Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy (review)

Bruce G. Todd in Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy documents the life of a man who lived on the Texas frontier his entire life and embodied the traits of that pioneer society. According to Todd, Bones Hooks was an exceptional cowboy without racial prejudices and able to create close relationships across the color line. Through informal networks with influential whites, he played a leading role in the development of the African American community in Amarillo, Texas.

In the book, Todd attempts to add another chapter to the history of the West and highlight the role that African American cowboys played in the development of the cattle industry in the Southwest. The author on several occasions mentions the need for the recognition of racial diversity among cowboys. He cites the absence of studies or even the acknowledgement that African American and other minority groups provided a significant portion of the cowboys on the American frontier. Additionally, the author notes that the images portrayed in the popular media ignore the role minorities played as laborers in the most important and dominant industry in the Southwest.

Todd uses a variety of sources to develop the odyssey and life of a man who lived until 1951 and who played an important role in keeping the frontier history of the Texas Panhandle alive during his lifetime. The conspicuous position Hooks held in Amarillo society provided the author with a rich body of interviews, oral history accounts, and personal papers to develop the story of his life. Due to his subject's longevity, the author had access to firsthand memories and accounts from people who worked with Hooks as well as those individuals he influenced in the African American community of North Heights in Amarillo.

Although Todd adequately develops the life of Hooks, he ignores several factors regarding African Americans in the West. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the westward migration of African Americans from the South constituted an important element in the settlement of the West. Another aspect was the dominance of the accommodation philosophy Booker T. Washington advocated in the early twentieth century. The life of Bones Hooks demonstrates the parameters of Washington's philosophy for creating stability in African American communities such as North Heights. Lastly, Hooks's personal life is underdeveloped because there is little mentioned of his immediate family or his relationship with either of his wives.

In Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy, Todd depicts a man determined to secure his place in the frontier society that developed in the Texas Panhandle. Todd is successful in adding a new understanding of the role African Americans played in the settlement of the Southwest and his description of the development of the African American community in Amarillo is laudable. Overall, Bruce G. Todd in Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy conveys the importance of the African American cowboy in the West. Although he does not detail every important factor regarding African Americans, he is successful in detailing an often-overlooked aspect of the history of the American West.