Black Rodeo History Meets High-Fashion at SP5DER's Houston Sweet Tooth Rodeo
Beyond the street style and non-stop thrill, the Sweet Tooth Rodeo continued its legacy to honor decades of Black history that refuses to go ignored. For Valeria Howard-Cunningham, the president and producer of BPIR, the mission is simple: bring visibility to Black rodeo culture, which often goes under-represented in the mainstream.
“My now-deceased husband [Lu Vason] founded BPIR when he went to a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and he didn’t see anybody that looked like him participating in the rodeo,” Howard-Cunningham tells Teen Vogue. “Afterwards, he researched and found out that there were thousands of Black cowboys and cowgirls across the country, but they were not given the opportunity to perform.” At first, his idea to create a rodeo rooted in African American contributions received a fair share of backlash. “Everybody told him he was crazy and that it wouldn’t be successful. But it didn’t deter him. He did it anyway.”
Thus, BPIR was born in 1984, and named after William “Bill” Pickett, a prominent Black cowboy credited for being the creator of steer wrestling, also known as bulldogging. Now, the cultural organization travels all across the U.S., educating and entertaining the community while preserving and promoting Black Western history.
“We’re preparing the next generation to keep the legacy going,” Howard-Cunningham adds.
When it came to this past Sweet Tooth Rodeo, she admits to being hesitant about the merge of fashion with rodeo, but realized the importance of this unlikely partnership, especially with celebrities like Beyoncé embracing Western culture in Cowboy Carter. Her nephew, Julez Smith, was in attendance, showing off his Southern roots.
Julez SmithShane Drummond/BFA.com
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