Screening & Conversation: Harlem Rides the Range

Join Poster House for a screening of Harlem Rides the Range (1939), directed by Richard C. Kahn and starring Herbert Jeffries, the legendary “Bronze Buckaroo.” Presented in connection with Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen, this groundbreaking Black Western offers a rare opportunity to see Black performers take center stage in a genre that historically excluded them.

Following the screening, Professor Mia Mask will join curator Es-pranza Humphrey for a conversation about the history of Black Westerns, the importance of all-Black casts, and the ways these films challenged and expanded representations of African American life on screen. The evening will conclude with an audience Q&A and book signing for Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western.

Books will be available for purchase through the Poster House Shop and online store.

Please note that museum admission is not included in the cost of admission to this program.

Mia Mask is the Mary Riepma Ross endowed Professor of Film at Vassar College. She teaches courses on African American cinema, documentary history, feminist film theory, and African national cinemas. She is the author of Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western, an award-winning study of Black Western films and their place in American film history. Her scholarship has been featured by organizations including NPR and the British Film Institute, where she has curated programs on African American cinema. She earned her PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University.

Es‑pranza Humphrey is the Assistant Curator of Collections at Poster House, where her research centers on Black performance, fashion, and visual culture. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, NPR, ABC Here and Now, and the Fashion and Race Database, and her scholarship on the graphic language of the Black Panther Party has appeared in several international publications. In Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage and Screen, she investigates Black American theater and film posters from the 1870s to the 1940s.

Accessibility Note: Masks are available free of charge at the museum. Assistive listening devices and stools are available. ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or a CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is also available upon request. Please contact access@posterhouse.org or (914) 295-2387 to request interpretation services and to address any other accessibility needs. For other event-related questions, please contact events@posterhouse.org.