From Old Town Road by Lil Nas X to the recent Western, the harder they fall.

The idea of Black Cowboys has been making its way into popular culture over the last few years.

But there's much more to learn about the role that African Americans played in the complex history of the American West.

I'm Bethany Jay, and this is Music

Reconstructed from Teaching Heart History. It takes research to rethink, remix, and reimagine music.

The results can reveal insights into history for educators and students. In this special four-part

series, music expert and historian Charles Hughes brings us conversations

with contemporary musicians who are exploring the sounds, songs, and stories of the Jim Crow era through their music.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, many formerly enslaved people migrated west.

They became integral parts of industries like cattle ranching, the

railroads, and law enforcement. In this installment, Charles introduces us to

Grammy Award winner Dom Flemens, who helped lay the groundwork for the

growing understanding of this often forgotten history. Together, they take us on a

musical exploration of the American West after emancipation.

Here's Charles.

On this episode, I talked with Dom Flemens, who goes by the name of the American songster,

a title that he richly deserves. He is a musician, a historian, an educator, an archivist. We'll specifically focus on his Grammy-nominated album, Black Cowboys, which traces the

songs and the stories of the Black Cowboy tradition and the African-American West. And as he explains here,

these are stories, these are songs that often get left out or forgotten, an erasure that affects

not only our understanding of Western migration and Western settlement, but also of the

vibrancy of black life and black experiences in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Flemons is a model for how to go about doing research and historical learning

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