Conceived and organized by the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the exhibition follows the Black men, women, and children, enslaved and free, who worked Texas ranches and cattle trails, and the ranch owners, lawmen, rodeo competitors, and entertainers who came after. Across 5,200 square feet, the Autry paired it with a companion exhibition of equal size on California, curated by Carolyn Brucken and Joe Horse Capture. It runs from the state’s early Black communities and the Buffalo Soldiers through Black rodeo champions and Los Angeles riding clubs such as the Compton Cowboys and Urban Saddles to Black Westerns, from The Bull-Dogger (1922) to costumes from The Harder They Fall (2021).

The design made the handoff between the two shows legible. A plywood map of the United States at the entrance marked Texas and California in gold leaf and told visitors to start their story in Texas, and a roadside-style sign later signaled leaving Texas and entering California. Two contrasting materials carried the California galleries. Plywood, common yet visually interesting, grounded the design in the nature of cowboy work. Gold leaf elevated pieces such as garments from Urban Saddles and the Compton Cowboys, and honored the subject as a whole. Its fullest use was a curved gold-leaf wall behind the saddle of Sharon Braxton, a barrel-racing pioneer, elder, and consultant to the exhibition who died in 2024. 

| AC: Creative & Art Direction; Spatial, Graphic, & Furniture Design (Autry companion); Spatial Planning & Adaptation (Witte exhibition)

Team 
| Curation: Carolyn Brucken, Joe Horse Capture
| Organizing institution: Witte Museum
| Media + Technology Development and Fabrication: Anton Lieberman 
| Studio: Autry Museum