Compton Cowboys

When you think of Compton, California, a few things may spring to mind:

• Gang violence between the Crips and the Bloods overtook the populace in the 1970’s with death and crime rates remaining high until after the Rodney King Riots in the early 1990s.
• The rap group N.W.A. took the nation by storm and put Compton on the map in 1988.
• A laundry list of ground-breaking musicians including Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eazy-E, Suge Knight, and Coolio
• But did you know about the cowboys?

Poverty and crime in the area remains, but this former farming community still boasts a culture that harkens back to the roots of its settlement in 1867. Working ranches still dot the area and in the early 2000s one ranch owner, Mayisha Akbar, started the Compton Jr Posse, a riding program aimed at luring inner-city youth away from drugs and street crime through horses and riding.  

For more than 20 years, her ceaseless struggle to secure funding and prestige for the program worked. She retired recently, turning control of the ranch over to her nephew, Randall Hook. He and several other former CJP members renamed it the Compton Junior Equestrians and took full control of the organization on January 1, 2019.  The job of running such an organization is a particularly tough one and the struggle is ongoing but these passionate young men and women who call themselves the Compton Cowboys, one of only two riding clubs left, have never met a fight they weren’t willing to have.

Enter New York Times writer Walter Thompson-Hernández, a native of Compton who has fond memories of the black cowboys in Compton parades of his youth. Thompson-Hernández began his career with the New York Times in 2018 and writes for Surfacing, the NYT’s multimedia reporting team covering subcultures and marginalized and offbeat communities around the world. He's written about an albinism community in Ghana hunted for their body parts by witch doctors and rural villages, the lowrider community in Tokyo and Nagoya in Japan, women rappers in Oaxaca, Mexico speaking out against violence on women in the region, and more.

His new book, The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland, teams with life. Thompson-Hernández lives and works with the Compton Cowboys for over a year to give readers an in-depth look at daily life in a community and a culture that in many ways still struggles to survive.  He does not stray away from the harsh details of daily life and behavior, including mental illness and struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, but allows the dreams and ambitions of these modern pioneers to shine through those struggles.  This is definitely a story that deserves to be told.

For more of Walter Thompson-Hernández’s reporting, click here.

Find the Compton Cowboys online:

Thompson-Hernández's book is scheduled for publication later this month. In the meantime, the author recommends the following in his Acknowledgments:

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Pulitzer Prize winner, General Nonfiction, 2017

National Book Critics Circle Award winner, General Nonfiction, 2016

From Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America. 

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

2018 Audible Audiobook of the Year

Winner of the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and Kirkus Prize Finalist

Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed, The Undefeated, Library Journal, The Washington Post, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics

In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse. 

World cultures:

Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team that Changed a Town by Warren St. John

The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town. Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world's war zones, from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets.

SOURCES

www.comptoncowboys.com/

www.comptoncity.org/visitors/history.asp

www.laist.com/2015/08/14/city_of_compton.php

www.allmusic.com/birthplace/compton-ca-mz0000070164

www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/us/compton-cowboys-horseback-riding-african-americans.html

www.theplaidhorse.com/2017/06/01/compton-jr-posse-changing-the-course-of-kids-lives/

www.comptonjrequestrians.org/about

www.amazon.com

Evening Book Group Recap

I believe this was one of our best meetings! If you missed it, we talked about nonfiction on the Great Depression in American history. Here is the list!

The Growing Seasons: An American Boyhood Before the War by Samuel HynesThis honest, scrupulously organized study of Hynes's Depression-era boyhood has the simple effectiveness of a family photograph.

Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One by Elliott GornGorn (Mother Jones) presents a solid, unromanticized account of the last year in the short life of famed bank robber John Dillinger.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura HillenbrandGifted sportswriter Hillenbrand unearths the rarefied world of thoroughbred horse racing in this captivating account of one of the sport's legends.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: The Great Depression 1929-1933 by Milton MeltzerMeltzer focuses on the human reactions to the events of the Great Depression, and as such, draws heavily on first-hand accounts of those who experienced it.

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits On an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong KalishKalish's memoir of her Iowa childhood, set against the backdrop of the Depression, captures a vanished way of traditional living and a specific moment in American history in a story both illuminating and memorable.

Music of the Great Depression by William and Nancy YoungAn insightful study of the works, artists, and circumstances that contributed to making and performing the music that helped America through one of its most difficult times.

Children of the Great Depression by Russell FreedmanThis stirring photo-essay combines such unforgettable personal details with a clear historical overview of the period and black-and-white photos by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and many others.

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs TerkelThe book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and Clement Stone; a six-day bicycle racer; artists and writers; racketeers; speakeasy operators, strikers, and impoverished farmers; people who were just kids; and those who remember losing a fortune.

America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA: The Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food by Pat WillardThe original America Eats! was written for the WPA by out-of-work writers during the Depression of the 1930s as an account of group eating as an important American social institution, the development of local, traditional cookery by churches and communities, fairs, festivals, rodeos, fund-raisers, rent parties and the like. It was never completed or published, but when food writer Willard (Secrets of Saffron) found the manuscript in the Library of Congress, she decided to follow the footsteps of the original writers to find what remained of these feasts, or a modern equivalent. (Related titles discussed were Mark Kurlansky's Food of a Younger Land and Gayden Metcalfe's Being Dead Is No Excuse)

The Family Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Phillip Steele with Marie Barrow ScomaOutlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were Depression-era pop cultural icons whose careers Scoma, Clyde's sister, and writer Steele recount.

As you can see, each person in the Genre Reading Group reads a different title in a particular topic then we discuss the books and the topic itself and anything else upon which our thoughts come to rest. If this sounds like just what you were looking for in a bookgroup, then I hope you'll join us for the September 29th discussion of Young Adult fiction! As always, call or email me if you have any questions!

Happy reading!

Holley

205/445-1117

hwesley@bham.lib.al.us