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Larry Callies says God gave him a vision in 2017 to open a Black Cowboy Museum in Rosenberg, Texas. But he had no idea why.

There was a time when the museum would have been a natural fit for the cowboy and country music singer. Callies had serenaded former President George H.W. Bush and a host of former Houston mayors, including Lee P. Brown, Kathy Whitmire, Bob Lanier and Sylvester Turner. He had even opened for Selena.

Then he lost his voice in 1990 when he was diagnosed with dysphonia, a disorder that impairs voice production.

“I said ‘God, I can’t even talk. Why do you want me to open up a cowboy museum?’” said Callies. “He said, ‘Step out on faith.’ When I stepped out on faith, the museum appeared.”

Within a matter of weeks, he went from borrowing space in the back of a feed store for his saddle shop to opening his own small museum located in a blue-and-pink-colored strip center in downtown Rosenberg. He’s packed it with antique artifacts that date back to the early 1800s. The collection includes vintage irons, sewing machines, black powder guns, and stoves, to saddles, rows of unique barbed wires, and a hall of fame room with photos of his long lineage of cowboys and other notable, trailblazing Black cowboys.

Callies aims to showcase the lifestyle of the American cowboy and preserve the legacy of the Black cowboys’ influence on Western culture. 

“When I lost my voice, I lost my band and I lost my manager,” said 71-year-old Callies, who is originally from El Campo, Texas. “But I’m a Christian first and I’m a cowboy second. When God closes one door, he opens up another. And he’s opened this door wider and wider.”

Since its inception, the museum has attracted thousands of inquisitive visitors from across the nation, with on average roughly two to three bus loads of visitors a week. It has also garnered national attention as one of the only museums dedicated to telling this untold history of Black cowboys with features in the New York Times and on season one of the Netflix documentary,“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America” — an episode titled “Freedom.”  

But even with increased awareness and popularity over the years, Callies said visitors are always surprised to learn of the museum’s existence and the true origin of American cowboys. 

It’s the kickoff question in every tour that he leads after he introduces himself. But people rarely answer correctly, he said.

“People didn’t know where the word cowboy came from until I told them,” he said on a recent rainy Wednesday morning while preparing for a tour. “I’m telling history that nobody really knows.”

The word originated in Texas during slavery when Black men — regardless of age — were called boys. They were either a house boy, a yard boy, or a cowboy, referring to someone who worked the cows, Callies said. 

“The white man refused to be called a cowboy in the 1800s,” he said. 

“He was called a cowhand. You called a white man a cowboy in the 1920s and he would say, ‘I’m not your slave. I’m a cowhand or a cowman.’ But he’s not a cowboy until Hollywood whitewashed it.”

Pop culture mythicized Western culture beginning with the 1945 film “Lone Texas Ranger” followed by the television series “The Lone Ranger”  in 1949-1957, which depicted the Lone Ranger as a white cowboy with a black mask. But the real “Lone Ranger” and frontier hero was U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves — a Black man.

“Everybody you saw on TV was imitating Black men,” Callies said. “But they wouldn’t put Black men on TV.”

When Callies posed his staple question — “Anybody can tell me where cowboys come from?” — on that Wednesday tour where he hosted members of AARP’s Alief chapter, one visitor, Marva Crawford, got it right, noting she read it somewhere. 

“You read it because I said it,” Callies responded. 

The diverse group regularly takes a monthly field trip to unique places around the Houston area to expose its members to new experiences. 

“No one in our organization had ever been to this place,” said Jan Albers, the president of AARP’s Alief chapter. 

As the tour continued, many took pictures, held antique items, asked questions and relished the answers as Callies reminisced on some of his family’s accolades and memories riding bulls, bareback riding and team roping. 

In 1967, his cousin Tex Williams became the first Black man to win a state high school rodeo title in Texas. In 1971, while Callies didn’t win the title, he became the second Black to make the state finals for bareback riding. 

At 71, Callies primarily sticks to his favorite event: team roping.

“When I got older, I can just stay on the horse. I don’t have to get off,” he said. “In calf roping you have to jump off and it’s bad on your knees. I have bad knees. Bull riding it was bad on your head and bad on your back.”

For the seventh year in a row, he will teach roping to attendees at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo during its annual Black Heritage Day on March 1.

Callies’ museum and his collection of vintage items like irons inspired one visitor, Nila Pugh, to replicate something similar in her hometown of Spencer, Oklahoma, to honor her father, whom she said was a renowned Black cowboy and will soon be inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame there. 

“He’s just helping me gather some of the stuff that I need to give to them,” she said. “Irons, we have a lot of that stuff at the house (but) we really don’t think about it.”

The museum, which is registered as a nonprofit, recorded just over $200,000 in revenue in 2022 and had steadily grown in popularity over the years. But county officials anticipate an even greater local impact and national reach once the museum expands to a new, nearly 4,000-square-foot site within the historic Bates M. Allen Park in Kendleton. 

“This is going to have (an) impact (over) the country because of his diligence and courage in telling this story, and how he’s been able to restore the stature of the Black cowboy and just the history of Blacks in rodeo,” said Dexter McCoy, Fort Bend Precinct 4 Commissioner. 

“It’s absolutely incredible,” he added. “There’s been great support. Our office has received nothing but great feedback about the investments in this museum. And I’m really excited that we’re able to partner with Mr. Callies in developing this very, very critical asset.”

The Black Cowboy Museum will join the Heritage Unlimited Museum and a planned African American Memorial, which is part of a $4 million initiative to preserve and redevelop the 236-acre park. 

Kendleton is one of the very first freedmen’s towns established after emancipation with trailblazing descendants such as Houston Congresswoman, Barbara Jordan and Walter Moses Burton, the first Black sheriff in the United States. Bates M. Allen Park has two historical freedmen’s burial sites: Newman Chapel Cemetery and Oak Hill Cemetery, one of which is the final resting place of former State Rep. Benjamin Franklin Williams – a former slave who became the first Black legislator in Texas and was one of only 10 Black constitutional delegates during Reconstruction.

“When we have assets like these that are related, we should have these all in the same ecosystem,” McCoy said. “We’re doing an entire redesign of Bates Allen Park, especially given that we anticipate heavy tourist traffic.”

Fort Bend County Parks and Recreation has allocated nearly $9.4 million of its 2023 parks bond toward the redesign, $2.7 million of which is dedicated toward the Black Cowboy Museum, according to McCoy. 

The expansion project was originally slated for completion by the end of 2023. But changes in funding, changes to the museum site location and “exponential” growth in Fort Bend county that outpaced county staff operations ultimately delayed the progress on the project, McCoy said.

Callies said the county also hasn’t done a good job keeping him updated.

“They keep me in the dark.” Callies said, noting that he’s been patient ever since the county first started mapping out the expansion with him nearly three years ago. “As long as they give me the money for it, I’m okay.” 

McCoy acknowledged the sparse communication from the county, but he anticipates movement soon on the project and is aiming to break ground by the end of 2024.

With the concentration of three historic facilities on what he considers “sacred ground,” he hopes that visitors will encounter a more holistic experience with Black history.

“I think when folks come from over the country to visit this place, I hope that they get this sense of significance,” McCoy said. “I hope that they are really able to travel through history and learning. And once they leave that site to go back to their homes, take with them that learning and are able to hold those principles of ingenuity; of overcoming.”

 An earlier version of this story misstated where Barbara Jordan was buried. The story has been updated with accurate information.

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