Burton heard stories of Reeves when he would visit relatives in Oklahoma, and he became determined to learn more. Reeves has that effect on people. Curiosity spikes at the mention of a Black lawman living by his rifle and his wits during Reconstruction. Reeves wasn’t the first or only Black marshal of the period, but he became the most famous.
Sidney Thompson caught the Reeves bug when he saw Morgan Freeman describing Reeves as his dream role in a TV interview. (It was widely reported last year that Freeman was developing his own Bass Reeves series, “Twin Territories,” for Amazon.) “I didn’t really know African Americans were even allowed to touch a gun in the 1800s,” said Thompson, who teaches creative writing and African American literature at Texas Christian University. Thompson — like Burton, like Freeman — became obsessed, and his obsession led him to write the trilogy of novels that became the basis for “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.”
For Jewel Coronel, who wrote the second episode of the season, the offer to help tell Reeves’s story was almost too good to be true. Coronel, who traces her family tree back to 17th-century Virginia, saw the series as an opportunity to honor her ancestors.
“For Black people, whenever we’re able to historically contextualize these largely hidden historical figures in the modern day, be it in mythology or reality, it’s inspiring,” she said in a video interview. “As a Black woman, being able to tell this story with Taylor Sheridan is a big deal. My ancestors would almost see that as handing me a badge.”
Throughout the process loomed the challenge of shaping fact and myth into a coherent whole. Though depictions of Reeves are more popular than ever — he was a supporting character, played by Delroy Lindo, in the 2021 Netflix western “The Harder They Fall,” and Jamal Akakpo portrayed him in HBO’s 2019 series “Watchmen” — he made his name at a time when Black westerners were often written out of history books. It seems telling that the series is based on a work of historical fiction, a genre that isn’t required to dot every “i” and cross every “t.”
Burton recalled trying to get information on Reeves from a historical society in Muskogee, Okla., the city where Reeves died, only to be told the organization did not keep records of Black people. Burton’s book is deeply researched, yet its most memorable lines ring like tall tales passed down through generations. (One interviewee told Burton that Reeves “could shoot the left hind leg off a contented fly sitting on a mule’s ear at a hundred yards and never ruffle a hair.”)
For Coronel, navigating the line between fact and fiction was part of the fun.
“It’s nice to have that breadth of unknown because it allowed us all to have a perspective,” she said. “I enjoy a little bit of unknown because you have to make it dramatic. You have to make it a little messy.”