If that’s not enough, Burton quotes a contemporary, D.C.

Equally striking, the men who ended up in deputy marshal Reeves’ custody, if convicted, were taken to the Detroit House of Corrections, the same city where The Lone Ranger premiered on radio in 1933. Seizing on the parallel between Bass Reeves and the Lone Ranger (whose “real” name in the original radio show was John Reid), Burton notes how both at one time rode white horses, rode out with Native American sidemen and relied on disguises and, while the Lone Ranger made silver bullets famous, Reeves handed out silver dollars.

“Considering his long service and remarkable dedication to duty,” Burton writes, “had Reeves been a white lawman it is quite possible he would have been as popular as any ever written about during the late 19th century.” marshal who, for more than 30 years, patrolled the western territories hauling in outlaws of every stripe-and race. Burton, author of the 2006 biography Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves, the real-life analog of America’s iconic black-masked lawman may have been a black man named Bass Reeves, a deputy U.S. Imagine if Morgan Freeman, Jamie Fox, Will Smith or Denzel Washington had been cast to play the Lone Ranger alongside Johnny Depp’s Tonto this past summer (and, coincidentally, out on DVD next Tuesday). marshal and a renowned symbol of law and order in the Wild West?

59: Which former slave became a deputy U.S. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage.Īmazing Fact About the Negro No. 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: The character’s story is strikingly similar to that of 19th-century lawman Bass Reeves.Įditor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A.

The lone ranger was black