Ivan McClellan, a photographer, was captivated the primary time he got here throughout Black cowboy tradition at a rodeo in Oklahoma years in the past.

He noticed Black folks donning cowboy hats and saddling horses, photographs that impressed him to fully document that community in his work.

This yr, although, he needed to go a step additional. Mr. McClellan and Vince Jones-Dixon, a metropolis councilor in Gresham, Ore., sought to host a Juneteenth rodeo in Portland, one that might carry collectively the Black cowboy and cowgirl communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

On Saturday, they unveiled the inaugural Eight Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo within the Portland Expo Center, the place the Western life-style was showcased by barrel racing, bull driving and glimmering, weighty buckles.

“You see the cowboy, and it’s a shorthand for independence and grit and all of these things about America,” mentioned Mr. McClellan, who’s Black. “But then you combine it with Black culture, and it just wiggles your brain and disrupts things that you thought were true.”

Mr. McClellan and different attendees on Saturday remarked on how Black cowboys and cowgirls have been fusing their vogue with Western staples: gold chains peeking out from button-down plaid shirts; ladies with acrylic nails adjusting their dusty bluejeans; cowboy hats flat throughout the entrance, popped up over the edges.

“It’s taking the things that we know about Black culture, and it’s taking the icon of the cowboy — John Wayne, Clint Eastwood — it’s taking that icon and disrupting it,” Mr. McClellan mentioned.

Jarron Owen, a bull rider from Centralia, Wash., who attended the rodeo, mentioned such occasions have hardly ever been organized within the area.

“There’s such a small community of Black people who rodeo on the West Coast,” Mr. Owen mentioned. “To have a Black rodeo in Portland is big.”

More than 2,000 folks attended, Mr. McClellan mentioned. They stomped and cheered as bull riders jostled and swayed, struggling to stay mounted on the animal.

Mr. McClellan mentioned they deliberate to make the rodeo a Juneteenth custom.

“The Western world was bone white when we came in,” he mentioned. “We started to sprinkle in some Black folks into that world — and make some change.”