Part of a century-long tradition of black cowboys and horsemanship in Philadelphia, local horsemen maintain and care for horses and teach neighborhood youth to do so.
The Fletcher Street club has stables in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of North Philadelphia, on the edge of Fairmount Park.
[1] Informal stables also existed throughout North and West Philadelphia and in Cobbs Creek Park, on private and abandoned city land.
Since 2015, the club has been a recognized federal nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, enabling it to accept tax-deductible donations, including its first title deed to a 7,500-square-foot piece of vacant land, and revive its fundraising efforts.
[12][13][14] The lot was donated to the organization by Good Bet Trading,[15] a local real estate company owned by Philadelphia native Adam Ehrlich.
[17] In April 2021, following the release of the Netflix movie based on them, Ellis Ferrell and the Fletcher Street Riding Club launched a fundraiser, so that support could flow into the real-life programs that Ferrell, his family, and the group's friends have largely self-funded for decades, despite external pressure, direct city government interference, and acquisition of their longtime property for housing construction.
[16] The Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club has been mentioned in NPR's This American Life (television version) and in regional equestrian magazines.
"[4] Another formal horsemanship program in Philadelphia for local teenagers is Work to Ride, based at Chamounix Equestrian Stables in Fairmount Park.
These include Horses in the Hood in Los Angeles and the Federation of Black Cowboys in Queens in New York City,[22][23] the subject of a 2003 film produced by Zachary Mortensen.