Issac Steele declined to be interviewed for this story. Despite his stature as “The Black Cowboy” in Milwaukee’s Walnut Hill, he isn’t a limelight seeker. It’s kind of shocking that he allowed a first-time filmmaker to make a documentary about him, Forged By Steele, which will debut later this month at the Oriental Theatre.
Steele came to Milwaukee in 1972 from Mississippi in search of a better living. Natalie Derr, the artist-turned-documentarian, captures the way this welder with a rancher’s heart has contributed to the interwoven fabric of the city.
Steele created Milwaukee’s Black Cowboy Association, as well as the overlapping Buffalo Soldier Association, for two reasons.
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No. 1 is preserving history: His great-great-grandfather, Hawk Davis, served in the Civil War. But more pressing is No. 2, which is to show young’uns there are more paths than just what they can see in their immediate vicinity. “I would never hand a kid a joint. I’d take them out into the country to show them something better to do,” Steele tells Derr in the documentary. Painted on the outer wall of his welding shop at 31st and Brown is the message “You can’t raise your baby in jail.”
As many as one-fourth of all the Old West’s cowboys were Black, according to the Smithsonian. “Cowboy,” by some accounts, was originally a racialized term referring to Black ranchers, while white men doing the same work were “cowhands.”
In the 1990s, Steele’s Association had two-dozen members. Until about a year ago, it was down to two. Now, it’s up to four, thanks to Kevin Nichols, the newest member; along with a rider who goes by “Top Sarge” and a teenager named Anthony who’s attached himself to the roughshod posse.
Nichols, a hobbyist horse owner who’s sheepish about being referred to as a “cowboy,” may soon take the Association’s reins, as Steele turned 80 at the end of last year. “I want to do something big,” says Nichols, who’s considering getting involved in equine therapy or collaborating with local sports teams for on-field events.
Partway through filming Forged By Steele, Derr came to a realization: The subjects of her doc aren’t exactly one of a kind. Last fall, she almost got lost trying to find a block party Nichols invited her to. But then, suddenly, “I pull over and see these horses running through the streets of Milwaukee.”
Nearby, in front of an abandoned home, she found a line of kids and moms queuing to ride and/or take selfies with a half-ton steed. Other riders had brought their horses to the neighborhood festival, a veritable herd saddled by urban devotees with ranchers’ hearts.
Milwaukee doesn’t have just one “Black Cowboy.” Steele is simply the one who’s been around the longest.
See Forged By Steele, funded by local arts organization Joy Engine, premiere at the Oriental Theatre on March 29.
