Lassoing a Legend: Cowboy Bill Pickett’s Story : History: Black rodeo star taught the trade to Tom Mix and Will Rogers, but Hollywood ignored him, probably because of his race. And when the Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor, it used a painting of his brother Ben.

Derrick Phillips laughs when he remembers the day he visited an elementary school to talk about his great-great-grandfather. He thinks the youngsters he spoke to were third-graders, but he knows he won’t forget the reaction of a young Hispanic girl when he started retelling stories of the Wild, Wild West.

“There’s no such thing as a black cowboy!” she scoffed.

It took Phillips a second to recover, but he met her challenge. After all, his great-great-granddaddy was one of the most famous rodeo cowboys of all time, a man who used to stun a steer by biting it on the lip. A man who taught the business to celebrity cowboys Tom Mix and Will Rogers. A man whose picture is on a postage stamp. Phillips, a 27-year-old District of Columbia attorney, could handle an 8-year-old.

“I explained to her that the origin of the word ‘cowboy’ was actually black. Children of former slaves used to be cowhands on ranches, and they were always called ‘boy,’ like, ‘Hey, boy, go get this, go feed the cows.’ And soon the two words were put together, like ‘cowboy,’ ” he said, then beamed with pride.

Phillips loves sharing this part of his history. So does the rest of his family--all 220 members. One recent weekend, about 60 gathered in Gaithersburg, Md., to celebrate Bill Pickett.

They flew in from Chicago and Little Rock, Las Vegas and Houston. One brave bunch drove from San Jose, with three youngsters under the age of 5.

Pickett’s great-grandson, Willie Wilson from Oklahoma, is the only descendant to take up the rodeo tradition (although on a much smaller scale). The rest are scattered in a variety of fields: doctors, lawyers, professors, computer analysts. The Pickett with the biggest spotlight might be the youngest. Phillip Leon McKeever of Grand Rapids, Mich., is a rambunctious toddler of 19 months who models for Gerber baby food.

The Pickett brood piled into a hotel hospitality room to peer at their sprawling family tree. The branches were outlined on four sturdy white poster boards that stretched across seven chairs. Bill Pickett’s name was in bold black letters across the top, and his seven-plus generations hovered beneath. Some of the more industrious families contributed 15 children apiece.

“My mother had eight sons and seven daughters. Back then, that’s when women were women,” laughed Laura Bell, one of Pickett’s granddaughters. “My children used to say, ‘Mother comes from a tribe!’ ”

Pickett had nine children, seven of whom started the family gatherings about half a century ago, not long after the patriarch was kicked to death by a horse in 1932.

“This is the first one I’ve been able to make,” said Kevin Van Buckner, Pickett’s great-great-grandson and one of this year’s coordinators. “When I was very, very young, I loved Roy Rogers and ‘Happy Trails’--the whole bit--but my father never told me about Bill Pickett. It wasn’t until college that I got a copy of the manuscript from the person writing his biography [Bailey C. Hanes] and started to learn about him.”

Born the son of former slaves in 1870, Pickett became a cowhand at age 10, though he was small for his age. (As an adult, he was a wiry 5 foot 7, 145 pounds.) In his 20s, he observed range dogs chasing runaway steers and decided to use their tricks. He called it “bulldogging.”

“He’d jump off his horse, grab the steer by its horns, dig his heels into the ground so the animal would be at a standstill, twist its head and bite its upper lip,” according to Cecil Johnson, who wrote the book “Guts: Legendary Black Rodeo Cowboy Bill Pickett.”

Pickett’s death-defying techniques took him to the Miller brothers’ huge 101 Ranch in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma, where he gained instant fame. He performed in rodeos throughout the United States, Canada, South America and Europe. In 1912, the “Dusky Demon” put on 400 performances. He was treated like royalty--until he left the arena.

” . . . He couldn’t get served in restaurants,” said Johnson, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a guest at the reunion. “And if he had to take a train somewhere, he’d have to ride in back with the animals.”

Frank Phillips, the family historian, said color was probably the reason his great-grandfather never rose to the star status of cowboys like Mix or Rogers--both of whom started as Pickett’s assistants.

“There are no blacks in Western movies; Hollywood just eliminated them,” said Phillips, a systems analyst for the federal courts.

Last year the U.S. Postal Service honored “Legends of the West” with commemorative stamps of Annie Oakley, Geronimo, Buffalo Bill and others. When it got to printing Bill Pickett’s stamp, it accidentally used a painting of his brother Ben. Collectors were reportedly paying close to $5,000 a sheet for the misprints until the Postal Service issued another 150,000 sheets. The mistaken sheets now sell for about $100.

But if it was the stamp snafu and Johnson’s book that put Pickett back into the limelight, it will be his family that keeps him there.