Atlanta’s ‘Urban Horseman’ rides again
Erika Edwards stepped out of the restaurant and screamed.
It was her birthday, and while every bar along the Atlanta Beltline was glued to the SEC Championship Game, her attention was fixed on “Mexico,” a quarter horse in a bright red hood reading, “Brannuhorse.”
“Laissez les bons temps rouler. Let the good times roll. This feels like Mardi Gras,” she said, slipping into her best Cajun French, before climbing aboard Mexico.
Brandon “Brannu” Fulton steadied Edwards’ waist as she climbed atop Mexico.
A pair of restaurant workers scrambled to get their phones out to take photos. Behind them, Fulton noticed a young girl lingering at the edge of the crowd — eager but hesitant. He motioned her forward and lifted her into the saddle.
“It makes kids smile. I ride because of how it makes me feel, but it also makes other people feel good,” Fulton said later. “People come up to me and say, ‘Man, you made my day.’”
Scenes like this once made Fulton a minor Atlanta folk figure and, eventually, a flashpoint.
He became known as the “Urban Horseman,” a curiosity on the Beltline whose appearances drew cameras, complaints and, later, felony charges alleging neglect and animal cruelty.
Now that prosecutors have dropped those charges and a federal appeals court has revived his lawsuit over seven confiscated horses, Fulton is thinking bigger.
He talks about building a large horse farm in South Fulton with trail rides, lessons, nature programs and a full stable. In the meantime, he’s back on the city streets, even as his story shifts to a broader stage.
“Brannu: The Urban Horseman,” a feature-length documentary about his life and legal fight, has been showing in select theaters this fall as filmmakers pursue a streaming deal.
For the director, Adelin Gasana, capturing Fulton in motion was anchoring the man to the unlikely landscape that helped shape him.
“This isn’t some weekend cowboy aesthetic,” Gasana said. “It’s his whole life.”
Fulton’s path to that identity began long before he ever drew stares riding down an Atlanta street. He grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where his grandfather took him to the Jamaica Bay Riding Academy, planting the idea that he might one day own a horse.
But he found a different calling. He enrolled at Clark Atlanta University and built a reputation as a DJ.
He left CAU a few credits short of graduating with a public relations degree to tour with performers such as J-Kwon, Da Brat and Akon.
His mentor, Biz Markie, gave him the nickname “Brand New,” which evolved to “Brannu.”
Everything shifted during a concert tour stop in Mexico, when he rented a Paso Fino horse for the day.
The ride rekindled what he had felt as a boy around horses. When he returned to Atlanta, Fulton began rebuilding his life around that impulse.
He sold his DJ equipment and used the proceeds to buy his first horse, a brown-and-white Paint mare named Spinderella.
An older farmer in McDonough allowed Fulton to live in a stall on his property while caring for the horse.
Fulton stayed nearly a year without plumbing or heat, channeling his money into animals rather than housing.
He acquired more horses, led trail rides, gave lessons, and hauled them to birthday parties, church festivals and neighborhood events.
By 2011 and 2012, he had become a familiar figure in intown Atlanta as he rode through busy corridors.
That visibility brought scrutiny.
Animal-welfare advocates and city officials cited him repeatedly for how and where he kept his horses and for construction work he began on a rented property without permits.
In 2012, he faced charges in Atlanta Municipal Court for animal cruelty and permit violations. He entered a no-contest plea, paid fines and spent six months on probation.
But a more consequential battle emerged in 2016, after Fulton bought roughly 30 acres of raw land off Butner Road and Camp Creek Parkway in what was then unincorporated south Fulton County. He moved his horses there and began building a more permanent operation.
In July 2016, county police and animal-control officers raided the property, reporting four dead horses and others they described as malnourished. Fulton, who insisted some carcasses predated his arrival, was arrested on aggravated animal-cruelty charges and released on a $75,000 bond that required him to surrender all seven horses.
“They never had a video of me beating a horse or starving a horse,” Fulton said. “When you look at the pictures from that day, you see grass, 100-gallon water troughs, brand-new wood and fencing going up.”
Two years later, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges after lab tests from the dead horses failed to determine a cause of death.
But Fulton never saw the seven horses — including at least one mare he says was worth at least $35,000 — again.
Fulton filed a federal lawsuit against Fulton County, arguing the government had effectively taken his property without compensation.
A federal judge initially sided with the county, but in August, the 11th Circuit for the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that view, concluding that property owners can bring claims directly when governments seize property without compensation.
The ruling revived Fulton’s lawsuit and positioned his long-running dispute over his seven horses as a potential test of how far the courts will let citizens pursue claims.
His story caught the attention of filmmakers who thought it should be told.
“This is a biographical film about Brandon, but the microcosm is his ranch and the macrocosm is gentrification, land rights, and government power,” Gasana said. “We’re talking about what happens when a Black man’s vision for his own land doesn’t align with the blueprint of county officials.”
Producer Julia Griggs met Fulton on the Beltline in 2022 for what she assumed would be a short television feature.
“I asked, ‘Who is this man? What is his vision? What really happened to those horses?’” Griggs said. “I knew it was bigger than a news package. That’s when I called (filmmaker) Adelin and said, ‘This could be a feature film.’”
Gasana, who also wrote and directed “Bo Legs: Marvin Arrington, Sr., An Atlanta Story,” about the former Fulton County judge and political figure, agreed.
“We could’ve made a political hit piece calling out every prosecutor and judge,” he said. “Instead, we wanted an inspirational story where people watch and say, ‘I want this brother to win.’ He’s been living off the land, off the grid, for nearly a decade, taking all the slings and arrows and still refusing to leave.”
At the entrance to Fulton’s farm, tattered letters spell out “BK” — a nod both to his Brooklyn roots and to what he calls Believe Kingdom, the 28-acre stretch he has carved out along Camp Creek.
Looking over the land, Fulton is reminded of a line commonly attributed to James Baldwin: “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”
This suits the landscape.
On a cold, wet week, with rain turning the ground to mud, it takes imagination to picture a working horse farm here. His caiman boots are caked, and his jacket carries flecks of alfalfa from the morning feeding.
“I don’t care about the esthetics,” he said. “Just look at my interactions and how I treat my horses. Not how my field looks.”
For the past decade, Fulton has been clearing this land himself — chopping down trees, hauling stumps, digging up roots.
Piles of dirt and logs sit everywhere, and supplies are stored in shipping containers.
Two ramshackle sheds stand at opposite ends — one with running water that he uses to bathe, the other damaged when a tree fell — but Fulton prefers sleeping in his truck, a habit he concedes is difficult on cold winter nights.
Fulton doesn’t eat much, has no major bills and lives off the small income he receives from giving trail rides on his property and making appearances at parties and events.
“He doesn’t really have any bills and lives off what he has. He lives on the land,” Gasana said. “He doesn’t live like you and me. He doesn’t believe in capitalism or material things. He is engrossed in freedom.”
Five horses — Mexico, Soul, B-Nice, Brooklyn and Earth — graze and wander freely, though they spend part of the day in their pen.
A sixth horse, Classic, newly arrived from New Mexico, is tied to a tree until he acclimates. Occasionally, the others drift over to sniff him and say hello.
As he walks the property, Fulton narrates what he imagines: a fenced area with a barbecue pit and picnic tables, a nature center and a race track with a small clubhouse.
When or how any of it will be funded remains unclear.
“I’m walking into this day to day without a budget,” he said. “I paid way more for this property than what it was worth. But I saw the future of what it could be.”
The land is raw and the work grueling, but Fulton insists he is accustomed to difficult terrain.
“It is rough, but I am mentally prepared because I come from the hood,” he said, his Brooklyn accent sharpening. “I have had people offer me things, but I refuse because I know what they do. That is when it becomes more of a business than a lifestyle, and I don’t want to owe nobody nothing.”
Believe Kingdom, he said, is not only a project but a refuge.
“Sitting out here did a lot of healing for me,” he said. “I am not trying to get rich. I’ll just sit here until the next blessing comes.”
Which is why the contrast feels almost cinematic when he rides toward the Beltline — a solitary horseman emerging from the mud into the city’s evening buzz.
The trip can take more than three hours.
Fulton dresses for it: chaps over his jeans, clean boots, a Western shearling duster, a red scarf, a blade of grass in his mouth and a cowboy hat.
He says he rides into the city mostly for the food.
At the Inman Park Bartaco, he hops off Mexico for a quick meal while the staff rushes out to greet the horse.
“He brings a vibe when he comes,” said Michael Dubit, the restaurant’s assistant general manager. “People love to pet his horses. This is a great way to bring the community together.”
As night falls and the temperature drops, Fulton prepares for the long ride home.
But leaving the Beltline is its own slow procession. It takes him nearly an hour to get off the trail because he stops for every child, birthday girl, pet and photo request.
“Sometimes I just have to get out of my environment and clear the clutter,” he said. “And at the end of all this, if I could just be recognized as the face that made it possible for kids in Fulton County — or anywhere in Georgia — to have a place to ride, that’d be enough.”
About the Author
Ernie Suggs is an enterprise reporter covering race and culture for the AJC since 1997. A 1990 graduate of N.C. Central University and a 2009 Harvard University Nieman Fellow, he is also the former vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists. His obsession with Prince, Spike Lee movies, Hamilton and the New York Yankees is odd.
