to
lynch the men. First, they'll need to break into the
county jail and yank the black men out of their
cells where they're locked up. U s Deputy marshals are
called in to protect the jail. The tallest, toughest look
(36:47):
and marshal among them is also the blackest. That night,
the lynch mob loses to Bass Reeves and six black
men keep their lives. Bass Reeves believes in justice far
more than his former master did, who coincidentally was a
(37:10):
Texas lawmaker. Bass also believes in justice more than his
white neighbors do. The ones who reserve it for the
races they respect and pursue justice conditionally. To bass Reeves,
justice isn't just blind, it isn't even personal. It's what
we all live under. It's what holds us together. It's
the tie that binds. Without the law, there is no we.
(37:30):
His faith and justice was first tested when he was
on trial himself, yet it was strengthened when he was acquitted.
Now he must face the biggest test of his deep
faith in the law. One day, Ben Reeves, the son
of Bass, comes home to find his wife in bed
with another man. He flies into a rage. He beats
the man and then kills his wife. After he attempts
to take his own life and his gun misfires, he
(37:52):
takes off. Now he's a wanted man, and a rest
warrant is soon drawn up. Marshall Bennett doesn't know what
to do. You No, Deputy Marshall wants to hunt down
the son of Bass Reeves. The father, though, does what
he's raised his son to respect. Bass Reeves reportedly tells
the marshal, give me the writ. It doesn't take the
(38:13):
law man father long to find his son. He tracks
him down to a house. Some people beg Bass Reeves
to go easy on his boy. Bass Reeves pays them
no mind. He speaks directly to his son. According to
Reverend Charles Davis, a Creek freedman, bass Reeves shouted to
his boy, Now, Betty, you want no more my thun.
You committed a crime, and I have a one in
(38:34):
my pocket for you, a bench. One either to bring
you in dad, one live, and I'm gonna take you
in today one way or the other. You come out
with your hands up, press your whole body. We'll be down.
Ben Reeves comes out from where he was hiding, his
hands raised high over his head. It has to be
(38:55):
one of the saddest days of bass reeves life. And
he does it for justice. His commitment is that great.
Then America betrays him and his belief in the nation.
Like his father before him, Ben Reeves has to face
a murder trial. He's tried, convicted, and sentenced to life
in prison in Leavenworth. When bass Reeves goes to arrest
(39:17):
his son Ben Reeves for murder, I wondered, if you
were the law, would you come after me like that?
That's a very difficult question, but A said no, I
wouldn't do anything to help you get away. I wouldn't
do anything to help you hide, and I don't I
wouldn't do anything to help him catch you. That's a
(39:38):
fair deal. I'll take that. The Cowboy era ends. Then
we've talked about how the racism comes to the West,
But what do you imagine for black men who they
lost that Cowboy era? They lose that freedom, just specifically them,
Like it seems so sad, you know, to know, to
get this moment of two decades of actual freedom and
(39:59):
then to have that taken away after dedicating yourself to
enlarging America. They committed themselves to the American enterprise, and
then this is their their return, this is their repayment. Yeah,
they believe what the government told them that you are
now free and full citizens, and they acted on it
and they went out and went west. The level of
betrayal that was felt, that's what we're working against. Now.
(40:20):
It's a reasonable position to be skeptical of America if
you're black or Native. I mean, why is America so
committed to allowing bigotry? Like the American people who do
go for that. And I'm not suggesting that all Americans
are like this, I do know that it is. It
is not the majority of Americans to feel this way,
but yet the impulse is so strong that it is
recognizable and it expected, and you can you know what
(40:41):
it's going to keep becoming. So why is that? What about?
What about that feeling? What does bigotry provide that a
person is willing to go against their own self interest
to have that? It's a satisfaction with a failed life.
God damn, there it is. Nineteen of It was the
year Oklahoma joined the Union. It was also the same
(41:03):
year the Indian Territory was declared no more. What this
means for bass Reeves is he's out of a job.
There's no longer any need for a deputy marshal in
the territory since there's no longer a territory. He's fired
by the March of what the new white folks in
town called progress. The next year, nineteen o eight, bass
Reeves becomes a beat cop in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He's forced
(41:23):
to only work in the black section of town. He's
no longer allowed to arrest white citizens or have any
legal authority over them. At one time he could shoot
them dead. Now he can't even shoot them. A mean look.
By eight, bass Reeves is worn down and limps from
an old gunshot wound. After nearly two years as a
beat cop, he retires from the Muskogee Police in nineteen
(41:43):
o nine. By bass Reeves is dead. He dies on
January twelve at home. The last of the real wild
West passes away with him. When bass Reeves dies, his
son Ben is still locked up behind bars in federal
prison for Perhaps as a way to pay their respects
to the departed legendary law man, friends of bass start
(42:05):
to work to free his son. They advocate for him
with the authorities, and finally, in nineteen fourteen, Bassarie's son's
life sentence is commuted. Bassarides was, without a doubt, America's
greatest law man, a proud tradition, a legend of the law.
And what did he get for it? When he needed someone,
(42:27):
he was treated like a dog. He believed in America
more than America did. Here was a law man so
unswerving from justice and so relentless in his pursuit of
it that he entered people's dreams. One man who attempted
to kill his wife had a dream that Bassarieves was
looking for him, hunting him down. When he woke up,
he went to the authorities and turned himself in. That's
a true story. That's the sort of whole bass Reeves
(42:49):
had on the people in the land that he policed.
A black cop is a difficult job, to say the least.
It's a trope in hip hop movies, online culture. Everyone
knows the black cop is to be avoided, but also
the black cop represents the idea of race and justice
paired together, even if the black cop doesn't guarantee real
racial justice just because he or she is black. When
(43:11):
the good people arrived in Oklahoma with their racism and
their law books, bass Reeves had to take a back
seat to progress. But until then he was an incorruptible,
indomitable law of the land, what nearly everyone would call
a good cop. The Prairie was certainly more fair and just.
Law and order were maintained by the hanging Judge Isaac
(43:32):
Parker and the greatest law man the West ever, New
bass Reeves. Thanks for listening, Stay tuned for chapter four.
Estebon the first Black Cowboy. We're gonna to step back
even further in American history. Black Cowboys is written by
me Saron Burnett, produced and edited by Ryan Murdock and
(43:53):
Michelle land Or. Theme song is written and performed by Demeanor.
Sound designed to music by Jeremy Thal. Additional music by
Alvin Young Blood Heart. Additional music also by Greg Childs.
Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown, Jocelyn Sears,
and Aaron Blakemore performances by Adam Copeland, Tom Combs and
Ryan Murdoch. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Executive producers are
(44:16):
Jason English and Man Guesh at Ticket. Yeah, this is
a home. It's been a long road for us. We
take it ownership over everything else to us, realty, We
surrounded by our heritage, are fisked up because we're tried
to be Ammerican special. Thanks as always to my pod.
Thank god he asked himself, what's really in the name?
(44:44):
Sitting on a Mustang Friday through the place Buffalo. So
to the King little brains, we a love with the
cowboys way
The year is eighteen eighty three. The last days of
winter are giving way to spring. The prairie of the
Indian Territory will soon be bright green, almost glowing with
new life. A black preacher named Reverend William Stewart tends
his land. He owns this farm spread located in the
Chickasaw Nation. The reverend plans to burn off what remains
of winter. It's common prairie management, something his native neighbors
(00:26):
have long used to prepare for spring. But the reverend's
intentional grass fire burns out of control. Soon it crosses
over onto nearby grazing lands. Forty five cowboys work that land.
There are a mix of Native, black and white cowboys.
The foreman's name is Jim Webb. He's not a decent
or kind man. He's quick to anger, and he's prone
(00:47):
to violence. He's also a bigot. As fast spreading wildfire
burns into the soft hills of grass, Jim Webb saddles
up and rides hard over to Reverend Stewart's farm. There's
little either man can do now. He dis mounts and
confronts the preacher. He spits hot words in the black
reverend's face. The reverend takes it for a while, since
he's the forgiving sort. But when he tries to calm
(01:09):
the cowboys, anger Webb flies into a white hot rage.
He will tolerate no back talk. He kills the black preacher,
and then Jim Webb leaves the Black Man of God
lying dead on the prairie, surrounded by the burning grass fire.
(01:37):
A federal warrant is issued for the Reverence murderer. The
law man bass Reeves is given the writ in charge
of dispensing law and order in the Indian Territory. Bass
Reeves was the first black man hired to be a U. S.
Marshal west of the Mississippi. Before Deputy Marshal, he had
been a tracker and guide in the Indian Territory. He
knows the land, he knows the people. Plus he speaks
(01:57):
a few of the languages of the five tribes of
the in territory. Above it all, he's fearless. As the
biographer of the Indian Territory D. C. Gideon wrote in
bass Reeves quote, fears nothing that moves and breathes. He
has good reason. He's deadly accurate with both his revolvers
and his winchester He stands six ft two with his
(02:18):
boots off, weighs around a hundred and eighty pounds. He's
a big man, known for his big voice, booming laugh,
and good time personality. He can talk, and he likes to.
He's particularly fond of his thick black walrus mustache. He
knows it makes him distinct. He also always wears a
black hat for the same reason. It makes him recognizable
(02:38):
from a distance. Bass Reeves has a strong hunch where
to find the outlaw, Jim Webb. He starts his man
hunt at Bywater's General Store. When Webb sees bass Reeves
ride up to the general store, he runs jumps out
of a window. The outlaw takes a Winchester rifle with
him and a revolver. He makes a desperate run for
his horse. Bass spots his prey lean. He spurs his
(03:01):
horse and cuts off Jim Webb's escape route. Webb turns
and sprints for some tall brush. He makes it about
five dred yards. Then he turns and fires his Winchester.
It's a fatal mistake. Here is how bass Reeves recalled
the end of Jim Webb. Before I could drop off
my horse. His first bullet cut a button off my coat,
and the second cut my bridle rein and two. I
(03:22):
shifted my six shooter and grabbed my Winchester and shot twice.
The outlaw, Jim Webb, falls to the earth, gut shot,
but he isn't dead yet. He calls out for Bass
Reeves to come closer. Bass was no fool. He tells
the gut shot outlaw to throw off his revolver and
rifle into the brush. Webb does as he's ordered, good
(03:45):
to his word. Bass Reeves draws closer. Dying breaths, Jim
Webb pays his final respects to the law man who
took his life. Keep me your hand, Bass, you're a
brave man. I want you to accept my revolver and
scabbard as a present, and you must accept them. Take
it for with that. I have killed eleven men curiously.
(04:13):
When the Arkansas Gazette reports this story on July, there's
no mention of Bass Reeves. The shooting death of Jim
Webb is left vague. The black law man is not
given credit for killing the white outlaw. It's the same
sort of passive language familiar from officer involved shootings today.
A man named Webb charged with murder, engaged them in
a running fight and was fatally wounded, dying the next day.
(04:36):
Jim Webb was from Texas. He was likely white and
a former Confederate soldier, the sort of man who'd want
to give an honorable enemy his gun and scabbard. We
don't know this for sure. All we know for certain
is it was important that the American newspaper reading public
never really focus on the fact there was a black
law man shooting white men dead on the prairie. The
(04:56):
image of a formerly enslaved black man riding around on
horseback with a license to kill tended to make white
people uncomfortable. Over his thirty two year career, bass Reives
claimed to have killed at least fourteen men. We can
only confirm that bass Reie is officially killed five men,
but we have no reason to doubt him. He was
(05:17):
a man of his word, not prone to exaggeration or puffery.
We just can't corroborate his number with news accounts. But
if we do take him at his word that he
killed fourteen men in gunfights, then there's no debate at all.
The bass Reids was the most lethal law man in
the wild West. Think of it this way. His record
as a gunfighter was fourteen and oh he was undefeated.
(05:40):
No other law man comes close. Black or white, sorry whiter. Yeah,
this is a home. It's been a long role for us.
We'd take an ownership over everything else to us royalty.
We surrounded by a heritage. Are fist up because we
tried to be Ammericant. I'm Zaring Burnett. Welcome to Black Cowboys,
(06:03):
And I heard original podcast asked himself was really in
the name? Sitting on a Mustang Friday through the place Buffalo?
So did the King of the Range. We love for
the cowboy way. Chapter three. The law man Bass Reeves
(06:27):
No Pop. When I was young, you told me about
Bass Reaves, and he was this bad, bad man. In
my mind, he was just in formally enslaved black man
who frees himself. He rides around the West arresting and
even shooting white men dead in the name of the law.
But I was a boy. That meant something different to me.
What did it mean to you as a man father,
a black man in America? Bass Reeves had a singular
position in my personal history and my and in my
(06:49):
understanding of history. In order to understand bass Reeves. You
have to understand after the Civil War, everything was in flux.
Everything had changed, and Bass Reeves had left the slavery
before the war ended, so he made himself free. Then
when freedom came to the West, he was ready for it.
He was dedicated to freedom and justice as a natural idea.
(07:12):
In the same way that Stevie Wonder was born to
play music. Bath would have been a police officer and
a justice person wherever he landed, because that was in him.
Bass was amazing at taking people in. He only killed
fourteen people out of like three or four thousand and
he arrested. That's not many people. So he it was
like he was a bloodthirsty, crazy man. It's almost like
(07:33):
he had a zeal like a minister has a zeal
to be a minister. He had his deal to be
a law man. In the same way his mother first
began to worry about Bass Reeves when he was a boy.
When he worked in the field. He loved to sing
songs about murder and outlaws. She wasn't sure where he
(07:54):
learned the songs, know when she knew sang them. Bass
started his life as the enslaved child property of a
white family. He was born sometime in July in Crawford County, Arkansas.
He worked the fields as a child, but as he
grew bigger, he was picked to be a body man
to the son of his owner. He was a mix
of a valet and protection. Bass wasn't taught to read,
(08:15):
as he'd requested. Instead, he was taught to shoot. This
was rare for an enslaved person. He became so skilled
with a gun in his hand, his owner entered him
into turkey shoot competitions, which Bass typically one. When war
broke out, Bass accompanied his master to the Civil War.
He claims that he was at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Chickamaugua,
and p Ridge. There's no record for what the slave
(08:37):
was doing in the war. All we have our oral histories.
According to oral history, this is when Bass Reeves got free.
As the story goes, Bass and his master were playing cards.
Some stories say they had wagered on his freedom, others
say they just got into a disagreement. What all the
stories agree on is what happened next. Bass Reeves knocks
his owner the funk out, and then he frees himself.
(09:00):
He sneaks out of the Confederate camp and he escapes
the Civil War. He goes on the run and flees
to the Seminole and Creek Nation in present day Oklahoma
for the remainder of the war. He stays there. He
soon learns the Muskogee language of the Creek and Seminole.
He also learns to speak some Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw.
There the five tribes of the Indian Territory. Bass reviews
(09:21):
is accepted by the tribes. He learns their land, their ways,
becomes a proficient hunter, trapper, guide, and scout. After the
war is over, as the nation stitches itself together, it
begins to look west. In eighteen seventy five, President Grant
appoints Judge Parker to the bench of the Federal Court
at Fort Smith, Arkansas. It's the official U S Court
(09:41):
for the Indian Territory. He soon becomes known as Hanging
Judge Parker, the same man who will twice sentence Cherokee
Bill to quote hang by the neck until he is dead.
He's also a two term Congressman who served on the
House Committee on Indian Affairs. He's sent to restore law
and order in the Indian Territory until kne Good men
to do it. One of the first men the newly
(10:03):
appointed Judge Parker hires as a deputy Marshal, is Bass Reeves.
Judge Parker understands the stakes at hand with a black
man dispensing justice on the prairie. According to his fellow
judge Paul Brady, he reminded Bass that he would be
in a position as deputy to show the lawful as
well as the lawless, that a black man was the
(10:23):
equal of any other law enforcement officer on the frontier.
He convinced Bass to join them and helping to establish
the rule of law over the rule of men, and
to bring law where there had never been any law before.
Few men of their day would have guessed it. But
these two men have a lot in common. Not on
the surface. One man is a judge, the other man
(10:43):
is an illiterate runaway slave. Yet over their two decades
of working together, they'll discover they are equally committed to justice,
dedicated law men, and consequently they become close friends. Unexpected
as it may be, The key is that they can
both trust the other to be good at their job
and true to their word. They are honorable men in
a place overrun with their opposite as a you know,
(11:07):
a formerly enslaved man who freed himself. Here he is
having the chance to not get revenge or vengeance, but
he can enact his will on these white people that
would have been possibly former enslavers. And yet he doesn't
ever enact vengeance that way. He sticks to the letter
of the law. Do you find that commendable? I do.
I admire it because what he is, he's not letting
(11:28):
external factors change his values. He's if he's a fair
and just man. So the fact that there are other
people who are not fair and just who had visited
their abuse upon him, that didn't change him to be
like them. You know, he was still a fair and justment.
He could still be trusted to go out and arrest
anybody from the judge to his son and bring them
(11:48):
back with the same level of integrity. That's unheard of,
you know, man, that that's I mean not unheard of
because he did it, but as that's like it's very unusual.
That's a level of self assuredness and belief that could
only come from inside of him. You know, nobody taught
him any of that. That was in him to do right.
(12:09):
Last reads was a hard man and complex, a perfect
fit for the hard complex place that he called home.
A news story published in the early nineteen hundreds that
was eventually syndicated by the Washington Post described the land
as quote, there is not in all the United States
a place where a deputy marshal is such an important
figure as in Indian Territory. According to that same turn
(12:30):
of the century news story, when Reeves commenced riding as
deputy marshall, all of Oklahoma and Indian Territory were under
the jurisdiction of Fort Smith Court, and the deputies from
Fort Smith road to Fort Reno, Fort Sill, and Anadarko
for prisoners, a distance of four hundred miles. In those days,
the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad running south across the
territory marked the western fringe of civilization. Eighty miles west
(12:53):
of Fort Smith. It was known as the deadline. And
whenever a deputy marshal from Fort Smith or Paris, Texas
crossed the Missouri into in Texas track, he took his
life in his hands, and he knew it. When a
deputy and his post man wrote out of Fort Smith
into the territory, neither he nor his friends knew whether
he would ever ride back again. Bass Reeves never let
any fear of what could or might happen cause him
(13:16):
to shrink from his duty. He was as fearless as
they come, and he preferred to rely on himself and
his own wits. Not to mention, he was a recognizable
figure on the prairie, a big target. The way to
get around his high profile, bass Reeves love to slip
into a good disguise. He seemed to revel in his
undercover work. He could use expectations that others had for
(13:36):
black people against them, turn their prejudices to his favor.
One time, bass Reeves went out to search for two
outlaw brothers. Word was the men were hiding out somewhere
down by the Texas border. Bass Reeves leaves his posseman
behind and rides out alone to bring back the bad
men to justice. His plan is simple. He'll disguise himself
as a tramp, someone they'd never suspect was a lawman.
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Then once he's close enough, he'll pull his gun and
arrest them. He removes the heels from a pair of
busted shoes. He uses an old cane to walk. He
gets an old floppy ass hat. He shoots three holes
in it with some carefully applied dirt and stink. He's
ready for the game of subterfuge. Then he walks the
twenty eight miles to the outlaws hide out. When he arrives,
the outlaws aren't around. Only their mother is there. Bass
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changes tactics, knowing her sons are on the run. He
poses as a less fortunate outlaw who's also on the
run from a posse, and he begs her for a
hot meal. She feels for him and obliges. She invites
him in. As he eats, The mother conspires with the
undercover law man, saying it would be a good plan
that you and my boys joined forces, that you can
be a protection to one another. The irony is cruel. Sometimes,
(14:43):
after darkness falls, the outlaw brothers ride up. They whistle
to their mom when she whistles back to let them
know the coast is clear. The brothers ride up to
their hide out and dismount. They meet their mother's new
addition to their gang. The brothers are fans of their
mother's plan. They like Bass. Later that night, when the
outlaw brothers and Bass Reeves go to sleep, they're all
in the same main room of the cabin. Bass waits
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until the house is quiet save for the sounds of
two sleeping outlaws and their mother. Once the sounds of
sleep take hold, Bass springs into action. He sneaks over
and handcuffs the outlaws together. Somehow he doesn't wake them.
The next morning, the brothers come to urged awake by
bass reeves boot. He kicks the outlaws awake, and then
they learn with a rough shock that they've been captured.
(15:26):
Their mother feels cheated and lied to. She follows bass
Reeves and her boys for three miles, cussing out the
law man the whole damn time. A Deputy Marshall's job
is a mostly thankless one. Over his thirty two year
career as a lawman, bass Reeves arrested three thousand hardened criminals.
That's an average of ninety four arrests a year every
(15:47):
year for thirty two years. In other words, for three decades,
he hunted the most desperate men in America, outlaws willing
to kill to stay free. As the Turn of the
century news story made plain to its readers, there were
three principal classes of outlaws. Murderers, horse thieves and bootleggers.
Added to the Indians and mixed Negroes and Indians were
the white outlaws that had fled from Texas, Kansas, and
(16:09):
other states. Whiskey was a legal and Indian territory. To
sneak in whiskey, sometimes cowboys would slide a bottle in
their boot, thus the term bootlegger. Profit minded cowboys were
also whiskey runners for the busy whiskey towns, the ones
just over the border from Indian nations. When a bootlegger
was busted, they were charged with the crime of introducing
(16:29):
that was short for a quote introducing spirituous liquor in
the Indian country. Other than the whiskey runners and moonshiners,
the rest of the hard men a deputy marshal dealt
with were primarily murderers and horse thieves, and many men
were both and equally Both men knew if they were
caught and they could be killed, so they were prepared
to fight for their lives. That was the job of
(16:49):
a deputy marshal, and largely in the Indian territory it
fell to black men like Bass Reeves or Deputy Marshal
Grant Johnson, or even the shady sort of deputy like
Ike Roger who betrayed the outlaw Cherokee Bill. In the West,
the law, or what passed for it, was often a
black man with a badge and a gun. This is
due to the racial politics of the Prairie. The Indian
(17:10):
tribes both trust and do not fear black men the
way that they mistrust and fear white men. The federal
government knows this. They know that a black law man
is more likely to go into Indian territory and come
back alive. This is a central dynamic for justice in
the West. We'll dig into how this came to be
in a later episode about the Black seminal Chief John Horse. Now,
(17:31):
we often talk about the black cop in our modern context,
but bass Reeves is a very different black cop. How
do you, as somebody who has had issues with police,
respect a man like bass Reeves. We wouldn't be it
opposite ends that the spectrum. He would be required to
arrest me for things I've done, but he wouldn't see
them as things that were uh, immoral, unethical, that would
(17:55):
just be illegal. That's a different threshold, you know, that's
just okay. The lawmates change, you know it was used
to be illegal for this. Now it is not, so
there's room for law man and law breakers to break
bread on areas that are not ill moral. My my
feeling is Bass has a job to do. I want
any cop who does his job to do it just
(18:15):
the way Bass did, without any consideration for who the
citizen is. That everybody should get exactly the same treatment.
My anger was always when that was in the case.
Instead of curbside justice, it would be curbside injustice and
that's not right. Whereas Bass barrass Reeves was to be
pitting me a consistent justice, I don't have any problem
(18:36):
with him. My prober with police is the hypocrisy and
the refusal to adhere to their own standards. When the
police officer kills somebody uh improperly, they need to go
to prison like everybody else who kills somebody improperly. Your
job should protect you from doing improper things, and Bass
Reeves has to meet the law head on. That's when
(18:58):
the law man is arrested for murder. Bass Reeves stands
accused of murdering his cook after a fight. It's alleged
that the cook poured hot grease down a dog's throat
(19:19):
to get back at bass Reeves for an earlier incident,
or the dog was the cooks and Bassaris threatened to
kill it. It depends on which prisoner tells the story.
What all agree on is that bass Reeves at the
time was dislodging a shell from his rifle. It was
the wrong caliber. He claimed the rifle misfired. His defense
is that it was an accident either way, intentional or accidental.
(19:42):
A bullet caught the cook, a man named Leech, in
the neck. Bass reeves nephew was there that night. I
asked Leech if he was badly heard, and he said
he was. I heard Leech tell the doctor he did
not think Bass shot him on purpose. It always been
perfectly friendly. I've been with bass and Leech on the
trip about two lunch and I've never heard a cross
word between them. When the shooting happened in eighteen eighty four,
(20:04):
it was deemed an accident. But between then and when
Bassaris was arrested for it two years later, something curious
was going on in the country, something that would change
the way that justice has served in America forever more.
What was your conception of the West and the end
of the West and the tragedy of what was lost
at that time, it was complete. It was went from
(20:26):
a place that had a bright future. They were creating towns,
they were creating futures for themselves, they were creating places
for their family. They believed in what they were doing.
And then when Rutherford Hayes cut that deal to win
the election, that said everything in motion, because part of
the agreement was they're going to take the Union army
out and and and reconstruction, and and that didn't happen
(20:49):
in one day. The agreement happened in one day, but
it took about twenty years for them to fully accomplish
the removal and replacement of the systems that had been
put in by the Freedmen's Bureau and by the new
newly elected Congress. So it took from eighteen seventy seven
to eighteen ninety seven before they really finished it. In
eighteen ninety six was the Plesti versus Ferguson case, which
(21:12):
was separate but equal. So that's that that's finished. That
finished the work of turning around reconstruction. That was the punctuation.
But it took a long time because all the white
people in those states were not in favor of doing it.
A lot of people were pleased that that slavery was over,
that now we can we can go back to being
decent people. And then decent people didn't go on about
(21:34):
their business and start doing their work. And then the
evil people get together and make deals. And that's what
they did. And they got together and then they just
one by one took over the state legislatures. They compromised
people that the Ku plus plan went berserk, and the
North turned their heads. They turned the Northern States turned
their heads away for any number of reasons, all of
which were low down, you know, unworthy. But the net,
(22:00):
the net result of that was that when reconstruction ended,
then the possibilities of the West ended. Well. We often
focus on Rutherford B. Hayes and his compromise of eighteen
seventy seven is the end of reconstruction. The spark of
Lincoln inspired hope for racial progress in America that was
articulated at the end of the Civil War. That last
(22:21):
flicker actually died in eighteen eighty four with the election
of Grover Cleveland. He was the first Democrat president elected
since the Civil War. His election signaled the final death
knell of any remaining hopes of a restoration of America's
commitment to its founding idealism, and it marked the true
end of the more earthbound goals of equality brought about
(22:41):
by reconstruction. Following the election of President Cleveland, lynchings of
black Americans went up dramatically, Hate crimes in general spiked.
The mood of the country changed. There was a new
dominant key of resentment aimed at the recent racial advancements.
This nationwide seas change was equally felt in the Indian Territory.
(23:03):
The newly elected President Cleveland appoints a new U. S.
Marshal John Carroll, a former Confederate soldier, now that he's
the chief lawman in the Indian Territory. Acting on his direction,
Commissioner Stephen Wheeler of Fort Smith charges bass Reeves on
the two year old murder rap many suspect. The charges
are racially motivated, and the legal process seemed to be
(23:25):
that way too. Bass Reeves recalls a run in that
he had with one of his white jurors. He said, yes,
I am a juryman, and if you want to save
your neck, you'd better make a statement to me. I
told him again, I had no statement to make. He
then said, you damn black son of a bitch, I'm
just as certain to break your neck because I have
this cane in my hand. Me and three others have
(23:47):
guided in for you. Witnesses to the exchange affirm bass
reeves recollection of events. Judge Parker ordered the juror to
appear before him or beheld in contempt of court. The
juror is eventually excused and the bass Reeves murder trial
carries on. In October seven, a Sunday night, the foreman
(24:12):
of the jury, as instructed by Judge Parker, reads the verdict.
We the jury find the defendant not guilty. Bass Reeves
is once again free justice carries on the system the
bass Reeves believes in works, despite ugly racist attempts to
manipulate it. Was around May a man named Zachariah Thatch
(24:39):
was killed by his traveling partner, a man named George Wilson.
Wilson is a career criminal has been released from a
Tennessee prison one year earlier. The night of the killing.
Wilson is spotted in the Red Dawg Saloon and Kyo
Cook Falls, Oklahoma Territory. It's a whiskey joint one mile
west over the border from the Creek Nation and one
mile north from the border of the Seminole Nation. It's
(25:00):
siice location was for legal reasons. Keo Cook Falls was
one of the most infamous whiskey towns on the prairie.
Later that night, after Wilson's stumbled out of the Red
Dog Saloon, two shots sounded in the dark. Witnesses said
they came from where Thatch and Wilson has set up
camp for that night. The next morning, a body is
found in Rock Creek. The corpse is Zachariah Thatch. He's
(25:22):
missing digits from two fingers blown off by gunfire. Worse though,
his head has been cracked apart like a melon split
open by an axe. Deputy Marshall bass Reeves arrives a
few days later, armed with an arrest warrant. It doesn't
take him long to track down Wilson, who is traveling
overland with Thatch, his wagon and all of his possessions.
Wilson claims to the law man that he's the nephew
(25:44):
of Zachariah Thatch, and then he's merely watching the wagon
and all of his uncle's property while he's off hunting.
Trouble for the outlaw is bass Reeves has brought the
corpse of Zachariah Thatch with him. Wilson quickly identifies the body.
He even admits that George Wilson is not his real aim.
He was born James C. Casharego of Conway, Arkansas. But
(26:05):
he swears the bass Reeves that he did not kill Thatch.
So bass Reeves investigates. He finds a pair of Wilson's
pants rust stained with blood. The outlaw says he'd hunted
rabbit for dinner the night before, and he stained his
pants butchering the animal. Bass Reeves finds an axe in
Wilson's wagon hidden among thatches property. It's highly unlikely that
(26:26):
Wilson butcher the rabbit with an axe. The facts begin
to indict the guilty man. The final clue is the
most difficult to discover, and thus is also the most damning.
Bass Reeves investigates the campsite and finds remains of two
camp fires. One of the fires burned right next to
a tree. That's a curious place to build a fire.
The Oklahoma soil is parched from all the dry weather
(26:49):
they'd seen lately. When bass Reeves digs into the campfire's ashes,
he turns over blood stained earth. He discovers the murdered
man's blood preserved in the soil. James C. Casharego of Conway, Arkansas,
a k a. George Wilson is taken to Fort Smith,
where he has tried, convicted, and sentenced to die. On
July thirty, at the six, bass Reeves ed Reid watched
(27:11):
James Cashirego step through the gallows trap. He's the last
man to be hanged at Fort Smith. The jurisdiction of
the Court of Indian Territory comes to an end of
September one. Bass reeves detective work is certainly cunning and commendable,
but the true highlight of the law man's career, at
least according to bass Reeves, is the man hunt to
(27:32):
capture the outlaw Bob Dozier. From what we know, Bob
Dozier started out as a farmer. He was smart, handy,
and productive. Then, for reasons only he could explain, he
decides to become an outlaw, a black outlaw in Indian Territory.
He's wildly successful at it. One key to his success
He's an outlaw jack of all trades. He operates land swindles,
(27:53):
he steals jewels, he'll rob a poker game that's all
big money gamblers. And meanwhile, on the side he runs
a gang that specializes and horse theft. Bob Dozier tends
to hit other criminals, which reduces the chances a U.
S Marshal or sheriff will ever get involved. He's smart also,
since he's known as a violent man, it limits the
number of people looking to bear witness against him. His
(28:13):
crimes often go unpunished, that is until Bass Reeves gets
a writ. The arrest warrant is to bring the black
outlaw Bob Dozier to Fort Smith to stand trial for
stealing a horse from a white man named Sam Stratton.
The theft occurred six months earlier, but six months later,
after no other Deputy marshals can find the outlaw, the
(28:34):
writ goes to Bass. He rides out in the dead
of winter to find Bob Dozier. It will require months
to track down the cunning bandit. You could think of
Bob Doziers like Omar from the Wire, but for the
Indian territory. Finally, Bass catches a cold trail. He works
it until it's a warm trail. He gets closer and closer.
Bob Dozier, here's word the bass Reeves is hunting him down.
(28:56):
The outlaw sends word to bass Reeves to stop looking
for or he'll kill the lawman. Bass Reeves, since we're back.
If Dozier wants to end things, he should just stop running.
A few more months pass, bass Reeves continues to stay
on the outlaws trail. Bob Dozier can't rest. He can't
stay anywhere more than a day. He must stay perpetually
(29:18):
on the move to avoid capture. The outlaw grows weary
as bass Reeves gets closer and closer. Finally, Bass tracks
the outlaw down to a canyon ravine in the Cherokee Hills,
but a storm starts to wash away the outlaws tracks.
It's the perfect place to lose the law man. As
(29:39):
a master tracker and former Army scout, bass Reeves knows this.
He decides to take a risky gamble. He leads his
posseman down into the ravine, giving up the high ground.
It's a nearly fatal gamble. A shot is fired from
an unseen rifle. His possemen scatters, leaving their horses in
the ravine and bass all alone. The posseman hides among
(29:59):
the tree line. Both law men try to spot their ambushers.
It has to be Bob Dozier and his men. Bass
Reeves stays in the ravine. He lets his eyes adjust
to the darkness of nightfall. He watches the trees, scanning
for any movement. He spies a figure as it darts
between the two trees. He leads it with his winchester
and then fires twice. The figure falls with a pained sound.
(30:25):
The gunfire gives away bass his position. A second unseen
man returns fire. Bass Reeves lurches to his side. He
makes an anguish sound and falls to the ravine ground.
He's back to his old tricks. Rain splatters next to him.
Lightning splits the darkness with flashes of light. Bass Reeves
lies there his trapped set, waiting for his man to
(30:48):
make his move. After a short way, Bob Dozier laughs
against the darkness. He's killed bass Reeves and he knows it.
He steps out of the trees to inspect his prize.
Once he's close enough, bass Reeves speaks. He orders Bob
Dozier to drop his weapon. The outlaw. Bob Dozier can't
(31:10):
believe he felt for such a schoolboy trap. Bass Reeves
orders him again to drop his weapon. Instead, Bob Dozier
drops low to a squatted fire at bass Reeves, who's
still lying on the ground. Bass Reeves is faster, he
fires first. The bullet tears into Bob Dozier's neck. He's
likely dead before he hits the dirt. This was one
(31:31):
of the last highlights of bass reeves long career, at
least as far as he was concerned. It happened around
the same time when everything officially changed, not just for
bass but for all of America. All persons born or
(32:02):
naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof are citizens of the United States and of the
state wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States. In eighteen sixty eight, a
(32:23):
few years after the end of the Civil War, the
United States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. It guarantees equal protection
under the law to all citizens of the US. Nor
shall any State deprived any person of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law, nor denied to any
(32:43):
person within this jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Of course, the law is one thing, reality is another.
By the time bass Reeves caught Bob Dozier, the case
of plus E versus Ferguson had made its way to
the Supreme Court. In short, a mixed race man in
New Orleans boarded a train and sat in a whites
(33:06):
only seat. When the conductor forced the man from his seat,
it was in direct violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights,
but the court decided the train company was well within
its rights to discriminate on the basis of race. This
was the beginning of separate but equal, and it was
the end of a black lawman enforcing the laws of
this land. How could he if he wasn't equal to
the citizens he arrested. For three decades, bass Reeves rides
(33:28):
as a federal law man. He risks his life and
limb for the law abiding people of the Indian Territory,
regardless of race, creed, class, or color. He lives according
to America's most deeply revered values, and he feels betrayed
when the nation's lawmakers and the justices of the Supreme
Court are the ones to put him back in his place,
and they dare to call it progress and the coming
(33:51):
of civilization. But do you feel the vast reason would
have felt that the Supreme Court portrayed his values. I mean,
here's the highest court in the law. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah,
there's the Supreme Court. But there there were a bunch
of a bunch of races. So you know, of course
(34:14):
they betrayed completely. He didn't die pleased with with the
way the country was moving. He couldn't because it was
it was moving backwards from where he had been moving.
It was when west, it was moving in an upward trajectory.
You know, he was bringing law and order and and
they had opportunity. If you were a freeman, a fair man,
and adjust man, there was work for you. And he
(34:35):
did that without any change of anything except people who
were making the decisions. Everything turning backwards because they betrayed
the country, not just black people. They betrayed the whole
country when they did that, because they turned the whole
country in a direction that we're still coming out of.
You know, the whole country got consumed with the industry
of bigotry, all the commercial activities that support bigotry is
(34:58):
what we're not stuck with, you know. So no, he
had to feel betrayed, but he also had to feel
that the country still had the potential to correct itself.
Judge Parker's court officially endsed session on September one. The
new federal appointees at Fort Smith are now increasingly Democrats.
(35:20):
They set about dismantling reconstruction fast as they can. A
few months after his last gavel strike, Judge Parker dies
on November se He was fifty eight years old. He
passes away eight months of the day after he watched
Cherokee Bill hanging from his gallows, the last great outlaw
he'd sentenced to die. After Judge Parker has gone, Bassarieves
(35:42):
operates primarily out of the Federal courthouse down in Paris, Texas.
It'll soon be time for him to move on, but
not before he makes one more attempt at ensuring justice
for black men in America. At one point, while Bassarieves
works down in the Lone Star State, a white rancher
named John Ashley shoots and kills his black neighbor. Soon
after that, Ashley's livestock starts to mysteriously die, Then his
(36:04):
house is burned down. To get justice of their own,
Ashley's neighbors go hunting for black people to punish. They
find a few black farmers out on the road. There's
no evidence that they're the guilty party. The crowd needs
no evidence. They hang the black men from trees, and
then they go looking for more. Most of the black
community flees the area as they attempt to reach safety.
(36:26):
The sheriff arrests six young black men he feels are responsible,
and he holds them in custody. In his jail, a
crowd forms, intent on more Texas justice. They plan to
lynch the men. First, they'll need to break into the
county jail and yank the black men out of their
cells where they're locked up. U s Deputy marshals are
called in to protect the jail. The tallest, toughest look
(36:47):
and marshal among them is also the blackest. That night,
the lynch mob loses to Bass Reeves and six black
men keep their lives. Bass Reeves believes in justice far
more than his former master did, who coincidentally was a
(37:10):
Texas lawmaker. Bass also believes in justice more than his
white neighbors do. The ones who reserve it for the
races they respect and pursue justice conditionally. To bass Reeves,
justice isn't just blind, it isn't even personal. It's what
we all live under. It's what holds us together. It's
the tie that binds. Without the law, there is no we.
(37:30):
His faith and justice was first tested when he was
on trial himself, yet it was strengthened when he was acquitted.
Now he must face the biggest test of his deep
faith in the law. One day, Ben Reeves, the son
of Bass, comes home to find his wife in bed
with another man. He flies into a rage. He beats
the man and then kills his wife. After he attempts
to take his own life and his gun misfires, he
(37:52):
takes off. Now he's a wanted man, and a rest
warrant is soon drawn up. Marshall Bennett doesn't know what
to do. You No, Deputy Marshall wants to hunt down
the son of Bass Reeves. The father, though, does what
he's raised his son to respect. Bass Reeves reportedly tells
the marshal, give me the writ. It doesn't take the
(38:13):
law man father long to find his son. He tracks
him down to a house. Some people beg Bass Reeves
to go easy on his boy. Bass Reeves pays them
no mind. He speaks directly to his son. According to
Reverend Charles Davis, a Creek freedman, bass Reeves shouted to
his boy, Now, Betty, you want no more my thun.
You committed a crime, and I have a one in
(38:34):
my pocket for you, a bench. One either to bring
you in dad, one live, and I'm gonna take you
in today one way or the other. You come out
with your hands up, press your whole body. We'll be down.
Ben Reeves comes out from where he was hiding, his
hands raised high over his head. It has to be
(38:55):
one of the saddest days of bass reeves life. And
he does it for justice. His commitment is that great.
Then America betrays him and his belief in the nation.
Like his father before him, Ben Reeves has to face
a murder trial. He's tried, convicted, and sentenced to life
in prison in Leavenworth. When bass Reeves goes to arrest
(39:17):
his son Ben Reeves for murder, I wondered, if you
were the law, would you come after me like that?
That's a very difficult question, but A said no, I
wouldn't do anything to help you get away. I wouldn't
do anything to help you hide, and I don't I
wouldn't do anything to help him catch you. That's a
(39:38):
fair deal. I'll take that. The Cowboy era ends. Then
we've talked about how the racism comes to the West,
But what do you imagine for black men who they
lost that Cowboy era? They lose that freedom, just specifically them,
Like it seems so sad, you know, to know, to
get this moment of two decades of actual freedom and
(39:59):
then to have that taken away after dedicating yourself to
enlarging America. They committed themselves to the American enterprise, and
then this is their their return, this is their repayment. Yeah,
they believe what the government told them that you are
now free and full citizens, and they acted on it
and they went out and went west. The level of
betrayal that was felt, that's what we're working against. Now.
(40:20):
It's a reasonable position to be skeptical of America if
you're black or Native. I mean, why is America so
committed to allowing bigotry? Like the American people who do
go for that. And I'm not suggesting that all Americans
are like this, I do know that it is. It
is not the majority of Americans to feel this way,
but yet the impulse is so strong that it is
recognizable and it expected, and you can you know what
(40:41):
it's going to keep becoming. So why is that? What about?
What about that feeling? What does bigotry provide that a
person is willing to go against their own self interest
to have that? It's a satisfaction with a failed life.
God damn, there it is. Nineteen of It was the
year Oklahoma joined the Union. It was also the same
(41:03):
year the Indian Territory was declared no more. What this
means for bass Reeves is he's out of a job.
There's no longer any need for a deputy marshal in
the territory since there's no longer a territory. He's fired
by the March of what the new white folks in
town called progress. The next year, nineteen o eight, bass
Reeves becomes a beat cop in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He's forced
(41:23):
to only work in the black section of town. He's
no longer allowed to arrest white citizens or have any
legal authority over them. At one time he could shoot
them dead. Now he can't even shoot them. A mean look.
By eight, bass Reeves is worn down and limps from
an old gunshot wound. After nearly two years as a
beat cop, he retires from the Muskogee Police in nineteen
(41:43):
o nine. By bass Reeves is dead. He dies on
January twelve at home. The last of the real wild
West passes away with him. When bass Reeves dies, his
son Ben is still locked up behind bars in federal
prison for Perhaps as a way to pay their respects
to the departed legendary law man, friends of bass start
(42:05):
to work to free his son. They advocate for him
with the authorities, and finally, in nineteen fourteen, Bassarie's son's
life sentence is commuted. Bassarides was, without a doubt, America's
greatest law man, a proud tradition, a legend of the law.
And what did he get for it? When he needed someone,
(42:27):
he was treated like a dog. He believed in America
more than America did. Here was a law man so
unswerving from justice and so relentless in his pursuit of
it that he entered people's dreams. One man who attempted
to kill his wife had a dream that Bassarieves was
looking for him, hunting him down. When he woke up,
he went to the authorities and turned himself in. That's
a true story. That's the sort of whole bass Reeves
(42:49):
had on the people in the land that he policed.
A black cop is a difficult job, to say the least.
It's a trope in hip hop movies, online culture. Everyone
knows the black cop is to be avoided, but also
the black cop represents the idea of race and justice
paired together, even if the black cop doesn't guarantee real
racial justice just because he or she is black. When
(43:11):
the good people arrived in Oklahoma with their racism and
their law books, bass Reeves had to take a back
seat to progress. But until then he was an incorruptible,
indomitable law of the land, what nearly everyone would call
a good cop. The Prairie was certainly more fair and just.
Law and order were maintained by the hanging Judge Isaac
(43:32):
Parker and the greatest law man the West ever, New
bass Reeves. Thanks for listening, Stay tuned for chapter four.
Estebon the first Black Cowboy. We're gonna to step back
even further in American history. Black Cowboys is written by
me Saron Burnett, produced and edited by Ryan Murdock and
(43:53):
Michelle land Or. Theme song is written and performed by Demeanor.
Sound designed to music by Jeremy Thal. Additional music by
Alvin Young Blood Heart. Additional music also by Greg Childs.
Research and fact checking by Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown, Jocelyn Sears,
and Aaron Blakemore performances by Adam Copeland, Tom Combs and
Ryan Murdoch. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Executive producers are
(44:16):
Jason English and Man Guesh at Ticket. Yeah, this is
a home. It's been a long road for us. We
take it ownership over everything else to us, realty, We
surrounded by our heritage, are fisked up because we're tried
to be Ammerican special. Thanks as always to my pod.
Thank god he asked himself, what's really in the name?
(44:44):
Sitting on a Mustang Friday through the place Buffalo. So
to the King little brains, we a love with the
cowboys way
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