These are the real-life figures who inspired Netflix’s ‘The Harder They Fall’

Jeymes Samuel’s revisionist western “The Harder They Fall” assembles an all-star cast of both actors and legendary Black western figures from across time for a fictional story about two rival groups, the Nat Love and the Rufus Buck gangs. It’s just what they embody as actors.” The film offers rare representation for Black cowboys, frontiersmen and lawmen who have largely been written out of Hollywood’s cinematic depictions of the Old West. “Black cowboys were some of the very first cowboys on the cattle trails because many of them used the skills they already had from handling cows as slaves,” said Gloria Austin, co-founder of the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth. It’s empowering when people are able to see their rightful place in society and the many different avenues that were taken other than what is generally shown in movies, television and textbooks.” Here’s a brief history of the real-life figures who inspired characters in “The Harder They Fall.”