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Brianna Noble knew the impact her image could have.

When the 25-year-old equestrian and business owner parked her car and horse trailer at Lake Merritt, then made her way in downtown Oakland on May 29 to protest the killing of George Floyd, she had a plan.

“It’s not too often you see a black woman on a horse in Oakland,” said Noble, who lives in Pinole and is “Bri” to her friends. “I’m huge on a horse. I decided I’m going to give them something to look at.”

Noble was frustrated with how she felt the protests were being covered. Too often she thought that reporting on property destruction pulled attention away from the reason for the protests, the killings of people of color by police. If they turn their cameras toward her, she thought, maybe she could create a different narrative.

“I’d thought maybe in my community I’d inspire some change,” said Noble. “I didn’t realize it would get this big a reaction, that people from Kenya, Australia and Ireland would be reaching out.”

Brianna Noble rides her horse Dapper Dan through Downtown Oakland on Friday joining a protest over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

Photographed for @KQEDnews pic.twitter.com/oXmxJNWkux

— Beth LaBerge (@bethlaberge) June 1, 2020

The images and videos attracted wide attention in what they presented: A woman of color riding a horse, her fist raised in the air and a cardboard Black Lives Matter sign attached to the saddle bag. She sits tall on Dapper Dan, her large Appaloosa gelding. She even wears a Western style bandanna as a face mask, conjuring images of Lone Ranger-type characters.

From 6 to 8 p.m., Noble rode with her sign, including a moment when she says protesters naturally gathered behind her as though she was leading the crowd, creating an image that evoked classical scenes and historic figures.

“Who is this iconic queen?” user @canteven asked on Twitter.

What makes the image of Noble so powerful is not just the heroic archetypes it references, said Kwadwo Duane Deterville, a black visual culture scholar and faculty member at San Francisco State University, it’s who is now occupying the trope.

“To see a black woman on horseback like that is the opposite end of the spectrum of the codified white man on horseback, the John Wayne image we see in Westerns,” said Deterville. “That’s one of the things that makes it significant, to see a black woman sitting in a seat of power is an image reserved for white men.” With one of the goals of the protests being a reframing of how America sees black people, it’s a visage that is a deeply effective symbol.

It’s not just that images on horseback are traditionally associated in Western culture with white men, the world of horses and equestrian sport are also heavily white, affluent spaces that frequently feel off- limits to people of color, said Deterville, even though he says organizations like the Oakland Black Cowboy Association have existed for decades.

Noble is still processing how the pictures of her break the “white conqueror” image she saw depicted in her history textbooks growing up. In addition to her race and gender changing the iconography, those white men on horseback were leading armies in their pictures, said Noble, not riding at the head of a social justice protest. The community has already embraced this image: A new mural outside of Luka’s Taproom in Uptown Oakland features Noble and Dapper Dan prominently.

Noble doesn’t remember a time in her life without horses. Her older sister was already involved with the horse world when Noble was born and both girls grew up training at Skyline Barns in Oakland, says Noble’s mother, Michelle. At first Brianna resisted following her sister into riding, but her love of animals eventually extended to horses and she was hooked. Michelle and Gary Noble moved their family to San Leandro when Brianna was born. Michelle Noble describes the family as blue-collar during their girls’ childhood, not like the doctors and lawyers who were the parents of other girls at Skyline Barns.

“I always told my girls, our name is Noble but we’re not royalty,” said Michelle Noble. “We don’t have a royal budget for horses.”

Both Brianna and her sister worked at the barn to help pay for lessons.

Michelle Noble said that even with their accomplishments in horsemanship and jumping, there were times when her children felt excluded or like they stood out in the horse world growing up.

“Even recently, someone said to Brianna, ‘I didn’t know black people rode horses,’ ” said Michelle Noble. “I could tell you stories, that stuff is deep and real, both my kids have had to deal with it. In the horse world that they’ve been exposed to, it’s just a microcosm of larger societal challenges.”

“It’s a very white world,” said Brianna Noble. “It can be a hostile, racist place to be.”

When Brianna Noble was 16, she left the Oakland School for the Arts to start junior college courses in veterinary technology. At 16, she also raised the funds to acquire and house her first horse, Starlight, whom she still has today.

In 2018, Brianna Noble started Mulatto Meadows, her business that trains and sells horses as well as offering riding lessons. She said that making the benefits of riding available to low-income students and people of color is part of her longtime plan and she’s working toward establishing an equine education nonprofit, Humble.

“I want to see more people of color in a white world,” said Brianna, who also wants to be the first black woman to jump horses at the Olympics. “It’s so expensive to keep and ride a horse; this image (from the protest) shows how life-changing a horse can be.”

Brianna Noble, the mother of a 3-year-old with her husband, Adolfo, has launched a Go Fund Me campaign for Humble, which she hopes will be aided by the popularity of the protest images. Part of Humble’s model will be doing events where horses are brought into communities of color. Last year, she and her sister brought Dapper Dan to the Sunnydale neighborhood in San Francisco to meet local children. Her sister, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, asked not to be named in this story, but said she reacted positively to the photos of her sister. Brianna Noble doesn’t believe that she and her sister are on the opposite sides of the protests.

“To me it’s furthering the movement to have a black woman who wants to see change happen and things done correctly in the system,” she said. “I think that might be a big reason she’s a police officer.”

Michelle Noble said that as black women especially, careers in the police force and in the horse world seemed not only difficult to attain, but possibly dangerous for her children.

“I’m over the moon proud of both my daughters because they followed their dreams despite it not being practical,” she said. “I have strong emotions because on one hand you have a systemically racist organization like the police with gender bias that my daughter wants to work for. Then you have Brianna, who has always been a social activist — since she was a little girl, she stood up for the underdog and marginalized.”

While the two sides might seem to conflict, Michelle Noble sees evidence that they can work together, as the impression Brianna made at the protest shows. She said if anyone can ride the popularity of the image to lasting visibility, “it’s Brianna.”

Whether the image of Noble on horseback becomes one that defines Oakland during the time of the George Floyd protests remains to be seen, said Deterville. For Michelle Noble, the impact of the photo is more immediate.

“It often goes back to feeling like we’re not allowed, like it’s not practical for black and brown youth to dream,” she said. “They can’t dream, they’re just trying to survive. It really gives me hope that there is some little girl that’s going to see that picture and say, ‘I’m going to do it, I see Brianna, an image like me, maybe I can do this too.’”

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