The Hard Ride is an intimate look at black cowboys as they gather for a rodeo and dance on the 40 acre Circle 6 Ranch in Raywood, Texas (between Houston and Beaumont.) Black cowboys drive their horse trailers onto the ranch. A.J. Walker reveals that as many as four generations of cowboys are involved in this event. Before he and his father started this ranch fifty years ago, Walker himself had worked as a cowboy on white-owned ranches in this area of southeast Texas and because of the racial discrimination against black cowboys, he decided to start his own rodeo. In the film poignant stories and songs, as well as foodways, crafts, blues, zydeco, and cowboy poetry, evoke the unique ways this community has combined Anglo-European traditions with distinct African-American perspectives.