Three years ago, Portland had its first Juneteenth Rodeo, and it has returned each year to packed crowds, selling out the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, even at 7,200 seats compared to the 2,500 seats at the Expo Center the first year. This year, for the first time, there will also be a sister event, an Eight Seconds Rodeo in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September.
Ivan McClellan, founder of the Eight Seconds Rodeo and renowned photographer of Black cowboy and cowgirl culture, spoke with OPB after Portland’s first wildly successful Juneteenth rodeo in June 2023, and shared how the rodeo came to be.
History of Portland’s Juneteenth rodeo
“I had had the idea to do my own rodeo for about two years and I had been talking to other cowboys and other rodeo producers about it,” McClellan said. “The idea was that we would do an inclusive rodeo. We would do a rodeo for everybody except for traditional rodeo fans, and we would bring out folks that just hadn’t felt comfortable going to an old fashioned rodeo.”
His plan was to hold it in Kansas City, where he’s originally from, but then Vince Jones Dixon, a friend of McClellan’s and a city councilor in Gresham, proposed they do it in Portland as a way to celebrate Juneteenth.
“We kept talking about it and the more we talked about it, I was like, you know, more than Kansas City, a rodeo in Portland would have a huge impact on the population here,” McClellan said.
Initially, it was difficult to convince potential sponsors that Portland was a logical place to hold a Black rodeo…