The Injustice Never Leaves You
The Injustice Never Leaves You

Author: Monica Muñoz Martinez

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0674989384

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Winner of the Caughey Western History Prize Winner of the Robert G. Athearn Award Winner of the Lawrence W. Levine Award Winner of the TCU Texas Book Award Winner of the NACCS Tejas Foco Nonfiction Book Award Winner of the María Elena Martínez Prize Frederick Jackson Turner Award Finalist “A page-turner...Haunting...Bravely and convincingly urges us to think differently about Texas’s past.” —Texas Monthly Between 1910 and 1920, self-appointed protectors of the Texas–Mexico border—including members of the famed Texas Rangers—murdered hundreds of ethnic Mexicans living in Texas, many of whom were American citizens. Operating in remote rural areas, officers and vigilantes knew they could hang, shoot, burn, and beat victims to death without scrutiny. A culture of impunity prevailed. The abuses were so pervasive that in 1919 the Texas legislature investigated the charges and uncovered a clear pattern of state crime. Records of the proceedings were soon filed away as the Ranger myth flourished. A groundbreaking work of historical reconstruction, The Injustice Never Leaves You has upended Texas’s sense of its own history. A timely reminder of the dark side of American justice, it is a riveting story of race, power, and prejudice on the border. “It’s an apt moment for this book’s hard lessons...to go mainstream.” —Texas Observer “A reminder that government brutality on the border is nothing new.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Cult of Glory
Cult of Glory

Author: Doug J. Swanson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1101979879

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“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.

The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution
The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution

Author: Charles Houston Harris

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 692

ISBN-13: 9780826334848

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The authors document the secret role of the Mexican president in the insurgency against Anglos during the Mexican Revolution and the Texas Rangers' role in ending the uprising.

The Mexican American Experience in Texas
The Mexican American Experience in Texas

Author: Martha Menchaca

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1477324372

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A historical overview of Mexican Americans' social and economic experiences in Texas For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, this book illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience. Martha Menchaca begins with the Spanish settlement of Texas, exploring how Mexican Americans’ racial heritage limited their incorporation into society after the territory’s annexation. She then illustrates their political struggles in the nineteenth century as they tried to assert their legal rights of citizenship and retain possession of their land, and goes on to explore their fight, in the twentieth century, against educational segregation, jury exclusion, and housing covenants. It was only in 1967, she shows, that the collective pressure placed on the state government by Mexican American and African American activists led to the beginning of desegregation. Menchaca concludes with a look at the crucial roles that Mexican Americans have played in national politics, education, philanthropy, and culture, while acknowledging the important work remaining to be done in the struggle for equality.

The Texas Rangers
The Texas Rangers

Author: Chuck Parsons

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738579825

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The Texas Rangers. The words evoke exciting images of daring, courage, high adventure. The Rangers began as a handful of men protecting their homes from savage raiding parties; now in their third century of existence, they are a highly sophisticated crime-fighting organization. Yet at times even today the Texas Ranger mounts his horse to track fugitives through dense chaparral, depending on his wits more than technology. The iconic image of the Texas Ranger is of a man who is tall, unflinching, and dedicated to doing a difficult job no matter what the odds. The Rangers of the 21st century are different sizes, colors, and genders, but remain as vital and real today as when they were created in the horseback days of 1823, when what is today Texas was part of Mexico, a wild and untamed land.

Revolution in Texas
Revolution in Texas

Author: Benjamin Heber Johnson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780300094251

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In Revolution in Texas, Benjamin Johnson tells the little-known story of one of the most intense and protracted episodes of racial violence in United States history. In 1915, against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, the uprising that would become known as the Plan de San Diego began with a series of raids by ethnic Mexicans on ranches and railroads. Local violence quickly erupted into a regional rebellion. In response, vigilante groups and the Texas Rangers staged an even bloodier counterinsurgency, culminating in forcible relocations and mass executions. eventually collapsed. But, as Johnson demonstrates, the rebellion resonated for decades in American history. Convinced of the futility of using force to protect themselves against racial discrimination and economic oppression, many Mexican Americans elected to seek protection as American citizens with equal access to rights and protections under the US Constitution.

War Along the Border
War Along the Border

Author: Arnoldo De León

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781603445245

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Scholars contributing to this volume consider topics ranging from the effects of the Mexican Revolution on Tejano and African American communities to its impact on Texas' economy and agriculture. Other essays consider the ways that Mexican Americans north of the border affected the course of the revolution itself.

Texas Devils
Texas Devils

Author: Michael L. Collins

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-11-09

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0806185422

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The Texas Rangers have been the source of tall tales and the stuff of legend as well as a growing darker reputation. But the story of the Rangers along the Mexican border between Texas statehood and the onset of the Civil War has been largely overlooked—until now. This engaging history pulls readers back to a chaotic time along the lower Rio Grande in the mid-nineteenth century. Texas Devils challenges the time-honored image of “good guys in white hats” to reveal the more complicated and sobering reality behind the Ranger Myth. Michael L. Collins demonstrates that, rather than bringing peace to the region, the Texas Rangers contributed to the violence and were often brutal in their injustices against Spanish-speaking inhabitants, who dubbed them los diablos Tejanos—the Texas devils. Collins goes beyond other, more laudatory Ranger histories to focus on the origins of the legend, casting Ranger immortals such as John Coffee “Jack” Hays, Ben McCulloch, and John S. “Rip” Ford in a new and not always flattering light. In revealing a barbaric code of conduct on the Rio Grande frontier, Collins shows that much of the Ranger Myth doesn’t hold up to close historical scrutiny. Texas Devils offers exciting true stories of the Rangers for anyone captivated by their legend, even as it provides a corrective to that legend.

Riding for the Lone Star
Riding for the Lone Star

Author: Nathan A. Jennings

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2016-02-15

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1574416359

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The idea of Texas was forged in the crucible of frontier warfare between 1822 and 1865, when Anglo-Americans adapted to mounted combat north of the Rio Grande. This cavalry-centric arena, which had long been the domain of Plains Indians and the Spanish Empire, compelled an adaptive martial tradition that shaped early Lone Star society. Beginning with initial tactical innovation in Spanish Tejas and culminating with massive mobilization for the Civil War, Texas society developed a distinctive way of war defined by armed horsemanship, volunteer militancy, and short-term mobilization as it grappled with both tribal and international opponents. Drawing upon military reports, participants' memoirs, and government documents, cavalry officer Nathan A. Jennings analyzes the evolution of Texan militarism from tribal clashes of colonial Tejas, territorial wars of the Texas Republic, the Mexican-American War, border conflicts of antebellum Texas, and the cataclysmic Civil War. In each conflict Texan volunteers answered the call to arms with marked enthusiasm for mounted combat. Riding for the Lone Star explores this societal passion--with emphasis on the historic rise of the Texas Rangers--through unflinching examination of territorial competition with Comanches, Mexicans, and Unionists. Even as statesmen Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston emerged as influential strategic leaders, captains like Edward Burleson, John Coffee Hays, and John Salmon Ford attained fame for tactical success.

The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands
The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands

Author: Nicholas Villanueva Jr.

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2017-06-15

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 082635839X

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More than just a civil war, the Mexican Revolution in 1910 triggered hostilities along the border between Mexico and the United States. In particular, the decade following the revolution saw a dramatic rise in the lynching of ethnic Mexicans in Texas. This book argues that ethnic and racial tension brought on by the fighting in the borderland made Anglo-Texans feel justified in their violent actions against Mexicans. They were able to use the legal system to their advantage, and their actions often went unpunished. Villanueva’s work further differentiates the borderland lynching of ethnic Mexicans from the Southern lynching of African Americans by asserting that the former was about citizenship and sovereignty, as many victims’ families had resources to investigate the crimes and thereby place the incidents on an international stage.