Bones Hooks

Born in Robertson County in 1867, Hooks began his career as a cowboy and wrangler by driving a chuck wagon at the age of nine. Referring to himself as an "Angus among White Faces", he worked for area ranchers such as Charles Goodnight before becoming a porter for the Santa Fe Railroad in 1909.

He retired from the railroad in 1930 and devoted himself to civic affairs in Amarillo. He started the North Heights addition and created the Dogie Club for boys. While still working as a cowboy he founded the first African American church in the Texas Panhandle.

Hooks sent a single white carnation to funerals of every pioneer he knew, and also to noteworthy living persons such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Will Rogers. The responses he got from these flowers, along with other mementos and clippings, were displayed at the Texas Centennial in 1936 and the 75 Years of Negro Progress Exhibit in Detroit in 1940. He is the subject of WPA Oral History interviews and a book by Bruce G Todd, Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy.