Elkins Park resident, Swarthmore professor releasing new book titled ‘The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America’ on Aug. 31

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August 11th, 2024 | By Ryan Genova

Ron Tarver, an Elkins Park resident and Swarthmore Associate Professor of Art, has published a new book titled “The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America.”

The book, set to be released on Saturday, August 31, includes a curated selection of Tarver’s 15,000 images captured over more than 30 years, documenting Black cowboy culture across the United States.

The following images were captured by Tarver in the Philadelphia region:


Last fall, Tarver restored a greenhouse at Elkins Estate Farm called “The House of the Living”.

Tarver at work

From the book’s description on Amazon.com:

The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America is among the first books to tell the story of the Black cowboy experience in contemporary America. Although Black cowboys have been a fixture on the American landscape since the nineteenth century, few people are aware of their enduring contributions to the history of the West and how their unique culture continues to thrive in urban as well as rural areas all over the country.

The book features Ron Tarver’s beautiful, compelling, and often surprising contemporary images of African-American cowboys that not only convey the Black cowboy’s way of life and its rich heritage, but also affirm a thriving culture of Black-owned ranches and rodeo operations, parades, inner-city cowboys, retired cowhands, and Black cowgirls of all ages, too. Tarver, who comes from a family of Black cowboys in Oklahoma, uses his artistry to question, if not up

The Long Ride Home couldn’t be more timely, coming on the heels of Beyonce’s hit album, Cowboy Carter (2024), and films such as Lil Nas X’s hit time-travel Western, Old Town Road (2019), andIdris Elba’s Concrete Cowboy (2021). The latter was based on Greg Neri’s book, Ghetto Cowboy (2013), about Philadelphia’s contemporary African-American cowboy culture. Many of Tarver’s images were made in some of the same Philadelphia neighborhoods

In addition to Tarver’s photographs, The Long Ride Home includes an essay by Art T. Burton, an expert on the history of Black cowboys. This book is both a tribute to and a celebration of the Black cowboy in America, providing an invaluable and unique perspective on American history and culture as well as the Black experience in America.

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Photos: Ron Tarver