Hall Continues Legacy of Black Bull Riders by Encouraging the Next Generation
By: Darci Miller
PUEBLO, Colo. – When one pictures a bull rider, a bespectacled Black man with a heavy Southern twang might not be what comes to mind.
But Keith Hall isn’t too bothered by the idea of forging his own path.
It was just the way of things growing up in Blakely, Georgia. While the small town and surrounding area is big on farmland, it’s short on bull riding.
So the aspiring young bull rider began his career as a steer roper—sort of.
“I got on my first steer when I was probably about 15 at a roping pen,” Hall said. “We would rope them, and we would throw them down, and I would just jump on their backs.
“The first time I did it, by the time the steer stood up, he just dumped me right on top of his head and ran right over me. But I just kept wanting to do it, and I just started getting better.”
It was an unconventional start, to be sure, but within a month, Hall decided to give bull riding a shot instead. He excelled quickly and was soon making the connections that would get his career on track.
“I started meeting people inside the rodeo world who was always there, ready to give me a hand, because I didn’t hardly know anyone first-off,” Hall said. “So it was God just giving me opportunities to keep learning about it.”
Those opportunities led to competing on the rodeo team at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and a 2015 PBR debut.
While Hall competes mostly on the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour, he made his premier series debut at the PBR Last Vegas Invitational, presented by Union Home Mortgage, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, last April.
“It was a good experience, and I’m definitely going to be back there soon, back on tour,” Hall said. “But it was really nice just to be able to get on those bulls and actually feel the difference on how hard those bulls buck compared to the ones you see at the lower divisions.”
It took him seven events, but Hall finally got the first premier series ride of his career under his belt in September at the PBR Lucas Oil Invitational – 85 points on Tapp Out.
“Man, after I rode my first one, it was amazing. The pressure just lifted off of you,” he said. “Because when you get on tour, those bulls, they buck so hard, so much more hard than any other bulls I’d been on. They expose every single little weakness that you have. Things that you didn’t think was a weakness at first, those bulls are going to point them out real quick. And then you start doubting, like, ‘Man, do I even ride good? I don’t even know how I even made it here.’ But then you finally ride one and you’re like, ‘Man, that feels so good. I can breathe now, and now I know I can do it. Now I just have to keep stringing them together.’”
Hall is currently ranked No. 52 in the world standings, 16.5 points behind No. 35 Dakota Louis.
He will next be in action at the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour’s Collision at the Coliseum in North Charleston, South Carolina, airing on RidePass on Friday at 8 p.m. ET and Saturday at 7 p.m. ET. Hall has drawn Bomber (3-2, UTB) in Round 1.
Hall’s premier series experience also came with another surprise. While he never paid too much thought to being one of the few Black bull riders in the locker room, others certainly did.
“I noticed whenever I first got on tour, I had a lot of young Black men come to me and tell me they look up to me,” he said. “So it really helped me see that even though I don’t see it, I don’t take it as a big deal, or we’re all people and we’re all human, but that goes to show that there are people who are looking up to me because I’m a Black bull rider.”
Like many other Black bull riders, Hall grew up looking up to the likes of 1982 PRCA World Champion Charlie Sampson and Mike Moore, who rode at an elite level at times.
Hall tips his hat to the pioneers before him.
“My grandparents, they told me stories, because I grew up in the Deep South,” Hall said. “They told me stories of how things used to be, and man, that was tough. So being a bull rider and traveling the country back then, it might’ve had a lot more hardship.”
Hall has done his part to encourage the next generation of Black bull riders. His father-in-law has a business called Fresh Start Self-Improvement Center, which aims to give underserved individuals – primarily young Black men in inner cities – a chance for a better life through programs and community events.
“Some have maybe been to jail. Some maybe have absent fathers in their lives,” Hall said. “And my father-in-law goes and he helps them to be able to just provide for their families, teach them how to become men, and also teach them how to act, teach them that there’s more than doing things that you shouldn’t be doing in life, and there’s other ways that you can provide for your family that is legal. He brings me in sometimes to talk to young kids and things like that, which has really been amazing.
“And maybe they think, ‘This is not a sport for me because of my color.’ So being able to ride bulls, that really helps me be able to give me that platform to reach out to inner cities to let them know, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. To be a bull rider, you have to be an athlete. It don’t matter what color athlete you are. You can still be a professional bull rider.’”
The PBR does have an incredibly diverse locker room, with riders of all colors and different nationalities competing side by side. While everyone wants to win, everyone is also looking out for each other in the tight-knit, cowboy community.
“I think the different thing that I see in bull riding is that guys are a lot more willing to help,” Hall said. “It don’t matter what your color is or whatever. I think it’s because in this sport, you can literally die. With bull riders, you see a bigger brotherhood just because of the things that could happen. Me and my buddy, I don’t want him to lose. I want him to do good. I want him to be 90, but I want to be 91. I want to beat him just a little bit more. And I think you see the competition, but also you see a brotherhood.”
Photo courtesy of Andre Silva/Bull Stock Media
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