National Multicultural Western Heritage HOF to honor Watertown native

Lynn Hart has entertained nearly 1 million people as a rodeo bullfighter, changed South Dakota holidays and once held the goldfish swallowing world record.

Today, he will become the first South Dakotan ever inducted into the National Multicultural Western Heritage Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.

Now a resident of Flandreau, Hart is a community activist widely credited with being the person who in 1990 convinced the South Dakota Legislature to recognize Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday and for inspiring the legislature to rename Columbus Day to Native American Day.

Because of that action, on Jan. 13, 1992, Coretta Scott King, music legend Stevie Wonder and FBI Director William Sessions presented Hart with the National Making of King Holiday Award in Washington D.C.

In 2013, he was a personal guest of the King family at the 50th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream" Speech and March on Washington.

But it is his nearly 20-year career protecting rodeo bull riders from 2,000-pound bulls that led him to this hall of fame induction.

Fighting bulls was relatively easy compared to some of Hart’s challenges. He calls himself the “Bla-Indian of South Dakota – half Black, half Indian. I can play cowboys and Indians by myself. Not many people can say that.”

Orphaned three days after birth, he spent his first 10 years in a foster home before being adopted by his white parents, Jim and Lois Hart, who settled in Watertown.  

He struggled to fit into any of those three cultures, but he has blazed a notable trail powered primarily by his gregarious personality and infectious smile.

His first notable achievement was during summer 1977 when he swallowed 501 goldfish, earning him entry in "The Guinness Book of World Records."

“That’s where it all started,” he said. “I always had to do things twice as good because of the color of my skin.”

Following high school, he joined the Marines, earning a top-secret clearance and serving at one of our country’s more sensitive military posts.

He then began working on ranches out West and started riding bulls in the rodeo.

“I got hurt really bad at a rodeo in Valley City, N.D.,” and that ended his bull-riding career.

While attending a rodeo in Rapid City, the operator told him his rodeo clown, or bullfighter as they are called, did not show up.

He said, “Lynn, you go and jump out there."

So, he did, and a long career was born.

He became part of the Bill Pickets Invitational Rodeo and began traveling the country as part of the Black cowboy event.

“I’ve always enjoyed entertaining people,” he said. “I have always been a class clown.”

Staring down massive bulls is a frightening business, and Hart said he was afraid every time he went into the arena.

“I always wore baggy plants so people couldn’t see my knee knocks," he said.

Always the entertainer, Hart also acted as a stuntman in a variety of Hollywood movies, including "Buffalo Soldiers."

He portrayed York in the bicentennial recreation of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri River.

“I’m probably the first Black person to paddle and ride a horse up the Missouri into Montana in the last 200 years,” he said.

Although a funny man by nature, there is a serious side to Hart. He is a fierce advocate for Native Americans who he says are “a forgotten race of people who once, with pride in harmony, inhabited this land but today, unfortunately, are roaming out of sight and out of mind like the buffalo.”

A member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, Hart loves to talk about driving five hours through a blizzard to testify at a 1991 state legislative hearing on observing Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday. At the time, South Dakota was one of only four states that did not recognize it.

His emotional testimony did not sway the Republican-dominated committee who voted down the Democrat-introduced legislation. But Gov. George Mickelson was listening. Inspired by Hart’s sincerity, he urged the Legislature to reconsider.

It did and it not only made Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday but went one step further to rename Columbus Day.

“I walked in with nothing,” Hart said, “and I walked out with Martin Luther King Day and the first Native American Day in the United States.”

It also prompted Mickelson to support a measure that pledged 1990 as the Year of Reconciliation, which resulted in the opening of dialogue between Indians and non-Indians. Subsequently, Hart was honored by state representatives for his efforts.

Hart is proud of the key part he played in those events, but much remains to be done.

“I have never stood on a stage and couldn’t perform,” he said, and his next big performance will be his acceptance speech in Fort Worth.

“You make life what you want it to be,” he said. “I am still living a very blessed life.”