“He was a chameleon that fit into the Skid Row landscape like graffiti written on the wall.”

Cowboy, an older man who writer Lexis-Olivier Ray met on L.A.’s Skid Row, has lived a life worth recording in history books.

In “How a Cowboy Helped Me Learn L.A.’s Unwritten History,” Ray tells Cowboy’s story from being active in the civil rights movement to active duty in Vietnam and the history of Black housing in L.A.