Charlie Sampson

CTL-E-6094 · Person · other · 1957–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07315 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6094.

Charles Osgood Sampson is an American former professional rodeo cowboy who specialized in bull riding. Born in Los Angeles, California, on July 2, 1957, he found horses as a boy through a stable near Gardena, where wranglers taught him to rope and ride, and he admired African American bull rider Myrtis Dightman. Sampson qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in 1981 and won the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champion bull rider title in 1982, becoming the first African American ever to win that PRCA title. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum notes that his win came eighteen years after Dightman first competed at the National Finals Rodeo. His career lasted almost twenty years, with repeated National Finals Rodeo trips, circuit championships, and severe injuries documented in contemporary reporting. He retired after the National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1994. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1996, received the Professional Bull Riders Ring of Honor in 2004, and was inducted into the Bull Riding Hall of Fame in 2019. In 2025 an inaugural rodeo bearing his name was staged in Norco, California.

The record

• Also known as: Charles Osgood Sampson, Charles Sampson

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Charlie Sampson entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6094 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 9 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1522). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black America canon first for this record — a Los Angeles-born national rodeo champion; Chicago link is indirect through Black Western heritage programming, so the PPL-001 placement is national, not Chicago-claimed. Vital status: Living — verified. No death report was found; a rodeo bearing his name was announced for June 28, 2025 in Norco, California (Cowboy Lifestyle Network, published 2025-05-14), and syndicated Los Angeles Times reporting dated April 22, 2025 described him at age 67 launching that rodeo and quoted him directly. STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Born July 2, 1957 (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16); qualified for NFR in 1981 and won the gold buckle in 1982 (National Cowboy Museum, accessed 2026-10-16); retired 1994, ProRodeo Hall of Fame 1996 (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16). CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: Wikipedia and Cowboy Lifestyle Network (2025) state 11 National Finals Rodeo trips/qualifications, while a Team Roping Journal profile found in search states he competed at 10 National Finals Rodeos between 1981-93 — the 11 figure is used in the description because two opened sources support it, and the 10 figure is retained here as an unresolved variance. MEDIA: photo HELD (Photograph captioned in search results as Sampson competing in the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in December 1982, credited Denver Post / Getty Images — specific image for a later PHOTO-001 pass to verify; no license claimed. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6094-charlie-sampson.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Referenced by

• Myrtis Dightman — collaborated with → this record

Sources

• National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, "Charlie Sampson - PBR Hall of Fame" (accessed 2026-10-16) — first African-American to win PRCA World Champion bull rider title; qualified NFR 1981, won gold buckle 1982; mentor Myrtis Dightman; started with horses at age 12 in Los Angeles — http://nationalcowboymuseum.org/collections/awards/pbr/honorees/charlie-sampson/ (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Charlie Sampson (bull rider)" (accessed 2026-10-16) — born July 2, 1957 in Los Angeles; full name Charles Osgood Sampson; retired 1994 in Pocatello; ProRodeo Hall of Fame 1996; 11 NFR trips; honors list to 2019 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Sampson_(bull_rider) (build store)
• Cowboy Lifestyle Network, "Feel the Grit, Witness the Legend: Charlie Sampson Open Rodeo" (published 2025-05-14, accessed 2026-10-16) — born and raised in Watts, Los Angeles; 1982 PRCA title; 11 NFR qualifications; ProRodeo Hall of Fame 1996 and Bull Riding Hall of Fame 2019; June 28, 2025 rodeo in Norco — https://cowboylifestylenetwork.com/charlie-sampson-open-rodeo-2025/ (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6094 · Combined Graph record U-07315 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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