Hey, it's Curious City's Jason Mark, and I'm always excited to work with regular contributor

Ariane Nettles, not only because Ariane's a great person.

Aw, thanks, Jason.

But because she's always bringing us great stories about Chicago's rich black history.

In the coming weeks, Arion's going to dish out two brand new stories to help us celebrate Black History Month,

but we're kicking off the month with a question we got back in 2021. One of our regular listeners,

Joyce Miller Bean, wanted us to dig into a piece of Chicago history that doesn't get a lot of

attention. And it all started when Joyce saw an obituary in the newspaper.

In 2014, which isn't that long ago, as you know, I saw the obituary for Herb Jeffries.

They meant nothing to me, but what caught my eye is that he was 100 years old when he died,

and he was a black singing cowboy.

With my role and my son and my husband. died, and he was a black singing cowboy. She was very familiar with my

roared and white singing cowboy she'd seen like Roy Rogers and Jean Autry.

If you ever heard Santa Claus is come into town when you were growing up, like my kids heard

growing up, that was Gene Autry.

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not powd, I'm telling you.

But she had no idea that there were black singing cowboys like Jeffries, who she discovered

created the first all-black

Western musical, Harlem on the Prairie.

So Joyce dug around and found out more about Jeffries, and during that search, she also

started learning more about a black film industry in Chicago that started in the early

1900s.

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