Free Cowgirl Up! by Heidi Thomas Page B

rodeos included these new events at the expense of the women.
    â€œWhen the RAA formed [the cowgirls] implored them to include women’s events and make rules for them . . . for reasons we will never know, they refused,” Mary Lou LeCompte, author of Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes , wrote.
    Ironically, it was the East that would temporarily save the rodeo cowgirl. Many Eastern rodeo promoters did not join RAA, and women’s bronc riding and trick riding gained popularity in that part of the country. Montana’s cowgirls benefitted, as witnessed by the world championships won by Marie Gibson and Alice Greenough in New York and Boston during the 1930s.
    International rodeo flourished during the 1930s as well—in Europe, Australia, Cuba, and Mexico—and in 1932 a promoter invited Alice to go to Spain. “That year in Spain was one of the best I ever had,” she related. Before each bullfight, she would ride the bull out of the chute and around the ring. Then the matadors took over their part of the show.
    After Alice won her first championship in Boston in 1933, she was among several rodeo riders to perform in the White City Stadium in London. Family members recounted that Queen Mary joined Alice and the riders for tea at the stables. Because the tea was too strong for Alice, she asked for additional hot water. Her niece Christine Linn now has that gold lusterware pitcher that was later sent across the ocean aboard a ship with a friend of the queen’s to present to “that little cowgirl” at Madison Square Garden.
    Not long after Alice returned home from England, she was selected as the only woman in a group to go to Australia. She performed “all over the back country” during 1934 and 1935 at “cattlemen’s picnics,” as rodeos were called. She won the Cowgirls International buck-jumping contest (bronc riding) in Sydney in 1935 and 1939.
    â€œIf travel is educational, the cowgirls should have been awarded Masters’ Degrees,” Milt Riske wrote in Those Magnificent Cowgirls .
    Alice was one of the professional cowgirls to enhance her income through endorsements, something few women athletes experienced during that era. The international successes enhanced the publicity at home. Most of the events paid huge prizes, with promoters paying all or part of the contestants’ travel expenses, and helped add to the American cowgirls’ earnings. While in Australia, Alice endorsed products from saddles to refrigerators, and later back home received several lucrative offers, including one for cigarettes. Although she was not a smoker, Alice signed the contract.
    But the impact of Bonnie McCarroll’s death and the RAA began to change the environment, leaving few options for women rodeo riders.
    Even with the RAA’s standardized rules, the problems of “crooks” in the business continued to flourish. Vi and Marg Brander learned this firsthand when they attended the World’s Championship Rodeo in Chicago in 1932.
    Marg later related, “Cowgirls from the North never had a chance. We drew our broncs the same as did the cowboys. The showy bucking horses that jumped high and bucked straight ahead always went to the southern girls. Northern cowgirls were allowed to win just enough to keep them riding for the nine days. [We] never got into the running for the championship money, even though the rodeo was billed as ‘competitive.’”
    Following this “fixed” rodeo, the sisters were nearly broke. Vi wanted to go on to Madison Square Garden, but Marg vetoed the idea, and they headed home to Montana in a Dodge roadster they had bought for $125 on the installment plan and just enough money for gas.
    This practice of a promoter bringing his own troupe of performers who ended up being the “winners” persisted. Cowboys accused Col. William T. Johnson—who had developed the successful Madison Square