God Rock Radio #123 – The Alternative Wild West Part 2-Cross Dressing Women and Gay Caballeros

In the 2nd part of the season 6 finale, Jack “The Agnostic” Garcia continues his journey into territory that most scholars and historians fear to tread. First up its cross dressing women of the Old West, like Charley Parkhurst who disguised herself as a male for over 50 years and became one of the greatest stage coach drivers ever to navigate the mountain trails of the Sierras. Elsa Jane Forest Guerin – who dressed as a man, spent years tracking down her husband’s killer and would later become a gender bending Wild West celebrity. Next Jack takes a look at homosexuality in the Old West, from Native Americans to dance hall girls and cowboys out on the range. It may surprise some but same sex intimacy was not only accepted but sometimes actually encouraged. And finally Jack examines the Wild West traveling medicine shows , a mixture of entertainment and advertisement that both romanticized and exploited an era that would soon vanish into history.
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God Rock Radio #122- The Alternative Wild West Part 1-African Americans

In the season six- two part finale, Jack “The Agnostic” Garcia presents a much different vision of the Old Wild West. First up it’s the Black contribution to the American Frontier, that has often been ignored or neglected by scholars and historians. Jack recites the lives and legends of some of the great African American pioneers, people like Nat Love-a cowboy legend in his own time who in his later years wrote his autobiography which not only became a bestseller but also a priceless historical documentation of the not so “Lilly White” wild west. Bill Pickett- the roping and Rodeo/Wild West show king whose career spanned nearly five decades and whom many people rank as the greatest cowboy of all time, and Stagecoach Mary Fields-a 200 pound, 6 foot tall black woman who lived her life her own way and waltzed around Montana with pistols strapped to her waist.

Six Tracks hit fwd to advance