Miles J. Dean, a Newark, NJ schoolteacher, rode his horse from New York to California to celebrate the contributions African Americans made in the settling of the United States. During his six-month, 5,000-mile journey, Dean, a 57-year-old African American, addressed people along the way at schools and colleges, community organizations, and penal institutions. He met hundreds of Americans through informal encounters at campgrounds, Wal-Mart parking lots, restaurants, and country stores. With each, he shared his reasons for the journey and inspired others to fulfil their dreams. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Dean first learned about cowboys from watching television. Like any boy at that time, he wanted to be like those heroes and pretended to be a cowboy. He galloped through the streets on his bicycle, ambushing outlaws on street corners. Although Hollywood helped keep his dream alive, the cowboys on TV didn’t look like Dean. At age 23, he saw Sidney Poitier play a cowboy in the 1972 film, Buck and the Preacher, and realized he too could be a cowboy. He deferred his teenage dream another 10 years before he could afford riding lessons and eventually bought his first horse. But the film inspired him to explore the African American history he never learned in school, specifically the contributions made during the 1500-1800s when horses were the primary means of transportation. He knew he wanted to make a cross-country journey and retrace the steps of these early pioneers; it was just a question of when. On September 22, 2007, Dean brought his horse, Sankofa, a 12-year-old Arabian stallion into New York City and rode to the African Burial Grounds, in lower Manhattan to begin his journey. Granted an unpaid leave of absence from his 5th grade social studies position, he embarked on this odyssey he had dreamed about for nearly 35 years. Six months later, Dean completed the trip with a celebration at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. In between he visited several historical monuments, paying homage to history’s forgotten heroes, including the black jockeys at Kentucky’s Churchill Downs and soldiers at Tennessee’s African American Civil War Cemetery. His travels through Memphis and Little Rock evoked his own memories of growing up during the Civil Rights Movement. His ride through the harsh deserts of the Southwest and across California’s formidable Chocolate Mountains allowed him to re-enact the conditions and perils faced by early cowboys and marshals. On the Trail of the Ancestors: A Black Cowboy’s Ride Across America recounts how one man followed his childhood dream. Dean’s commitment to his journey helped him battle a brain tumor; his gratitude to his ancestors fortified his resilience; and his integrity to honoring heroes in history via his horse kept him on road. This book chronicles Dean’s cross-country journey and introduces readers to people from all cultural and social backgrounds. Dean’s many encounters with strangers who assisted him, his meetings with students, his participation in local community parades and other events as he travelled bring to life the complex tapestry of the country. As Dean travels from state to state, the reader learns about African Americans who contributed to US history. Dean’s relationship with his horse Sankofa provides insights about what it is like to ride a horse for six months. Whether navigating dangerous terrain and city traffic, riding long distances, handling medical problems for him and the horse, or facing the challenges of acquiring the four relief horses, his anecdotes regale readers with the visceral pleasures and difficulties of such a journey. Dean’s story demonstrates that an ordinary person can accomplish the extraordinary.
On the Trail of the Ancestors
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About the Author
Lisa K. Winkler is a journalist and an educator. She met Miles Dean while serving as a literacy consultant in Newark, NJ. When she heard about his cross-country journey on horseback, she became fascinated by the history she never knew. Her curiosity landed her an assignment to research black jockeys, culminating in “The Kentucky Derby’s Forgotten Jockeys” for Smithsonian magazine’s website (April 24, 2009). Her other writing includes two essays published in book anthologies; one in I’m Going to College- Not You!: Surviving the College Search with My Child (St. Martin’s Press, 2010), and the other in Wisdom of our Mothers (Familia Press, 2010. A newspaper reporter (Danbury News-Times, CT), before becoming a teacher, Lisa writes for professional journals and for Education Update, a newspaper based in New York City. Among her interviewees - who include authors, college presidents, scientists, and artists - was Miles Dean in February, 2009. She has written several teacher study guides for Penguin Books. She holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA in Urban Education from New Jersey City University. An avid reader, knitter, and cyclist, she lives with her husband in the greater New York area and has three grown children.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Author Lisa K. Winkler is a journalist and an educator, both attributes that serve her well in this immensely entertaining, informative, and humbling tale of the remarkable feat of Miles Dean, an African American man of 57 years of age who elected to renew interest in black history by challenging himself to ride across the United States on the back of his 11 year old horse named Sankofa. Not only was he able to complete his journey as a modern day cowboy in riding from New York to Los Angeles in a six month period, but he also fulfilled his expectations (and more!) of resurrecting some black history that the country is so in d=need of knowing.
Initially stimulated by is love of history of cowboys he learned in the 1972 Western film `Buck and the Preacher' starring Sidney Poitier, Dean decided to fulfill his cream of being a cowboy and during the process unveil the hidden facts of African Americans who served as US Marshalls, how blacks were banned from acting in movies in the first half of the 20th century, some unknown truths about black jockeys, early participants in the Grand Ole Opry, about decimated burial grounds of black slaves, and in general a reconstruction of black history as observed and recorded by a man on horseback.
It took Miles Dean six months to cover the 500 mile course of his own design - from New York though New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, DC, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona to California. Much of the joy of reading this book is getting to know this gentle but determined Miles Dean and his adventures as he rode Sankofa across his country, but the other aspect that makes this book not only educational but almost invaluable as a resource is the recognition of important aspects of black history we all should know. Reading Winkler's account is both fascinatingly entertaining and educational. Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, March 12
Initially stimulated by is love of history of cowboys he learned in the 1972 Western film `Buck and the Preacher' starring Sidney Poitier, Dean decided to fulfill his cream of being a cowboy and during the process unveil the hidden facts of African Americans who served as US Marshalls, how blacks were banned from acting in movies in the first half of the 20th century, some unknown truths about black jockeys, early participants in the Grand Ole Opry, about decimated burial grounds of black slaves, and in general a reconstruction of black history as observed and recorded by a man on horseback.
It took Miles Dean six months to cover the 500 mile course of his own design - from New York though New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, DC, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona to California. Much of the joy of reading this book is getting to know this gentle but determined Miles Dean and his adventures as he rode Sankofa across his country, but the other aspect that makes this book not only educational but almost invaluable as a resource is the recognition of important aspects of black history we all should know. Reading Winkler's account is both fascinatingly entertaining and educational. Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, March 12
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One September day in 2007, a dreadlocked New Jersey schoolteacher named Miles Dean mounted his buckskin stallion, Sankofa, and rode him to Manhattan's African Burial Ground, the earliest archaeological site related to black slavery in America. After a recognition of other black horsemen, and a brief African dedication ceremony, Dean set out to ride horseback across America. He would be the first African American to do so in over a century.
Journalist Lisa Winkler recreates Dean's historic, and grueling, cross-country journey, using him not only as a guide for a travelogue, but also to restore lost history to its rightful American place. Winkler narrates Dean's visits to locations associated with African American history, emphasizing the conflict at the heart of being black in this country. It seems the places dearest to black American culture are also the places of deepest conflict, shame, and fear.
Like many boys, Dean fell in love with cowboy movies on afternoon TV. He dreamed of riding herd and rounding up bad guys, but there weren't a lot of horse paddocks in Newark, New Jersey. And, though he didn't realize it for several years, there weren't many black cowboys in the movies, either. That is, until Sidney Poitier in Buck and the Preacher, and Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem," which inspired him to challenge Hollywood's lily-white frontier.
It seems the mythic American West was far less Caucasian than many of us believe. In the heyday of the cattle drives, African Americans comprised up to a third of working cowboys. Rodeo rider Bill Pickett invented the steer-wrestling move known as "bulldogging," but got forced from his sport by a rising tide of racism. Nat "Deadwood Dick" Love perfected the rope tricks and sharpshooting techniques that made Roy Rogers and Gene Autry rich.
Why, then, are black cowboys missing from our myths? Miles Dean could not accept this, and set out to draw attention to this gap in our knowledge. But it seems everywhere we turn, we find another place where mythology has scrubbed American history white. Many pioneering horse race jockeys, Civil War heroes, and country singers paved the way for white successors...and then vanished from history.
Dean's itinerary calls attention to these and other forgotten heroes from American history. His audience follows his journey as he reminds them of the free blacks who took Harper's Ferry with John Brown; the Little Rock Nine, whose simple desire to attend high school nearly caused a second Civil War; and Dr. King, whose imprint on American history has been sanitized to a mere poster boy for voting rights.
Even Dean himself learned much on his journey. For instance, the Buffalo Soldiers he memorialized, it turns out, participated in illegal land grabs from Indians who only wanted to defend themselves. The wealthy and the powerful pitted two defenseless groups against each other, and laughed while they fought over the scraps. Yet the Buffalo Soldiers had the Army's lowest desertion rate, and both groups set new standards for gallantry in battle.
As told in Winkler's clean, energetic prose, Miles Dean reminds Americans that we are inheritors of a beautiful, tense, and complicated heritage. We built what some call the greatest nation on earth, but we did it on the backs of slaves. We invented enduring myths that inspire not just Americans, but generations of people worldwide, and then we purged those myths of the diversity that made them possible.
Dean's journey took him from Manhattan to Los Angeles, covering 5,000 miles across twelve states and the District of Columbia. He rode his horse through dense cities and wide-open countryside. He traversed centuries-old trails and modern highways, through forests and prairies, across bleak deserts and up mountains so steep his life was in constant peril.
And everywhere he went, young and old, black and white, raced out to greet him and his horse. Churches held dinners and civic groups sang his praises. Strangers opened their doors to him, simply because he was doing something that reminded them of their own dreams. Dean transcended boundaries of race, location, and history, by simply enacting boyhood dreams.
Miles Dean set out to recapture a piece of black history, and he did so admirably. But he does something more, too: he reminds us that America is worth something to people of all races. And if we have regions of history we're not proud of, that doesn't make us smaller. It just gives us higher goals and more noble dreams, and a reason to reach after them.
Journalist Lisa Winkler recreates Dean's historic, and grueling, cross-country journey, using him not only as a guide for a travelogue, but also to restore lost history to its rightful American place. Winkler narrates Dean's visits to locations associated with African American history, emphasizing the conflict at the heart of being black in this country. It seems the places dearest to black American culture are also the places of deepest conflict, shame, and fear.
Like many boys, Dean fell in love with cowboy movies on afternoon TV. He dreamed of riding herd and rounding up bad guys, but there weren't a lot of horse paddocks in Newark, New Jersey. And, though he didn't realize it for several years, there weren't many black cowboys in the movies, either. That is, until Sidney Poitier in Buck and the Preacher, and Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem," which inspired him to challenge Hollywood's lily-white frontier.
It seems the mythic American West was far less Caucasian than many of us believe. In the heyday of the cattle drives, African Americans comprised up to a third of working cowboys. Rodeo rider Bill Pickett invented the steer-wrestling move known as "bulldogging," but got forced from his sport by a rising tide of racism. Nat "Deadwood Dick" Love perfected the rope tricks and sharpshooting techniques that made Roy Rogers and Gene Autry rich.
Why, then, are black cowboys missing from our myths? Miles Dean could not accept this, and set out to draw attention to this gap in our knowledge. But it seems everywhere we turn, we find another place where mythology has scrubbed American history white. Many pioneering horse race jockeys, Civil War heroes, and country singers paved the way for white successors...and then vanished from history.
Dean's itinerary calls attention to these and other forgotten heroes from American history. His audience follows his journey as he reminds them of the free blacks who took Harper's Ferry with John Brown; the Little Rock Nine, whose simple desire to attend high school nearly caused a second Civil War; and Dr. King, whose imprint on American history has been sanitized to a mere poster boy for voting rights.
Even Dean himself learned much on his journey. For instance, the Buffalo Soldiers he memorialized, it turns out, participated in illegal land grabs from Indians who only wanted to defend themselves. The wealthy and the powerful pitted two defenseless groups against each other, and laughed while they fought over the scraps. Yet the Buffalo Soldiers had the Army's lowest desertion rate, and both groups set new standards for gallantry in battle.
As told in Winkler's clean, energetic prose, Miles Dean reminds Americans that we are inheritors of a beautiful, tense, and complicated heritage. We built what some call the greatest nation on earth, but we did it on the backs of slaves. We invented enduring myths that inspire not just Americans, but generations of people worldwide, and then we purged those myths of the diversity that made them possible.
Dean's journey took him from Manhattan to Los Angeles, covering 5,000 miles across twelve states and the District of Columbia. He rode his horse through dense cities and wide-open countryside. He traversed centuries-old trails and modern highways, through forests and prairies, across bleak deserts and up mountains so steep his life was in constant peril.
And everywhere he went, young and old, black and white, raced out to greet him and his horse. Churches held dinners and civic groups sang his praises. Strangers opened their doors to him, simply because he was doing something that reminded them of their own dreams. Dean transcended boundaries of race, location, and history, by simply enacting boyhood dreams.
Miles Dean set out to recapture a piece of black history, and he did so admirably. But he does something more, too: he reminds us that America is worth something to people of all races. And if we have regions of history we're not proud of, that doesn't make us smaller. It just gives us higher goals and more noble dreams, and a reason to reach after them.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Miles Dean like many little boys fell in love with cowboys and horses and had a dream: to be a cowboy, an unlikely prospect for a black child growing up in Brooklyn. He never forgot, however, a poem he learned in high school in 1967, the famous poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
With grit and determination Mr. Dean realized his childhood dream and became a cowboy. This book is the account of his traveling across America on his beloved horse Sankofa, whose name means in the Akan language of Ghana, "to return to get it." Mr. Dean's journey began on September 22, 2007 and ended April 1, 2008. He covered New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D. C., West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico Arizona and California in his quest to recover his ancestral history: Washington Square in Philadelphia where slave auctions were once held, Temple University for a glimpse of the history of the abolitionists, Morgan State University in Baltimore, Howard University in Washington, D. C., Fisk University in Nashville where Dean visited a history class and heard a lecture on the African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and a group of Tuskegee Airmen ("several elderly gentlemen") in Arizona and finally Los Angeles when he arrived at the California African American Museum.
Much of the American history that Mr. Dean 's journey provided-- sad to say-- has just come to light recently since all too often the conquerors write or rewrite history. His is a story that needs to be told. Lisa Winkler is the journalist/educator who tells his story. As much as I liked it, I kept thinking that Mr. Dean's story would have been much better told from his own first person narrative. Sometimes Ms. Winkler, for instance, will interject passages such as "Miles remembered reading about the black cowboy Matthew `Bones' Hooks" (p. 123) that sound artificial and do not flow from the narrative. Such a problem would have been avoided if we could hear the cowboy's own voice. Nevertheless, Mr. Dean's story is still a good one.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
With grit and determination Mr. Dean realized his childhood dream and became a cowboy. This book is the account of his traveling across America on his beloved horse Sankofa, whose name means in the Akan language of Ghana, "to return to get it." Mr. Dean's journey began on September 22, 2007 and ended April 1, 2008. He covered New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D. C., West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico Arizona and California in his quest to recover his ancestral history: Washington Square in Philadelphia where slave auctions were once held, Temple University for a glimpse of the history of the abolitionists, Morgan State University in Baltimore, Howard University in Washington, D. C., Fisk University in Nashville where Dean visited a history class and heard a lecture on the African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and a group of Tuskegee Airmen ("several elderly gentlemen") in Arizona and finally Los Angeles when he arrived at the California African American Museum.
Much of the American history that Mr. Dean 's journey provided-- sad to say-- has just come to light recently since all too often the conquerors write or rewrite history. His is a story that needs to be told. Lisa Winkler is the journalist/educator who tells his story. As much as I liked it, I kept thinking that Mr. Dean's story would have been much better told from his own first person narrative. Sometimes Ms. Winkler, for instance, will interject passages such as "Miles remembered reading about the black cowboy Matthew `Bones' Hooks" (p. 123) that sound artificial and do not flow from the narrative. Such a problem would have been avoided if we could hear the cowboy's own voice. Nevertheless, Mr. Dean's story is still a good one.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Black Cowboy's Ride Across America
It's not every day that a good book about both geography and history comes along, but Lisa Winkler's nonfiction epic, A Black Cowboy's Ride Across America, guides the reader on a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Marsha L. Ingrao
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Black Cowboy's Ride Across America
I loved this book I ordered from Amazon Kindle. The large type and illustrations made for an easy read. I like the fast availability and note taking in this format. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Bettye W. Harwell
5.0 out of 5 stars
an inspirational journey
An amazing journey..... an inspiring and informative book that should encourage all young people to follow their dreams, undaunted by nay-sayers.
Published 8 months ago by astitchintime
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Educational Tool for an Intro to African American History
On the Trail of the Ancestors: A Black Cowboy's Ride Across America by Lisa Winkler is a fabulous biography of a cross-country horseback ride of Miles Dean. Read more
Published 9 months ago by April Gibbs
3.0 out of 5 stars
An Inspirational But Weakly Told Story
It is a given that youths are in need of a positive role model to help launch them into successful adulthood. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Kurt Harding
3.0 out of 5 stars
KNOWING MILES
Miles J the brother and friend with the locks A man whom i personally came to know while he was fighting brain cancer yet did not know how i knew? Read more
Published 11 months ago by Truthskn
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling creative nonfiction
Lisa K. Winkler is not an amateur writer even though this is her first full length book. The attention to detail, the carefully constructed narrative and poignant word choices make... Read more
Published 12 months ago by John H. Byk
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Dream Not Deferred
How many of us give up on our dreams?
Miles Dean was born in Brooklyn and lived in New Jersey in the 1950s, but from the time he was a kid he dreamed of being a cowboy. Read more
Miles Dean was born in Brooklyn and lived in New Jersey in the 1950s, but from the time he was a kid he dreamed of being a cowboy. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Isaac M. Morris
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great introduction to black history & black horsemen
A great book for introducing young people to some of the facets of black history. Told by way of the 2007 cross country odyssey by horseback of Miles Dean from one coast of the USA... Read more
Published 14 months ago by G. Coatsworth
5.0 out of 5 stars
My new hero
Miles Dean is my new hero. His determination is an example for us all. I recommend this book for all ages. Lisa Winkler's writing makes you feel you are a part of the journey. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Judy
