Delta Hill Riders

• Prize
  Gold in Press/Feature Story
• Photographer
  Rory Doyle, United States

A recent article in Smithsonian estimated that just after the Civil War, one in four cowboys were African-American. Yet this population was drastically underrepresented in popular accounts. And it is still. The “cowboy” identity retains a strong presence in many contemporary black communities.

This project in the Mississippi Delta, "Delta Hill Riders," resists both historical and contemporary stereotypes.

The project aims to press against my own old archetypes — who could and could not be a cowboy, and what it means to be black in Mississippi — while uplifting the voices of my subjects.