Call it theBeyoncéeffect: One of America's biggest music superstars unleashed a stampede of excitement forBlack rodeosacross the country with her 2024 album "Cowboy Carter." Nowhere is that more obvious than in tiny Okmulgee, Oklahoma, home to the nation's oldest continuously operated Black rodeo. "WhenBeyoncéreleased that country album, she told Black people it's okay to wear cowboy boots and cowboy hats," said Danell Tipton, a champion bull rider who now serves as arena director for multiple state rodeos, including what is now the Okmulgee Roy LeBlanc Invitational Rodeo. "Black rodeoing is so hot right now, every event we go to," Tipton said. "I haven't seen so many Black girls in cowboy hats and boots, ever. We've had our rodeos, but city slickers were never in tune with it. Now, it's like the floodgates opened." On the weekend of August 9, the Okmulgee Roy LeBlanc Invitational Rodeo marks its 70thyear, the legacy of two dozen Black businessmen, farmers and ranchers frustrated with the second-class treatment accorded to Black rodeo competitors and their fans in the 1950s. Tipton has been attending the Okmulgee rodeo ever since he was a kid riding along with his family's roundup club, the Oklahoma City Paraders. The equestrian-minded community organization held weekend parades to precedeBlack rodeocompetitions in rural outposts around the state, in places like Tatums, Clearview and Drumright. "Okmulgee was always the last rodeo of the year," he said. "It was like our Super Bowl." Situated 40 miles south of Tulsa, the Okmulgee Roy LeBlanc Invitational Rodeo is among the country's largest Black sporting events, according to event producer Kenneth LeBlanc. In 1956, LeBlanc's father Roy and grandfather Charles were among the founders of what was then called the Okmulgee County Roundup Club. "Black people couldn't get into White rodeos," said Marcous Friday, who has been the Okmulgee event's announcer for two decades. "That's why they started the rodeo. Who would have thought that 70 years later, it's still going?" Okmulgee was among a patchwork of Black rodeo circuit events that thrived in the 1950s and 1960s throughout the Texas Gulf Coast region and the area around Tulsa, according to Keith Ryan Cartwright, author of "Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West." "A lot of Black rodeo cowboys got their start in one of those two areas," said Cartwright, who now serves as assistant general manager of the Nashville Stampede, a pro bull riding team. "Maybe they weren't from there, but they would migrate there in order to compete regularly." Nearly an hour to the west, the Boley (Oklahoma) Rodeo is the oldest of all Black rodeos, dating back to 1903 – but with several interruptions along the way. Okmulgee has clung to its annual tradition like a bull rider refusing to be bucked off. "This is the 70thyear, and there's no asterisk," Cartwright said. "They even found a way to have it in 2020." The 2025 event features more than 200 competitors, including dozens of calf ropers, team ropers, steer wrestlers and barrel racers. The atmosphere bears little resemblance to the big-money, corporate-sponsored spectacles broadcast on television. "It's not some multimillion-dollar production," Cartwright said. "It's old-school." The rodeo's inaugural run was held north of town on leased land owned by the local White roundup club, Tipton said. When the club saw the event's success and significantly raised its rates the next year, the organizers of the budding Black rodeo decided it was time to find their own venue and bought 40 acres south of town, he said. That's where the Okmulgee Invitational rodeo was held until 1991, he said, when the all-Black event moved to the Bob Arrington Rodeo Arena, owned by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. By that time Tipton was starting to compete himself, riding bulls and wrestling steers. In 1998, he was named the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's bull riding and overall rookie of the year. Coming up in the pro ranks, Tipton said, fellow Black cowboys were a rare sight. Even now, he said, when he goes to events on the East or West coasts, "they're like, 'Wow. Black cowboys.' They see White cowboys competing on TV every day." Among the barriers, Tipton said, are finances and unfamiliarity with the logistical strategies necessary to qualify for the national finals, which are based on prize money won throughout the year. Competitors must navigate a network of seasonal events held across the country to finish among the top 15 qualifiers in their respective categories. "There's so many Black cowboys who should be making tons of money," Tipton said. "A lot don't know the business side. So when they come back to Black rodeo, there's a home for them." When he found success as a rookie and hit the pro circuit, Tipton said, he didn't return to the Black rodeo circuit for several years. But he always made sure to return for Okmulgee. He wasn't the only one. Many of the Black rodeo greats throughout the years have frequented Okmulgee, among them Myrtis Dightman, often referred to as "the Jackie Robinson of rodeo."Dightmanwas among those featured duringBeyoncé's Christmas Day halftime showduring the Houston Texans' game against the Baltimore Ravens in December. "He was the first African American to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo," said Friday, the event announcer. "He never won a world title, but he's the one who actually opened the doors for African American cowboys in rodeo today." Dightman grew up on a ranch in Crockett, Texas, two hours north of Houston, where his father was a ranch hand and his mother helped work the fields, Cartwright said. He went to school when ranch work allowed, never learning to read. As a young man, Dightman found work as a rodeo clown and bullfighter but knew he had the skills to be an accomplished bull rider, Cartwright said. Like other Black rodeo hopefuls, he often wouldn't be allowed to ride until events were over. "He quickly established himself not as a great Black bull rider but as a great bull rider," Cartwright said. Eventually, the humble and well-liked Dightman would earn his way onto the circuit with other cowboys eager to compete against him. In the 1960s, Cartwright said, standards called for only two event judges, and all it took was one to poison a competitor's chances for success. "It wasn't so egregious as to make them finish last," he said. "All they had to do was rob them of a point here or there." But spread over the course of a season, Cartwright said, these sprinklings of bias had their effect, depriving certain competitors of prize money and dropping them several places in the standings. He believes that happened to Dightman and others. Dightman realized that despite whatever slights he might face, he could still claw his way to the finals if he competed in enough events to earn sufficient prize money. He avoided Southern rodeos and instead hit events in Texas, Oklahoma, on the West Coast and throughout the Midwest and Rust Belt. "He thought, there's always going to be a judge that isn't going to let me win an event, but if over the course of a season I go to more events than anyone else, all my 2ndplaces and 4thplaces will get me there," Cartwright said. "He hustled and was very methodical." In 1967 and 1968, Dightman finished among the three or four top-ranked bull riders in the world. While he never won the sport's gold buckle, Dightman knew he had accomplished something special, Cartwright said. "I can't stress enough how good he had to be to finish third at a time when our country was facing the racial animus it did," he said. "He said to me, 'I wanted to be a world champion but I never were a world champion, but I was a world champion as a man.' He wasn't bragging on himself. What he was saying was that he saw something that hadn't been done and he wanted to do it and did everything he could to do it. I just find him to be heroic." In February, Tipton and Friday teamed up to produce their second annual National Black Cowboy Rodeo Awards and Gala in Oklahoma City. "We've honored all the old cowboys the last two years," Tipton said. Dightman, now 90, was among them; so was Charles Sampson, the former kid from Watts, California, who with Dightman's mentorship becamethe first Black bull riderto win a rodeo world title, in 1982. Both have been among the luminaries who polished their craft at Okmulgee. "Myrtis and Charlie are legends," Cartwright said. "Not just among Black cowboys. They're legendary rodeo cowboys, period." Before a bull rider's bucking chute opens, there is someone there to tighten the rope he'll use to hold on to for the duration of the ride, and riders are notoriously picky about who gets to do it, Cartwright said. "When Charlie won the world title in the 10thround, Myrtis was there and Charlie had him pull his bull rope for him," he said. "For him to wave off the guy who would normally pull his rope and let Myrtis do it goes to show that Charlie understood the significance of his moment and that the road to that moment was paved by Myrtis." It's on that foundation that today's young Black cowboys will build on when they compete this weekend in Okmulgee. "Okmulgee originated at a time when it was needed," Cartwright said. "There was nowhere else for them to go. It's a historic event." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Oklahoma's iconic all-Black rodeo in Okmulgee marks a milestone