High Horse: The Black Cowboy Review 2025 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
The Jordan Peele docuseries “High Horse: The Black Cowboy” was released on Thursday, Nov. 20, with all three episodes of the series now available for streaming on Peacock. The main focus of the series is uncovering the truth behind the famed American cowboy image that has been whitewashed for over half a century. “The proper term for the white cowhand was ‘cowhand,’” said rapper Bun B, who appeared in the show. “The proper term for the Black cowhand was ‘cowboy’ because boy obviously meant lesser.” Early origins discussed include the connection in slaves being brought from Senegal specifically for their skills as horsemen.
It was later “White America” that adopted the idea of a cowboy into the masculine symbol of a sharpshooting white man on a horse, completely erasing the existence of Black cowboys from popular culture.
One example is Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger. That character was based on Bass Reeves, the first Black deputy U.S. Marshal. According to the show, legend has it that Reeves arrested over 3,000 outlaws and shot and killed 14 without ever sustaining a gun wound. The Marlboro Man, created by British company Phillip Morris & Co., is another example given in the show of a character meant to symbolize American masculine culture adopted from the whitewashing of the American cowboy.
Peele has a sit-down in front of a camera, where he discussed how his critically acclaimed horror film “Nope” was meant to talk about the illusion that Hollywood has created about America’s past. Peele also talks about how the first series of photographs put together to make a film was a two-second video of an unknown Black jockey on a horse.
“This is the first movie star and we don’t know who he is,” said Peele. “That to me was the horror story at the center of ‘Nope.’” One part of episode one that hits especially close to home is when Peele shifts his focus to the urban setting of Hartford, Conn.
“One day, two little boys ran up to us and said, ‘Lady, is that a horse? Is that a real horse?,’” said Patricia Kelly, the CEO of Ebony Horsewoman in Hartford. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, we have to do something about this.’” Kelly said that the Black youth that she works with don’t know about their own history due to the image of the white cowboy that protrudes on American pop culture.
“They have to be erased,” said Kelly of the image of white cowboys in the heads of the youth. Episode one is a detailed collection of factually based arguments that describe how the Black cowboy was erased from American culture through appropriation in Hollywood.
Episodes two and three cover the topics of stolen land in the west and the appropriation of country and western music by white artists such as Elvis Presley. Overall, episode one is an entertaining presentation of hard-hitting information while also serving as a basis for the rest of the series.
