BILL PICKETT

Pickett (1870-1932), was born in Taylor, Texas of African-American, White, and Cherokee Indian blood. One of 13 children, he and his brothers may have been the first black entrepreneurs in Taylor, where they operated a business called "Pickett Bros. Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Ass'n.” His specialty act, which he is said to have invented, was catching a steer's lip with his teeth, just like the cattle dogs did, and bringing it to the ground. This is popularly called “bulldogging.” Pickett worked most of his adult life (from 1905) for the Miller family, who not only owned a large Oklahoma ranch, but also the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He died after an altercation with a bronco at the age of 62. For being such a memorable character in the history of Wild West Shows and rodeos, Pickett was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, in 1971, the first black rodeo athlete to be so honored.

References
Pinkney, Andrea Davis. Bill Pickett, Rodeo-Ridin' Cowboy. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1996.
Sanford, William R. Bill Pickett : African-American Rodeo Cowboy. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1997.

GEORGE WASHINGTON WILLIAMS

Williams (1849-1891) was born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. He enlisted at the age of 14 for duty in the Federal army during the Civil War. Upon leaving the army in 1868, he underwent training as a minister at the Newton Theological Institution and was ordained in 1874, having been the first black to graduate from that institution. He served as a Baptist minister of several churches, became a lawyer, and served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1879 to 1881. The following year Williams published History of the Negro Race in America, 1619-1880, making him the first major historian of African American ancestry. This book was the first relatively objective account that strove for historical accuracy rather than functioning as a work of black apologetics or propaganda. His next project resulting in A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion (1888), a work that involved gathering oral histories from black Civil War veterans and culling newspaper accounts, both techniques which subsequently became basic resources in American historiography. Williams attended an antislavery conference in Brussels in 1885, and four years later he considered the prospect of employing black Americans in the Congo Free State under the auspices of the Belgian king. But a six-month visit to the Congo in 1890 shocked him due to the forced labor and brutal exploitation of the people. Putting his writing skills to work, Williams spent the short remainder of his life publicizing the outrages he had witnessed himself in the Congo. Williams died in Blackpool, England. Suggested Link
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/george_washington_williams.html