Home for the Cowboys is a ranch in the middle of one of the few remaining agricultural enclaves in greater Los Angeles, known as Richland Farms. Once a predominantly white area, it attracted black residents who moved to California from the rural South during the great African-American migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and more recently many Latinos. In 1988, Mayisha Akbar—a successful real estate agent in Los Angeles—started an organization called the Compton Junior Posse at Richland Farms to give young black people not only a respite from the horrendous warfare between the Crips and the Bloods on the streets, but an alternative set of experiences and values.
Three decades later, Mayisha was getting ready to retire and turn the reigns of running the ranch over to a group of young men and one woman, mostly alumni of the Compton Junior Posse, who had reconstituted themselves in 2016 as the Compton Cowboys. Their leader was one of her nephews, Randy Hook, and the challenges he and the others faced were daunting. It cost $25,000 a month just to keep the ranch running, and most of the previous funding had been provided by wealthy white donors, who were now leaving with Mayisha or dying off. In order to save the last standing cowboy ranch in the city, the Cowboys had to find new funding, fend off the threat of rising land prices and gentrification, and show a new generation of young Compton residents that cowboys were still cool.
Thompson-Hernández spent a year with the Compton Cowboys in order to tell that compelling and multifaceted story through the stories of the group’s individual members. As he vividly details, the ranch is far more than a place to teach young people how to ride and care for horses. Most importantly, it’s a place where people can be themselves and feel they truly belong. For each of the Cowboys, it functions as a renewable source of life, where their friendships are preserved and where the violent trauma that all of them—including the author—have experienced can be healed. They have all lost relatives and close friends to gun violence; many come from fractured families; some have been involved in gangs; some have done time in prison; some have struggled with substance addiction; most are economically insecure.
In addition to other traumatic events, the Cowboys have even lost horses to street accidents or gun violence. These incidents are devastating in a very particular way, since the Cowboys form intimate bonds with animals that often have a history of neglect and abuse, and that like themselves have been relegated to the margins.
In many ways, Thompson-Hernández notes, the Cowboys sustain the spirit of the entire Compton community. In addition to their everyday physical presence in the streets, they are often invited to perform in parades throughout Los Angeles, and increasingly appear in social media, advertisements, and films. Despite extremely limited resources, some members of the group compete professionally and successfully in jumping and various rodeo events, bringing much-needed positive attention to their community.
For the Compton Cowboys, the ranch is also a memory center of their culture, where they can learn about the legacy of black cowboys, which stretches back into the nineteenth century. As children, they never saw black cowboys on their television screens or read about the proud history of black cowboys in the founding of the American West. They were never taught about the ingenuity of cowboys like Nat Love, who was born a slave in Tennessee in 1854, freed at the conclusion of the Civil War, and gained prominence throughout the Southwest as a trusted guide and showman. Or Bill Pickett, one of the West’s most famous rodeo champions and actors, who would later be inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
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