The Night Was Clear and the Moon Was Yellow

"Stagolee is one such character, a 'bad man' who shot a man over, in various versions, a muddy glass of water, tainted meat, or a Stetson hat. Similarly, the character Bad Lazarus broke into a commissary counter and then 'He walked away, Lord, Lord, he walked away." In the 1890s, Railroad Bill was a 'mighty mean man' who 'shot the light out of a poor brakeman's hand,' then bought a pistol as long as his arm to 'shoot everybody ever done me harm.' Like the characters in the blaxploitation films of the 1970s, the bad men in post-Civil War black folklore were ciphers. Never fully described, they wore big hats, rode horses, and spoke with their pistols."

Scott Reynolds Nelson at The Chronicle of Higher Education places Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained into a tradition of American folklore.