Bronze buckaroo herb jefferies biography

   Herb Jeffries was, in the tradition of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, a Hollywood created, silver screen, singing cowboy hero.

   He starred in five films in the late 1930's, but Jeffries was a different type of cowpoke.

He was "The Bronze Buckaroo."

   "In those days, my driving force was being a hero to children who didn't have any heroes to identify with," Jeffries says.  "I felt that dark-skinned children could identify with me and, in "The Bronze Buckaroo,"  they could have a hero.  Many people don't realize (to this very day) that in the Old West, one out of every three cowboys was a Black...

and there were many Mexican cowboys, too."

   From the time Jeffries was a child he was a cowboy at heart.  He learned to ride horses on his grandfather's dairy farm in northern Michigan and he spent many afternoons in Detroit movie houses watching screen cowbo