Scotland yard, canadian police, the fbi, that sort of thing. They have been around longer than any state Law Enforcement organization in the United States. And they have this worldwide image. That is what i am going to explore a little bit tonight. How they got this image, what this image is, but i think we all have some idea of what a texas ranger is. Maybe from tvs and movies, if nothing else. That was my first exposure to the rangers. Growing up in florida, i watched this disney show called texas john slaughter. Some of you may have seen that. The theme song was texas john slaughter, made them do what they outta, because if they didnt, they would die. The lone ranger may be the most famous cinematic and tv, radio rangers that started in 1933. Out of wxyz in detroit. The script was originally called the war on lester man hunter. But then they changed it to lone ranger. We would still be talking about it today. The rangers have been in hundreds of movies. There have been hundreds of books written about them, hundreds of magazine and newspaper stories. That is how the image was built. I will go into that a little more. First, i want to get a brief history of the rangers. And then talk about why the Texas Rangers have residence and residents and a place in a conversation were having now nationally about Police Brutality and approaches to history and all this taking down of the confederate monuments. The rangers have a place in that too. I will try to toggle to vintage photos. This is the first time i have done this. If i mess up, im sorry. I have my Technical Assistant and my lovely wife to help me if we mess up. I will try to pull of photos and do a slideshow. Slidephotos and do a show. I hope everybody is seeing that. This is lone wolf gonzalez. A famous texas ranger in the 1930s, 19 40s, and 1950s. 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. He was a sharp dresser. He has the custom boots. The lone wolf was, by all accounts, a good ranger. There are many rangers who were heroic, upright honorable, courageous, valorous individuals who formed a Public Service in texas. Whether you agree or not, whether the anglos should have settled texas, setting that aside, texas would not be texas without the rangers. They were a valuable force starting in 1823. We have to say there were many terrific people who rangers continue to be. I dont want this to be seen as an attack on the rangers, but i want to get behind the myth of the rangers themselves. Lone wolf gonzales gives us a good example. Because he was a good ranger up ranger, but concerned with his public image. There was a saying, i know you heard this applied to other politicians, that there was no more dangerous place in texas than lone wolf gonzales. When he finished being a ranger he rode off to hollywood and became a tv show consultant. He put forth his own public image. It was said that he killed 75 ranchers. That was not true. He never disabused anyone of that. He claimed to be descended from spanish royalty. That was not true, either. He claimed to have fought in the mexican army as a mexican soldier, that was not true. One time, a reporter was hanging out with him, and they ended up spending the night together in a hotel. I dont mean to imply there was anything strange going on, there was no other rooms in the town where they work. The reporter woke up that morning and saw the loma lone wolf shaving with his towel on on andhat and boots nothing else. The lone wolf explained that is what he did every morning. Put on his hat and his boots. That was lone wolf. The first rangers came together in april in 1823 when the first anglo settlers came into texas. Stephen f austin led the first anglo texans. That is him in the center of this painting that comes from the library of congress. What he is doing is urging settlers to go out and kill the indians. They were a coastal tribe who had been in texas for thousands of years, but they were very large, very muscular, very tall, they smeared alligator grease on themselves to keep the mosquitoes off them. They put rattlesnake rattlers in their hair and were said to be cannibals. First time he saw them, he recorded in his journal these people must be exterminated. What he is doing is urging settlers to exterminate these indians. The first 10 rangers, they were not formerly recognized by any government. They were formed in 1823 to protect settlers against the indians. Was one texas was still a part of mexico. This was when texas was still a part of mexico. They did not do any fighting and they ran out of ammunition and food and returned to their day jobs. That was the beginning of the rangers. 197 years ago. And eventually, they were exterminated in about 10 years. They could not put up much of a fight. They did not have the ammunition or population to fight the settlers and they were long gone. Texas became an independent republic in 1836. Soon, they had to fight the comanches. The comanches from 1750 to 1850, they were the most powerful indian tribe in north america. That is because they were the greatest horsemen in north america. This is a painting of comanche horsemen. They were very clumsy on foot. They were short, werent very much good at anything. But when they got the horse, people who would see them, white men would see them and say it was like watching a thin tar a centaur. It was one beast, comanche and horse. What the comanches could do was have a little strap that they rolled onto with their foot and they would lean down beneath the neck of the horse and fire their arrows. They can fire up to 30 hours in a minute. So the anglo settlers and the rangers were using a single shot pistols and muskets. They would fire and have to reload. In that minute it took them to reload, the comanches would fill them with arrows. It was not an easy fight. An even fight. The comanches were called lords of the plains. They ruled the planes from colorado into texas for these many years. Jack was a ranger captain. Jack had a Ranger Company that was one of the First Companies in the American West to use the revolving pistol. It was a five shot pistol that samuel colt developed and then went broke. But jack hayes and his company of rangers got hold of them and used them to fight the comanches. Thats when the tide turned. No longer could the comanches wait for the rangers and others to fire their oneshot and have to reload. That began to turn the tide. Jack hayes is seen as one of the great ranger captains of all times. He was brave, he was fierce, he was a terrific tactician, any also led some companies in the mexican war. The mexican war was in 1846. The u. S. Invaded mexico, and the rangers went and joined the army to fight against mexico. They were, at that time, army soldiers. But they stayed to themselves, they did not dress as army soldiers. They stayed dressed as rangers. Read you a brief passage from a book by a new englander called my confessions. Its a terrific book. He was from New Hampshire and boston, and he encountered the rangers in the mexican war. He wrote, the rangers were the scouts of our army and a more reckless, the devil may care it would be impossible to find this side of the region, shirts black with grease and blood. Some wore red shirts, their trousers thrust into their high boots. All were armed with revolvers and bowie knives. Together with their bearded faces, lean and form and swaggering manners, they were fit representatives of the outlaws that made up the populations of the lone star state. Here is where the rangers made their reputation. The mexican war had a number of war correspondents recording what had happened. They were enamored by the rangers. They saved a lot of american lives. They kept american soldiers from ambushes. They fought guerrilla warfare very effectively. They were extraordinarily valuable to the u. S. Army. At the same time, they were noted for their atrocities. They took prisoners and they killed them. They often wiped out the civilians in villages for no reason except revenge. And ulysses s. Grant, a later president who was then a lieutenant in the mexican war, wrote a letter to his wife to be. He wrote, about all of the texans seem to pick it perfectly right to impose upon a city of a conquered city to any extent, even to murder them where the act could be covered by the dark. How much they seemed to enjoy acts of violence. Texas rangers in the mexican war came to be known as los diablos tehanos. Tejanos. The texas devils. They wore that as a badge of pride. The mexicans feared the rangers because of their fighting ability and rangers because they and their atrocities. Here is an engraving that shows Samuel Walker on the horse, one of the most famous Texas Rangers fighting in the mexican war. This is the death of Samuel Walker in a village in mexico near the end of the war. That is not how he died, he was shot. It was a traumatic rendering of him being pierced with a lamp. Walker was one of the more vilified rangers. He was instrumental in perfecting the colt revolver into a six shooter. It became the gun that won the west. Samuel walker was a pioneer in that regard. He visited a cult and helped him work on this new gun. Colt and helped him work on this new gun. Texas is a pro state. Its before the civil war, its the 1860s. This is a cartoon that ran in harpers magazine called young texas in repose. The figure on top is texas with the scars, sharp teeth and the knife. He is sitting on a slave, who has been whipped, stabbed, shackled and abused. Texas was a slave state before the war. Texas ordered mexico and the underground railroad in texas ran self to mexico. If you were a slave and wanted to escape, you probably ran to mexico. Once you got across the rio grande, you were free, because slavery was illegal in mexico at the time. The rangers, in some cases, had slave hunting expeditions into mexico. They would go in, try to seize the slaves, bring the back across the border, and sell them in texas. Hence, this cartoon. Rangers did a lot of valuable things. They captured this outlaw, John Wesley Hardin, one of the great gunslingers of the old west. Here is John Wesley Hardin as a dead man. The rangers did not kill him, they put him in prison, where he learned to become a lawyer. He got out and practiced law and was shot to death in el paso by either a dissatisfied client or a lover. No one is quite sure. The rangers were in sure mental in capturing a number of bad guys, including hardin. Lets move to the 20th century. 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915 on the new mexico border, the Rio Grande Valley in texas. This is a post card at the time. The men on horseback and rangers. The men on the ground are dead mexican bandits. The rangers were sent to sell texas at the time because the border was in place of was a place of great violence and of people. And upheaval. There was a revolution going on in mexico. At the same time, there was a land boom going on in texas. So the rangers were sent to keep the peace. What did that mean . It meant that the rangers, depending upon your source, killed hundreds, maybe thousands of mexicans and mexican americans, including these for here. Four here. Some of them were bad guys, some of them were abandoneds. Many of them, hundreds of them were only mexicans are mexicanamericans who lived on land that the white people wanted. So they sent the rangers into force them off the land. Sometimes that meant scaring them, burning them out, sometimes that meant killing them. Rangers were known at the time as common man killers. They operated death squads. They had a list of people that the anglo powerful wanted dead, so they killed them. The rangers became as feared by mexicanamericans along the border as the kkk was feared in the deep south by black people. They were a terror to these people. Now to the anglo powerbrokers who want this land, they were a godsend. It depended on which side you are on. Were on. This is where the rangers got their reputation as a force of death along the mexican border. That is a reputation that has been impossible for them to shake. We will talk a little bit more about that when we get to the end. Here is a Ranger Company around the turnofthecentury. Well armed with the texas flag flying in the background. Later, in the early 20th century, there were 450 lynchings in texas. From 1885 to 1930. Most of them, of black men. Some of them, hispanic men and women. In 1919, which was known as the red summer because of racial violence, Texas Rangers conspired with Police Chiefs and sheriffs in texas at the governors order to quash the civil rights of black people. They conspired to keep them from voting. They conspired to keep them from meeting to pursue their civil rights. They blocked their mail. They instructed local gunshot Gun Shop Owners not to sell them weapons. They infiltrated their meetings. It was all aimed at keeping black citizens of texas from exercising their civil rights. This picture is from 1930. In sherman, texas. The black man is in shackles and is named George Hughes. He was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. So, he went to trial. This is him being led to the courthouse, from the jail to the courthouse, for the first day of his trial for assault. The rangers were brought in to protect him. Four rangers. You may have heard the slogan one ranger, one riot. This was supposedly said by a ranger who showed up one day where there was a riot going on in the local Law Enforcement and the local Law Enforcement official said there is only one of you and the ranger allegedly said, you only have one riot. That never happened. There are a number of statues, signs, and monuments around texas that have the slogan, one riot, one ranger. Here is what happened. George smith is on trial for assaulting a white woman. First day of trial for rangers are there to protect him. This is insurance, texas. This is in sherman, texas. A farm town north of dallas. A mob formed outside the courthouse. A mob of white people. They decided to storm the courthouse to get George Hughes. They got to the second floor, which is where the trial was taking place. The rangers fired some shotgun shots at them and the mob are the mob retreated. The rangers thought they had it fixed. But then the mob set fire to the courthouse. The rangers locked George Hughes vault on the second floor to try to protect him. The courthouse was ablaze. The rangers climbed out the second floor window of the courthouse. Got in a car and left town. The mob waited for the fire to burn out. They got George Hughes out from the vault, through his body out threw his body out the second floor window, drag it through the streets behind a car and hoisted it from a tree limb on a noose in the black part of town and set it on fire. That was your one riot, one ranger. This is indicative of the rangers problematic history with race. Here is one of the best examples. The man leaning up the tree is a ranger named j. Banks. He was sent to a town called mansfield, texas, which is between dallas and fort worth. The naacp, after brown v. Board of education was to integrate texas schools. Wanted to integrate texas schools. Which were all white. And they chose mansfield as the place to start. This is mansfield high school. They arrived with a court order, ordering local officials to enroll black students. So the governor sent in the rangers to keep the peace. I know you have all seen pictures, and maybe like me youre old enough to remember in places like arkansas and mississippi, federal troops in the National Guard were deployed and the National Guard were deployed to make sure that black students could enroll. We have seen the photographs and the famous Norman Rockwell painting of a black student being led past speeding and yelling mobs to enroll in school. The rangers were there to keep black children out of the school. You see there is a figure hanging from a noose. That is a black figure hanging in effigy over the school. A mob formed outside the school carrying a sign that said black children must die. Kill all blacks. It did not say blacks, you can imagine what it said. The rangers, under the governors orders, were ordered to prohibit black students from enrolling. They sided with the mob. J. Banks, because of that, here in mansfield and a week later in texarkana, texas, because of this photograph, which circulated worldwide, became the face of the opposition to integration in texas. This photograph ran in newspapers all across the country. A couple more things to talk about, and then we will deal with the rangers in general. This is captain, alfred ali, who is a distinguished ranger in south texas. He was one of the toughest rangers ever. How do i know he was one of the toughest ever . When a texas firemen patrol wrote his wife a traffic ticket for a burnt out tail light, he went in and he said his wife was lying, so he pistol whipped the highway patrolman. He would pistol whip or slap you. That was how he handled people he did not like. In 1967, there was a farm workers strike. They were hispanic and paid maybe . 50 an hour to pick melons. They lived in shacks. They had no medical care. To get water, they had to bend down and drink the puddles from the ground. So, they were aligning themselves with cesar chavez forces out of california. The melon growers asked them to bring in the rangers. He did. They broke the strike by harassing the strikebreakers by beating them, by arresting them for no reason. By holding their faces inches from speeding freight trains that were barreling through town. And they were successful. The rangers were strikebreakers in many cases. They broke steelworkers strikes, coal miners strikes. They even at one point broke a cowboy strike up in the panhandle of texas. This is one of the most famous in 1967 led by the captain. And later, in several courts and the Supreme Court and findings from the civil rights commissions censored him. In his defense, he was just a man out of his past. He once said these doggone civil rights is the dammed thing i ever heard of. When he retired, he was hailed as one of the greatest ranch captains ever. He settled back in his hometown of south texas. One day, he went to the store to buy a jug of water.