The first time Ron Tarver got on an airplane was at age 24 to interview for a staff photographer position at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Next thing he knew, the paper was sending out movers to his home in Oklahoma, where he had worked for his first two years out of college as the first Black photojournalist for the Muskogee Phoenix.

“It was just like, a complete head trip,” Tarver, now a photography professor and Pulitzer Prize winner, recalled in an interview with Hyperallergic. “I never lived in a big city before … I thought, wait, there are more people out here than I’ve ever seen in my life.”  

Tarver’s move from his home state early in his career would eventually lead him to capture the photos that comprise his new book coming out next month. The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America (George F. Thompson Publishing) documents the lives of America’s working Black cowboys, with an accompanying exhibition in the works. Long before pop-culture phenomena like Beyoncé’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album and Lil Nas X’s 2018 “Old Town Road” celebrated the legacy of Black cowboy culture, Tarver pushed for their recognition, sometimes unsuccessfully. 

After reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer on a particularly grueling story of what he only referred to as “the worst of human tragedy,” Tarver realized he wanted to shift gears. “I was so depressed after that story,” he explained. “I said, ‘For the next story I want to do something that’s colorful, that has a little bit of joy to it.’”

In 1993, Tarver settled on photographing Black cowboys after seeing them “popping” out of Philadelphia’s parks. His editor at the Inquirer approved his pitch, and after the photo collection ran in the paper’s now-defunct magazine, Tarver said he received more mail from readers than he had for any story he’d ever worked on.

After receiving a grant from National Geographic to continue documenting Black cowboys, Tarver shot about 15,000 photographs across the country, including in Oakland and New York City, over the course of six months. Selections from these rolls make up The Long Ride Home.

When he set out, Tarver had no fixed methodology to find and photograph cowboys. For one image, Tarver said he asked around for an “Annie Oakley-type character,” which led him to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to photograph a woman named Betsy Bromwell. One photograph led to another, and then another.

“I was asking people down there if they knew somebody who really worked and lived the life of a quintessential cowboy,” Tarver said.

In the 30 years since shooting this collection of photography, Tarver has attempted to find various homes for his work. Some success came in the form of museum exhibitions, including the Studio Museum in Harlem’s group show Black Cowboy (2016–17).

The Long Ride Home will debut in published form nearly 20 years after Tarver’s first photography book, We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, from World War II to the War in Iraq (Amistad Press, 2005). And there’s a reason it took so long.

When he approached publishers about his latest book, editors questioned whether Black cowboys even existed. One editor, he said, thought the subjects of his photographs were wearing cowboy costumes.

“And I’m like, ‘No, there are actual working cowboys out in America that make their living on ranches,’” Tarver recalled.

Tarver himself grew up working on farms, and his family members had ranches in Oklahoma. He also learned about Black ranching culture through his Texan father, who was also a photographer.

But it was through his conversations with the cowboys for this project that he discovered research investigating the racist, anti-Black roots of the term “cowboy” itself.

“Ranch bosses would refer to Black hired hands as ‘boys,’ as in, ‘Get me this, boy, or get me that, boy. Get that cow, boy.’ So, the name stuck. That’s my version and the version of most of the cowboys I know,” Tarver explained in an email.

Despite earlier rejections, Tarver says he is pleased that the book is coming out now, partly crediting the influence of Beyoncé.

“If this book had come out when I wanted it to, it would have been long forgotten,” Tarver remarked.

Two exhibitions will accompany the book: one held this fall in Norman, Oklahoma, and the other in fall 2026 at the Print Center in Philadelphia.

If all goes well with his launch, Tarver wants to track down the subjects in The Long Ride Home who were children at the time and document their lives 30 years later.

For now, Tarver writes in his foreword that he hopes his collection of photographs will inspire readers to consider what he calls the “visual poetry” of Black cowboy heritage in America.