✨ “Everyone knows that the conqueror writes his story.” – Louis Hook
✨ “I stood up. I told my son, ‘That’s not true.’ And from there, I started a research path.” – Louis Hook
Louis Hook is a founding member of the Compton Cowboys, the decades-old therapeutic riding program based in Compton, Los Angeles, and previously featured on Rupert’s Equine Assisted World podcast. He carries an MIT PhD program background and a Harvard Business School education, and for the last several years has redirected that analytical training toward an independent research project: documenting the African cavalry traditions written out of mainstream history. The catalyst was watching the film The Woman King and being stunned to see a Black cavalry on screen — a moment that sent him down a research path he is still on today.
Rupert brings his own family history into the conversation, including a 19th-century surcoat, chain mail, and sword taken from a Mahdist cavalryman at the Battle of Omdurman by his ancestor, George Spotswood Sparks. Together they trace the arc of African equestrian power — the Moors’ 800-year hold on southern Spain, Mansa Musa’s cavalry-protected gold empire in Mali, the Kanem-Bornu Empire and Sokoto Caliphate, and the horse cultures of the Sahel that, as Rupert notes, never went away and still produce true Barb horses in Senegal today.
From there the conversation moves to the American side of the story — the “brain drain” model of slavery that targeted skilled horsemen, blacksmiths, and rice farmers, and the land-grant gated-horse tradition of East Texas that Rupert witnessed firsthand. A wide-ranging, deeply researched conversation.
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What You’ll Learn in This Episode
00:01:44 – Rupert’s family connection to African horse cultures, sparked by a 19th-century surcoat and chain mail taken from a Mahdist cavalryman
00:07:23 – How watching The Woman King sent Louis on a research journey into Africa’s erased cavalry history
00:11:19 – The Moors’ 800-year conquest of southern Spain and their overlooked African identity
00:23:00 – Mansa Musa’s cavalry-protected gold empire, and Louis’s case that he ranks among history’s five greatest men
00:35:19 – Why true Barb horses survive today only in Senegal
00:37:43 – How the Catholic Church whitewashed Christian imagery and helped embed a racial hierarchy
00:53:29 – The “brain drain” model of slavery — how expert horsemen, blacksmiths, and rice farmers were targeted and bought at a premium
00:58:00 – The land-grant horse culture of East Texas, where freed slave families built a gated-horse tradition still alive today
01:13:29 – Louis and Rupert trace the likely African roots of dressage rising star Nashon Cook
01:30:04 – The “horses to heal, horses to harm” philosophy — how the same training system can wound or heal
Memorable Moments from the Episode
00:04:02 – Rupert describes the surcoat, chain mail, and sword hanging on his family’s wall, taken from a Mahdist cavalryman by his ancestor
00:09:36 – Louis recounts standing up in the theater during The Woman King and telling his son, “That’s not true”
01:00:13 – Rupert recalls roughly 200 Black riders on gated horses passing his Texas home, beer trucks blasting hip-hop
01:19:43 – Louis describes the emotional experience of visiting “The Last Bath,” the Ghanaian site where enslaved people were bathed before auction
01:34:38 – Louis walks through using AI to fact-check erased history, using the Benjamin Franklin slavery example
Guest Contact & Links
Louis Hook’s book, Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries to Modern Cowboys https://amzn.to/4htcuPf
Louis is a founding member of the Compton Cowboys, the Compton, Los Angeles-based therapeutic riding program also featured on Rupert’s Equine Assisted World podcast. https://educatedhoodrat.com
About Louis Hook
Louis Hook is a founding member of the Compton Cowboys, a therapeutic riding program serving Compton, Los Angeles for several decades. He brings an MIT PhD program background and a Harvard Business School education to his independent research into the African cavalry cultures erased from mainstream history. He is the author of Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries to Modern Cowboys, with a second volume in progress tracing his own ancestral roots to Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.
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