Horseman Lassos Recognition for Black Riders

All at once, the metal gate swings open and the bewildered steer charges into the corral with a burst of snorts, defiant head tosses and pounding hoofs.

Wayne Orme knows it is show time.

Swirls of dust devils in their wake, Orme and his cream-colored quarter horse light out from the corner of the corral, quickly matching the steer stride for stride. In one reckless moment, the cowboy swoops in close, hurling the wiry lasso deftly around the animal’s legs.

The other riders are hooting now. In less time than it takes to mount up, the 52-year-old Poway horseman has again shown why he is among the most graceful steer ropers on the rodeo circuit.

Around the corrals of the American West, life was not always so satisfying for the broncobuster with the signature baseball cap. Time was, a black rodeo cowboy brought out an ugly streak in people.

Judges fixed competitions, fans and fellow riders hurled epithets and promoters refused to pay out prize money to winners.

Then there was the time Orme swallowed his pride and rode a horse named Nigger.

Orme rode the animal--owned by a white man--in a bareback bronc contest in the 1960s. He gulped down his anger, climbed atop the horse’s back and stayed aboard as the bronc bucked, arched and kicked his hoofs. It was a ride no other cowboy--black or white--had been able to match.

“I never blamed that horse for his name,” Orme said. “He was a champion horse. He didn’t care if you were black or white or brown or purple. If you were on his back, he treated you exactly the same. He was just plain mean to everybody.”

A successful businessman, Hollywood stuntman and rodeo rider for 25 years, Orme also has become a mentor to black athletes in his sport.

Among the first handful of blacks to break into rodeo, Orme helped organize the American Black Cowboy’s Assn., a trade organization, in the 1970s to further black participation. He has sponsored benefit black-white rodeos and in the 1960s brought the first black rodeo to large black audiences in Watts.

The boys on the top rail say the no-nonsense Orme, who worked in the 1980s as a trail boss on several Wyoming cattle roundups, was the inspiration for the Jack Palance character in the film “City Slickers.”

Orme, a horse breeder who offers riding lessons at a city-owned stable in Escondido, still lectures regularly to minority students. Over the years, he has been an understanding father figure for black cowboys trying to get a boot toe into the rodeo door. He has loaned tack and horses, paid entry fees and given tired riders a place to bed down.

His motives are simple. Black cowboys played a large role in the American West. They fought Indians with the cavalry, blazed cattle trails across the plains and strung a thousand miles of barbed wire. But Orme believes their real role has been ignored by historians, their contributions glossed over.

The result, he says, is that for years blacks were seen as outsiders to the rough and tumble sport of rodeo, whose very roots they helped develop as slaves brought to America for their horse-tending skills.

“For years, I was looked at as a freak,” he said. “People came to point and laugh at the funny-looking cowboy with the black face. They didn’t understand what blacks had meant to cowboying.”

Although black rodeo contestants have won world champion status in some events in recent years, their numbers in the sport remain at less than 1% of professional riders, Orme estimates. The Professional Rodeo Cowboy Assn. said it does not keep statistics on how many of its 9,000 members are black.

But experts say conditions for minorities such as blacks and Latinos in the rodeo world are improving. The participation, they say, will come in time.

“A lot of that progress has come because of people like Wayne Orme,” said Don Harvey of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles. “The stumbling blocks that were thrown in the way of people of color just aren’t there any more. Wayne helped change that.”

But, racial equality never has been Orme’s top priority. His first love was horses. He is passionate about the animal he calls “God’s most magnificent creature.”

“I love horses more than almost anything else on Earth. I’d rather have a good horse than a good car.

“I’m proud of being a cowboy,” he said. “We’ve been called the first nomadic athletes in the world. Whether you go to the Far East or Europe, people see you in boots, jeans and a cowboy hat and they immediately know that you’re an American.”

When he is not working as a television or movie stuntman, Orme is at home in San Diego County with his wife, Loretta, and three dozen horse-riding students. He is a perfectionist who insists that riders try to understand horses before mounting a saddle.

And he is quick to tell inner-city youths that in these times of slick rap artists and streetwise drug dealers, the American cowboy could still be the best mentor of all.

“The cowboy is the most recognizable American symbol we have. Everybody knows what you stand for, a hard-working guy who don’t take no grief.”