Speaker 1: Texas Monthly. I want to tell you the story of
Speaker 1: a cover up, one that lasted almost sixty years, and
Speaker 1: the guy who exposed it and.
Speaker 2: Actually kind of happenstance. I was looking for something else,
Speaker 2: and that's frequently the way it is when you're doing
Speaker 2: archival work. You stumble upon something that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 1: That's James Sandos in nineteen seventy five. He was back
Speaker 1: from Vietnam and he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley.
Speaker 1: He was researching cross border raids by Mexican revolutionaries in
Speaker 1: the nineteen tens, and at the National Archives he'd seen
Speaker 1: a report on the Texas Rangers role on the border.
Speaker 1: It was a transcript of hearings at the Texas Capitol,
Speaker 1: split into three folios, but the third folio was missing.
Speaker 2: And the one that was missing seemed to have all
Speaker 2: the information about out ranger activity. Why isn't it there?
Speaker 1: James thought that the complete report might still be in Austin,
Speaker 1: so he went to take a look in the middle
Speaker 1: of what was still a sleepy college town. The Texas
Speaker 1: State Archives and Library is a grand, imposing building right
Speaker 1: next to the Capitol.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought, boy, this is on a par with
Speaker 2: the archival storage facilities in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: I thought, you know who.
Speaker 2: These people take their history seriously.
Speaker 1: And they did and do Inside he flipped through the
Speaker 1: card catalog and found the report, all three.
Speaker 2: Volumes, and I was told, well, you know, the Canalists
Speaker 2: investigation is closed and it won't be open for fifty years.
Speaker 2: And I said, excuse me, this is nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: The investigation was in nineteen nineteen. I think, even in history,
Speaker 2: you've got to do the math. And she went downstairs
Speaker 2: and talked to some people, and she came back an
Speaker 2: hour later and said, well, I guess you're going to
Speaker 2: get to look at it.
Speaker 1: James wondered, that was so delicate that it had to
Speaker 1: be locked away for half a century.
Speaker 2: It was on a cart, and it was she had
Speaker 2: somebody helping her pull the cart.
Speaker 1: It was more than sixteen hundred pages from nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: James began to read.
Speaker 2: I was just I was stunned. I was stunned at
Speaker 2: what I found.
Speaker 1: In the third volume, he found testimony about dozens of
Speaker 1: instances of ranger attacks, crimes and murders, testimony from survivors
Speaker 1: of Porbanir.
Speaker 2: You know, it was just boom, boom boom. I thought,
Speaker 2: this is this is incredible and first of all, second thought,
Speaker 2: it is no wonder if they wanted to keep this
Speaker 2: seal for as long as they could. According to James,
Speaker 2: by sealing that document for fifty years, there was a
Speaker 2: very vivid hope there would be no further inquiry. Whatever
Speaker 2: the official story was, that would be the official story.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to find out how that happened,
Speaker 1: how that official story took hold, and how this other
Speaker 1: version of events, even though the state locked up the
Speaker 1: records survived anyway. From Texas Monthly, This is White Hats,
Speaker 1: a story of the legendary Texas Rangers and a struggle
Speaker 1: for the soul of Texas. I'm your host, Jack Arera.
Speaker 1: This is episode four the Cold Case. Back in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: as Lore Sandre continued to rage in South Texas, one
Speaker 1: Texas lawmaker began to hear disturbing reports. His name was
Speaker 1: Jose Tomascanales. He's the man behind the Canalis investigation, those
Speaker 1: shocking documents James Sandos found in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he is. At the time, he's the sole
Speaker 4: Mexican American elected state.
Speaker 1: Representative is Monica Muno's Martinez.
Speaker 4: He's from Brownsville and start receiving complaints about violence by
Speaker 4: Texas rangers.
Speaker 1: Monica is a professor at the University of Texas in Austin.
Speaker 4: So I'm a historian of US history of race relations
Speaker 4: in the US. My primary research is focused on Texas
Speaker 4: and the history of racial violence in Texas.
Speaker 1: Monica has spent more than a decade researching the Porvenian massacre,
Speaker 1: and she explains that in the year after it happened,
Speaker 1: Canalis began working for justice for the survivors and other
Speaker 1: victims of ranger of violence. He heard stories of prisoners
Speaker 1: who'd been taken by the rangers from local shriffs and
Speaker 1: shot in the brush, of people who've been pistol whipped
Speaker 1: and tortured, and of a small village of Borvnir where
Speaker 1: rangers had killed fifteen men. Canal has tried to raise
Speaker 1: the alarm in Austin. He very much.
Speaker 4: Believed in the system and his ability as a politician
Speaker 4: to go through the proper channels, you know, writing to
Speaker 4: Jugend General, writing to the governor, to try to get
Speaker 4: help in curtailing these acts of violence by Texas rangers.
Speaker 1: Canalis was a gentleman. He was born in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven on his family's ranch, a large estate outside of Kingsville.
Speaker 1: The Canalis family had roots in Texas deeper than the
Speaker 1: state itself. They were at the Hanos, whose claims the
Speaker 1: land went all the way back to the Spanish crown.
Speaker 1: He studied law at the University of Michigan and entered
Speaker 1: the Texas State House as a Democrat in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1: He represented the area around Brownsville, the lush border town
Speaker 1: where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico,
Speaker 1: the Idara family in Laredo. The newspaper publishers you heard
Speaker 1: about in the last episode, they actually wrote about Canatis
Speaker 1: and the discrimination he faced in the capitol, in a
Speaker 1: story that describes how Mexican people were denied service at
Speaker 1: shops or denied the right to vote. They write that
Speaker 1: even Canals's fellow Lawmads had called him el Mechicano seboso,
Speaker 1: the greaser Mexican. But he was also insulated, in part
Speaker 1: by his own enormous wealth. In Austin, he went by Joe.
Speaker 4: He's from a wealthy Dahano family. His wife is white right.
Speaker 4: So in this era, when you see all of these
Speaker 4: Jim Crow Wancrow laws being passed, all of segregation being
Speaker 4: built into the institutions, he flies in the face of
Speaker 4: all of that.
Speaker 1: For months, Canalis asked the governor to reign in the rangers,
Speaker 1: but the governor put him off with false promises, and
Speaker 1: officials in Austin worked to undercut him, and his word
Speaker 1: spread that Canalis was investigating the Rangers. It earned him enemies.
Speaker 1: In December, almost a year after the Bordevinir massacre, a
Speaker 1: ranger approached canals in the border town of San Benito.
Speaker 1: He was over six feet tall and around two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty pounds, and he had a violent reputation. His
Speaker 1: name was Frank Kamer, and he had a message for Canals.
Speaker 4: And essentially, you know, threatens him like if you go
Speaker 4: through with this, you know you're gonna regret it.
Speaker 1: But Hamer's threats motivated him. The lawmaker gave up appealing
Speaker 1: to the governor and took matters into his own hands.
Speaker 1: Less than a month after Hamer confronted him, Gannellis introduced
Speaker 1: a daring piece of legislation.
Speaker 4: So he is in the company of others who are saying,
Speaker 4: we've got to stop, we have to stop this filence
Speaker 4: by the Texas Rangers. He gains enough support to pass
Speaker 4: h B five, which is a bill that calls for
Speaker 4: a hearing an investigation to the Texas Rangers. It's also
Speaker 4: calling for the same kinds of reforms that you hear
Speaker 4: about people advocating today that text Range should be under bond,
Speaker 4: that you should increase their wages so that you have,
Speaker 4: you know, a more competitive pool of people applying for
Speaker 4: these positions, but also that you reduce the force and
Speaker 4: you eliminate, you know, having these people who who have
Speaker 4: these bloody records from being on the force.
Speaker 1: But lawmakers were outraged by even at of criticism against
Speaker 1: the Rangers. They accused Canalis of lying and demanded that
Speaker 1: he produce evidence.
Speaker 4: And so what you get is two and a half
Speaker 4: weeks of over eighty witnesses coming in either to support
Speaker 4: the Texas Rangers and endorse their practices or violent practices,
Speaker 4: or to bring evidence of harms that they have caused,
Speaker 4: murders that they've committed, participating in torture of prisoners.
Speaker 1: In a room at the state Capitol, a handful of
Speaker 1: wall makers listen and question witnesses. Canalis actually isn't on
Speaker 1: the panel, but he's allowed to join in and ask questions.
Speaker 1: He and other witnesses sit in the room with the
Speaker 1: same men they're accusing. Canali has worried about assassination attempts
Speaker 1: and outside the capital. Frank camer had stocked Canalis around Austin,
Speaker 1: reminding him that he was watching. But Canalis succeeds in
Speaker 1: getting accounts of the Rangers brutality committed to the official record.
Speaker 1: Witnesses came from all backgrounds. In Anglo woman complains about
Speaker 1: Rangers quote reign of terror in South Texas. An Anglo
Speaker 1: judge describes how Ranger captain, who seemed to be drunk,
Speaker 1: approached him in the courthouse and pistol whipped him. That
Speaker 1: Ranger captain was named John J. Sanders. Sanders took the
Speaker 1: stand and admitted that he attacked the judge. He said
Speaker 1: he felt justified because the judge had published writing that
Speaker 1: condemned the Rangers attacks on Mexicans. Ganalis introduced more charges
Speaker 1: of his own, that Rangers tortured a Mexican American man
Speaker 1: in Duval County, that they murdered others in Cameron County,
Speaker 1: and Rio Grande City. The eleventh charge he brought is
Speaker 1: one you've already heard. Gannalis read it to the record.
Speaker 1: He said, I charge that on January twenty eighth, nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: fifteen Mexicans, after they'd been arrested in disarmed by the
Speaker 1: state rangers at Al Borvener Presidio County, were murdered by
Speaker 1: said rangers without any justification or excuse. By this time,
Speaker 1: more than a year had been passed since the massacre,
Speaker 1: and throughout the rangers of Company B had proclaimed their innocence.
Speaker 1: An outpass on newspaper had reported on the massacre but
Speaker 1: claimed that the massacred villagers were raiders and squatters, but
Speaker 1: the real story still got out. The survivors fled into
Speaker 1: Mexico and told officials there what had happened. Mexican officials
Speaker 1: complained to Washington, and eventually, under pressure from both federal governments,
Speaker 1: Texas Governor William Hobby dismissed five of the rangers and
Speaker 1: pushed Captain J. M. Fox for his resignation. But to
Speaker 1: the survivors of Borviner this was still not justice. Canalis's
Speaker 1: hearings in Austin gave them another chance. Lawmakers read a
Speaker 1: long collection of their testimonies. There was sixty six year
Speaker 1: old one Mendez who recalled quote the dead bodies were
Speaker 1: left lying in the same place where they were. The
Speaker 1: bodies had been shot straight through and in their heads,
Speaker 1: and Babla Menez explained that the men killed were peaceable
Speaker 1: citizen and dedicated completely to their work. For years, Rangers
Speaker 1: had been killing people of Mexican descent with near impunity,
Speaker 1: as the English language press cheered them on for stopping
Speaker 1: the bandits. Now, thanks to the state houses, only the
Speaker 1: Hano member survivors were getting to tell their side of
Speaker 1: the story in the capitol in the public record. But
Speaker 1: the Rangers fought back. The Rangers had a legal team
Speaker 1: of the hearings, and this was their strategy. Instead of
Speaker 1: letting the hearings proceed as an investigation of the Rangers,
Speaker 1: they would use them as an opportunity to take down
Speaker 1: the Rangers' most powerful critic, Ganals.
Speaker 4: You know, the lawyers for the Texas Rangers say, we
Speaker 4: need to question this guy's motives to see why he
Speaker 4: is bringing these charges, and so they smear him. They
Speaker 4: make these accusations that you know, because he has Mexican
Speaker 4: blood in his veins, that he is unconsciously loyal to
Speaker 4: Mexico and not to the United States.
Speaker 1: One of the Rangers lawyers asked Canalis multiple times if
Speaker 1: he was, quote by blood, a Mexican. Canalis replied, I
Speaker 1: am not a Mexican. I'm an American citizen. But the
Speaker 1: Rangers attorney declared, quote, blood is thicker than water. The
Speaker 1: lawyers also questioned Canalis's mental state. They suggested he'd imagine
Speaker 1: that Hamer had threatened him in Austin. They said, now,
Speaker 1: isn't it a fact, mister Canalis, that you have become
Speaker 1: obsessed in a way with suspicion and hallucination regarding the
Speaker 1: seriousness of this matter.
Speaker 4: They publicly go out of their way to try to
Speaker 4: humiliate him, to call him to question, and it's a
Speaker 4: hard transcript to read the sort of disdain that they
Speaker 4: showed for him.
Speaker 1: Ganellis isn't the only person the Rangers lawyer's attack. They
Speaker 1: throw doubt on essentially everyone who challenges the Rangers. After
Speaker 1: Canalis introduced the charge of the Porvenir massacre, the lawmakers
Speaker 1: read the account of Fox, the captain of Company B. Rangers,
Speaker 1: described the massacre as a shootout with bandits.
Speaker 4: And Fox continues to contest it, you know, and what
Speaker 4: he's also contesting is not you know in the end
Speaker 4: that the massacre happened, but like what's wrong with it?
Speaker 1: And that idea what's wrong with it permeated the entire
Speaker 1: Canalist investigation. Captain John Sanders, who had pistol, whipped that
Speaker 1: judge explained that residents on the border were terrified because
Speaker 1: they'd heard that Mexican mobs were coming to rob the
Speaker 1: banks and burn the towns. A US congressman from West
Speaker 1: Texas and Claude Benton Hudsmith, offered his own philosophy for
Speaker 1: survival along the border. He told lawmakers that to quote,
Speaker 1: put down this lawlessness. You have got to kill those
Speaker 1: Mexicans when you find them, or they will kill you. Today,
Speaker 1: the counties of the west of Borvenier is called Hudsmith
Speaker 1: County after that congressman. Through all of this, Canalis keeps
Speaker 1: his school. He tells the lawmakers that even with the
Speaker 1: harm they've caused, he still believes in the rain. He
Speaker 1: says that knowing the range of forces, I do, I
Speaker 1: know that we need the rangers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He's a complicated figure and he One of the ways
Speaker 4: that he actually tries to defend himself when he's being
Speaker 4: interrogated is actually by saying, like, you know, I fund
Speaker 4: Texas Rangers and I support them so, and he refers
Speaker 4: to the era of Texas Rangers from the late nineteenth
Speaker 4: century is like the good old days, right, That's like
Speaker 4: when Texas Rangers they are committing murders and massacres of Mexicans,
Speaker 4: but they're also committing acts of brutality against indigenous people.
Speaker 1: Ganalis isn't just being diplomatic. He had close friends who
Speaker 1: are rangers, and he says he feels caught between the
Speaker 1: devil and the deep blue sea, between those who want
Speaker 1: to abolish the Rangers and those who want to put
Speaker 1: them on a pedestal. All he wants, he says, is
Speaker 1: to purge the Rangers of what he calls their bad element.
Speaker 1: Ganellis says, I'm not here to protect any Mexican bandits,
Speaker 1: but if a man is murdered, another man shouldn't be murdered.
Speaker 1: After twelve days of testimony, the hearings come to a close.
Speaker 4: And they release a report. Their findings are that there
Speaker 4: were absolutely some civil rights abuses by Texas Rangers, that
Speaker 4: they absolutely committed some horrific acts of violence, but that
Speaker 4: on the whole that Texas Rangers did the best that
Speaker 4: they could in violent circumstances. And so the Committee buys
Speaker 4: into the version that the lawyers for the Texas Rangers
Speaker 4: submitted that South Texas is a violent place, that Mexicans
Speaker 4: are inherently violent people, and that to control those populations
Speaker 4: you have to use force.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, Captain J. M. Fox was welcomed
Speaker 1: back into the Ranger force. Other Rangers who'd been dismissed
Speaker 1: for the role in the Bordavnir massacre were also reinstated.
Speaker 4: And so what you don't see is any prosecution. So
Speaker 4: in the case is when there's clear evidence of Texas
Speaker 4: Range participating in murders, the Committee doesn't call for those
Speaker 4: text of Strangers to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: For survivors like Juan Flores, who you heard about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, it must have been a heartbreaking moment.
Speaker 1: Over a year after the massacre, after round's a painful testimony,
Speaker 1: he and his family had nothing to show for it,
Speaker 1: no justice.
Speaker 4: Juan Bodina Floris is somebody whose life I've spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time thinking about I mean, so here's this
Speaker 4: child who's just experienced this massacre. You know, then he's
Speaker 4: tasked with going to get the teacher, going to get
Speaker 4: Warren for help. And then Juan has to participate in
Speaker 4: this act of identifying the remains of his father. And
Speaker 4: so the kinds of injustices that people feel are multiple.
Speaker 4: It's not just the injustice about the massacre itself, but
Speaker 4: it's the injustice of the failure to fully acknowledge and
Speaker 4: reckon with the harm cause and so instead you have
Speaker 4: the racist tropes of Mexicans continue. And the other thing
Speaker 4: that happens is that these investigations, these volumes are not
Speaker 4: made public.
Speaker 1: After the hearings, Canalis began working for change outside of
Speaker 1: the Capitol. In nineteen twenty nine, he joined other Tahano progressives,
Speaker 1: including Jovite Dad's brother Edgardo dar in founding LULAC, the
Speaker 1: League of United Latin American Citizens. Today, it's the oldest
Speaker 1: and largest Latino civil rights organization in the country, and
Speaker 1: Canalis did win some meaningful reforms at the Capitol after
Speaker 1: the hearings. The ranger force was reduced, pay was increased,
Speaker 1: and the state created new requirements to become a Ranger,
Speaker 1: and Monica says that after the Canalis investigation, the Rangers
Speaker 1: made an effort to move on.
Speaker 4: And so the sort of convenient version of this history,
Speaker 4: the whitewashed version of this history, is that there's this
Speaker 4: hearing in nineteen nineteen. You know, if Texas Rangers are
Speaker 4: let go, and the Texas Ranger force moves on and
Speaker 4: it professionalizes, and so Hamer becomes a symbol of this
Speaker 4: kind of progression.
Speaker 1: Frank Hamer, the same guy who threatened JT. Kanalis. He
Speaker 1: becomes one of the most celebrated Rangers in Texas history.
Speaker 1: If you know any Texas Rangers by name, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard of Frank Hamer. They're still making movies about.
Speaker 5: Him's a time we put a pair of man killers
Speaker 5: on the trail and let them do their job.
Speaker 4: This is nineteen thirty four, Lee, and you want to
Speaker 4: put cowboys on Buddy and Claude.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're.
Speaker 6: Selling, Frank Hamer, That's what I'm selling.
Speaker 1: That's from the movie The Highwaymen from twenty nineteen. Kevin
Speaker 1: Costner played Hamer that movie. And Hamer's legend isn't about
Speaker 1: the nineteen tens. When Hamer fought in the Bandit Wars
Speaker 1: and threatened Canalis. Hamer had a long, storied career.
Speaker 6: He, in my opinion, was the greatest American lawman of
Speaker 6: the twentieth century. Nobody had a career that came close
Speaker 6: to Frank Hamer's.
Speaker 1: That's John Bosnecker. He wrote a best selling biography of
Speaker 1: Hamer in twenty sixteen. Francis Augustus Hamer was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four in Fairview, Texas, just north of Dallas.
Speaker 1: As a boy, he read stories about the rangers' battles
Speaker 1: against the Comanche and Kiowa, and in nineteen oh six
Speaker 1: he joined a ranger company in South Texas, patrolling the
Speaker 1: Mexican border.
Speaker 6: He had no intention of ever going into law enforcement,
Speaker 6: but he was an expert horseman, an expert cowboy in
Speaker 6: West Texas, crack shot, and incredibly intelligent. He only had
Speaker 6: a sixth grade education, but he was naturally intelligent.
Speaker 1: Hamer served along the border under Captain J. M. Fox
Speaker 1: in the conflict Rangers called the Bandit War, and Hamer
Speaker 1: saw some of its most brutal action. The rebels, Saidisnistas,
Speaker 1: derailed a train, attacked ranches, and killed indiscriminately. Hamer saw
Speaker 1: the terror they had inflicted on South Texans. It was
Speaker 1: Texas Governor James Ferguson who dispatched Fox along with Ranger
Speaker 1: Captain Harry Ransom to deal with the insurgency in South Texas.
Speaker 1: Both men already had bloody reputations. Ferguson told them to
Speaker 1: do whatever it took to stop the violence, and he
Speaker 1: said he'd pardon them if they'd broke any laws. From
Speaker 1: his letters, we know how Hamer felt about these two men.
Speaker 6: I think that Hamer was disgusted with both Captain Fox
Speaker 6: and with Captain Ransom. Hamer had multiple encounters with both
Speaker 6: of them and strongly disliked them and believed they'd brought
Speaker 6: terrible discredit to the Ranger Service.
Speaker 1: Even know Hamer served under Fox, John says, it's important
Speaker 1: to understand that Hamer wasn't at Porvenia.
Speaker 6: Hamer certainly had controversial aspects to his career and certainly
Speaker 6: made some terrible errors of judgment during his career, but
Speaker 6: none of them were taking part in these evaporations.
Speaker 1: Hamer saw the aftermath of the largest battle of the
Speaker 1: Bandit Wars in nineteen fifteen, about fifteen surgeons attacked a
Speaker 1: railroad stop at the King Ranch, the biggest richest ranch
Speaker 1: in Texas. The battle was called the Noreas Raid. For hours,
Speaker 1: Fox and the Rangers exchanged gunfire with the rebels. The
Speaker 1: fighting had already ended when Hamer arrived with Fox, he
Speaker 1: searched the area looking for any rebels who had escaped.
Speaker 1: Using his Winchester rifle, he pulled open the door to
Speaker 1: a shack. The site that greeted him was horrific. On
Speaker 1: the floor was the body of a Mexican woman. The
Speaker 1: back of her head had been shot off by the rebels.
Speaker 1: A group of Mexican railroad workers huddled next to her,
Speaker 1: surrounded by her blood. In South Texas, Hamer and the
Speaker 1: Rangers felt like they were fighting a war rather than
Speaker 1: acting as police.
Speaker 6: If you look at it as a military expedition carried
Speaker 6: out on the Mexican Texas border. You know the Special Forces.
Speaker 6: When they ambush a patrol of ISIS fighters, they open fire.
Speaker 6: They don't order them to surrender.
Speaker 1: Like many Rangers, Hamer believed that the only way to
Speaker 1: stop the rebels was with the shock in All campaign
Speaker 1: and after the Notius Raid, he tried to send them
Speaker 1: a message.
Speaker 6: And in the morning, Hamer and Captain Fox and some
Speaker 6: other men posed for photographs where they had lariats looped
Speaker 6: around the bodies of several of these dead rebels or bandits,
Speaker 6: depending upon how you look at it. And these were
Speaker 6: widely sold throughout the border region, even in north in Mexico,
Speaker 6: and they just enraged the Latino population because it was
Speaker 6: a picture of the very complaint against the rangers misabusing Tejanos.
Speaker 1: This was a time when postcards of black men being
Speaker 1: lynched were sold in stores across the South, and understandably,
Speaker 1: many people in Mexico and South Texas interpreted the photo
Speaker 1: as an image of Texas rangers lynching Mexicans.
Speaker 6: It was one of the biggest blunders of his career
Speaker 6: was to pose for that photo. And during the later
Speaker 6: Canalis hearings, one of the US Cavalry officers testified that
Speaker 6: those photos did a tremendous amount of damage because it
Speaker 6: incited feelings against Texans by people in northern Mexico.
Speaker 1: After the Canella's hearings, as dozens of rangers were fired
Speaker 1: and the force was professionalized, Hamer was one of the
Speaker 1: rangers who managed to keep his job. But now the
Speaker 1: rangers were changing, and he had to change too. John says,
Speaker 1: you can see this new chapter begin in of all places,
Speaker 1: a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 6: And his friends come and invite him to a meeting
Speaker 6: of the clan, and they tell him it's to support
Speaker 6: law enforcement, and Hamer says, I'm all for anything that
Speaker 6: supports law enforcement. So he goes to the meeting, and
Speaker 6: part way through the meeting, they bring up an African
Speaker 6: American prostitute and they start planning in the meeting that
Speaker 6: they're going to grab this prostitute and tar and feather
Speaker 6: her and ride her out of town on a rail.
Speaker 6: And Hamer listens to this for a few minutes, and
Speaker 6: he stands up and he says, if anybody in this
Speaker 6: room lays a finger on that woman, I'll put him
Speaker 6: in prison. And he stormed out of the meeting, and
Speaker 6: ever after he's a bitter enemy of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: John argues that Hamer did more than any other lawman
Speaker 1: in Texas to stop the practice of lynching in the state.
Speaker 6: This is the Jim Crow era. He was a white supremacist,
Speaker 6: but he also believed in the civil rights of blacks,
Speaker 6: and he believed strongly against lynching, so during his career
Speaker 6: he personally saved fifteen African Americans from lynch mobs, and
Speaker 6: then he led the fight against the Klan in Texas
Speaker 6: in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: In one dramatic instance, a black man in Waco had
Speaker 1: been accused of rape and a lynch mob had surrounded
Speaker 1: the courthouse looking to kill him.
Speaker 6: And the sheriff and the county judge are pleading with
Speaker 6: them to break up. People have all lost your minds,
Speaker 6: go home, let the law take its course. And a
Speaker 6: motor car with five men pulls up to the curb,
Speaker 6: and this burly man wearing a fedora and carrying a
Speaker 6: Thompson submachine gun walks very quietly through the mob. He
Speaker 6: goes up the steps of the courthouse and he sits
Speaker 6: down on the top step and he just swings the
Speaker 6: barrel of the Thompson submachine gun to face the mob.
Speaker 6: He doesn't say a word, and suddenly people in the
Speaker 6: mob start saying, that's Hamer, that's Captain Hamer. He's killed
Speaker 6: twenty five men. That's Hamer. And the mob just drifts away.
Speaker 6: But that was his reputation because at this point, you
Speaker 6: know by that time in the nineteen twenties. He's the
Speaker 6: most famous lawman in the American Southwest.
Speaker 1: Abruptly, though, in nineteen thirty three, the new Texas Governor,
Speaker 1: Miriam Ma Ferguson fired all the Rangers. Her decision wasn't
Speaker 1: about the Rangers' methods or about how modern Texas was changing.
Speaker 1: She just didn't like them. They had supported her opponent,
Speaker 1: the last governor, in the election, and for a moment,
Speaker 1: Texas was without his Rangers. But in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: Hamer would crack the case that turned him into a
Speaker 1: Texas legend and helped resurrect the range of force.
Speaker 7: Clyde Barrow, the most ruthless killer of the Southwest has
Speaker 7: ever known, was granted a parole from the Texas State
Speaker 7: Penetentiary on February second, nineteen thirty two. After Clyde had
Speaker 7: become a full fledged killer and gone in for big
Speaker 7: time crime, he met Bonnie Parker, waitresses and wife of
Speaker 7: a convict. What attracted this strange pair to each other
Speaker 7: will never be known.
Speaker 1: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were on a deadly spree
Speaker 1: of small time robberies, prison breaks, and hold ups across
Speaker 1: the country. This was the Great Depression, and in the
Speaker 1: press they became outlaw folk heroes, and Hamer came out
Speaker 1: of retirement for one last big job. For months, he
Speaker 1: tracked Bonnie and Clyde. He went so far as to
Speaker 1: acquire the same nineteen thirty four ford that they drove,
Speaker 1: and he slept in it, living on the road just
Speaker 1: like they did. And on May twenty third of that year,
Speaker 1: he was way for them in the brush, along with
Speaker 1: the posse of five other officers.
Speaker 3: Death is at the steering wheel, the inevitable end retribution.
Speaker 7: Here is Clyde, Beryl and Bonnie Parker, who died as
Speaker 7: they lived by the gun.
Speaker 1: The famous outlaws were dead, and the men who'd killed
Speaker 1: them had stepped into their spotlight. After decades as a lawman,
Speaker 1: Frank Hamer became a celebrity. His long career tracks the
Speaker 1: same arc of the Texas Rangers. After surviving dozens of gunfights,
Speaker 1: he cracked his most famous case as an investigator, a
Speaker 1: detective following the clues. When the Rangers were resurrected in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five under a new governor, this was their
Speaker 1: job description as a branch of the new Texas Department
Speaker 1: of public safety. The Rangers became a modern police force,
Speaker 1: the state's elite investigators. Hamer's heroics also coincided with the
Speaker 1: major history of the Rangers written by a friend of his,
Speaker 1: Walter Prescott Webb. Webb is probably Texas's most influential historian,
Speaker 1: and he wrote the first great history of the Rangers,
Speaker 1: The Texas Rangers, a Century of Frontier Defense. The Bonnie
Speaker 1: and Clyde affair helped convince Texas it still needed real
Speaker 1: life Rangers, but it's Webb who made those Rangers into legends.
Speaker 1: Webb dug into the Ranger's own reports and wrote a
Speaker 1: history of the great Ranger leaders Jack Coffee, Hayes, Leander McNelly,
Speaker 1: and Frank Hamer. Of course, the book came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five and readers loved it. Hollywood even made
Speaker 1: it into a movie called The Texas Rangers.
Speaker 3: These are the men called Texas Rangers, molded in the
Speaker 3: crucible of heroics, struggles, guardians of the Frontiers makers.
Speaker 1: The web celebration of the Rangers is one sided. The
Speaker 1: book has been described as a life of saints. When
Speaker 1: I first read it, I assume that Web just didn't
Speaker 1: know what the Rangers had done during La Matanza that
Speaker 1: he'd never come across stories told by survivors of Borvenir.
Speaker 1: But I was wrong. When James Sandoz finally got the
Speaker 1: Canalist transcripts unsealed in the seventies, the archivist told.
Speaker 2: Him, no one has seen this report since Walter Prescott Web,
Speaker 2: And I said before he wrote his book on the
Speaker 2: Texas Rangers. As he said, yes, that's the only person
Speaker 2: who's seen it since nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's not just that Web included the Canali's hearings in
Speaker 1: his research. Years later, he said the hearings were actually
Speaker 1: what motivated him to write his book.
Speaker 4: He's not telling the story from the point of view
Speaker 4: of people who were massacred. He's telling it from the
Speaker 4: point of view of the Texas Rangers, and so he's
Speaker 4: justifying their action.
Speaker 1: It may not have been great history, but it was
Speaker 1: great entertainment. In the forties and fifties, the Rangers had
Speaker 1: a real pop culture renaissance.
Speaker 3: Texas Rangers first two advanced, last to retreat.
Speaker 8: Fiery, Harsh, with the speed of light, a cloud of
Speaker 8: dust and a hardy oil silver, A lone.
Speaker 1: Ranger as the country singer tex Ridder put it.
Speaker 5: I'll bet there's not a boy girl in this whole
Speaker 5: country of ours who hasn't thrilled the stories of the
Speaker 5: Texas Rangers. The high principles and courage of that failst
Speaker 5: little band of men will remain an inspiration to us
Speaker 5: down through all the years.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, a state Senator from West Texas
Speaker 1: named Dorsey B. Hardiman introduced an amendment saying, quote, the
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers shall not be abolished. It is still today
Speaker 1: actually against the law to get rid of the Rangers.
Speaker 1: I had to ask Monica to help me understand, just
Speaker 1: forty years after Borvenir, how did the Rangers become bigger
Speaker 1: heroes than ever?
Speaker 4: It happens because somebody like Walter Prescott Webb doesn't see
Speaker 4: the humanity of the victims.
Speaker 1: But it's Webb's version of the Rangers that took hold.
Speaker 1: When Monica was taking seventh grade Texas history in the nineties,
Speaker 1: she says she didn't learn any stories about Ranger abuse. Still,
Speaker 1: there were places where the stories survived. Sometimes they survived
Speaker 1: in songs. Did you grow up with any folk allusions
Speaker 1: to what had happened in early twentieth century to Mexican
Speaker 1: Americans and Mexicans at the end of the Texas Rangers
Speaker 1: or is that totally revelatory when you start learning about it.
Speaker 4: It was totally revelatory, although I should say I had
Speaker 4: heard the corrido ye.
Speaker 5: Lucien al.
Speaker 1: She'd heard a version recorded by one of the legends
Speaker 1: of Mexican ortheno.
Speaker 4: Music, Ramoniela. He's saying that ballad and so.
Speaker 1: That about oral history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, so it's a Mexican ballad tradition.
Speaker 1: Gregorio Cortez tells the story of what happened on a
Speaker 1: ranch southwest of San Antonio in nineteen oh one. A
Speaker 1: sheriff got into an argument with the rancher and shot him,
Speaker 1: and in return, the dying man's brother, Gregorio Cortez, shot
Speaker 1: the sheriff. Then Gregorio disappeared.
Speaker 9: Yeah, greg Cortes mamoienda macien.
Speaker 4: And part of what was the sort of folklore around
Speaker 4: it was not only his brother being killed in him
Speaker 4: shooting a law enforcement agent, but that he had made
Speaker 4: fools of the Texas Rangers that were trying to hunt
Speaker 4: him down.
Speaker 1: For ten days, Gregorio led hundreds of men, including Texas Rangers,
Speaker 1: on one of the largest man hunts the country had
Speaker 1: ever seen.
Speaker 4: And there was a sense of for Mexican American populations
Speaker 4: that new histories of oppression and violence and racism, that
Speaker 4: he was a folk hero.
Speaker 1: So while the official history of the Rangers was written
Speaker 1: by men like Walter Prescott Webb about heroes like Frank Hamer,
Speaker 1: Gorrios helped another version of the history, the Hanos version
Speaker 1: of the history, survive. In nineteen fifty eight, at the
Speaker 1: height of the Rangers' popularity, an author from South Texas
Speaker 1: named Americo Barreres published a book about Gregorio Cortez. Barreres
Speaker 1: was one of the first scholars in Texas to elucidate
Speaker 1: Mexican American identity, and his book called With His Pistol
Speaker 1: in his Hand, helped inspire the Chicano movement. Monica's parents
Speaker 1: grew up during this time.
Speaker 4: They taught me and my sister to think critically about
Speaker 4: the way that issues around race or civil rights are
Speaker 4: framed in the press, and so I learned to think
Speaker 4: critically of issues, but also to think critically of history.
Speaker 1: Monica grew up in Uvaldi, Texas. It's about ninety minutes
Speaker 1: west of San Antonio, towards the border. Today it's known
Speaker 1: as the site of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.
Speaker 1: But fourteen years before Monica was born, Euvoldi was in
Speaker 1: the news because of a student protest.
Speaker 4: My mom shared a memory with me when I remember
Speaker 4: looking at photographs of the school walkout.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Chicano activists, inspired by writers like
Speaker 1: Americo Bareres, had been organizing voters and raising money to
Speaker 1: pay poll taxes and supporting Mexican American candidates. Mexican American
Speaker 1: students in South Texas were staging protests against school segregation,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen the school board in Valdi fired
Speaker 1: a teacher named hassueg Gaiza. He was a beloved figure
Speaker 1: for Mexican American students, but when he ran for county judge,
Speaker 1: part of this movement to claim the Hano political power,
Speaker 1: the district refused to renew his contract. Students rallied around him.
Speaker 1: They delivered a list of demands, and as many as
Speaker 1: six hundred of them walked out of class and led marches.
Speaker 1: Monica's mother was one of them.
Speaker 4: And you see elementary school kids and high school kids
Speaker 4: in their single file lines. And I asked her, I said,
Speaker 4: you know, why are we always walking in these lines?
Speaker 4: And she explained that the Texas Rangers and the local
Speaker 4: law enforcement were writing to arrest anybody who didn't stay
Speaker 4: on the sidewalks.
Speaker 1: Witnesses remember that two dozen Texas Rangers and two State
Speaker 1: police helicopters came to town.
Speaker 4: My parents, who were sophomores at the time, also knowing
Speaker 4: they knew the history of brutality. They knew the history,
Speaker 4: they knew the recent history of some of the Texas
Speaker 4: Rangers that were there, like ay.
Speaker 1: Lee Alfred Young. Ali was the captain of the Rangers
Speaker 1: Company D. He developed a troubled reputation in South Texas.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 4: It wasn't only that he was an intimidating factor as
Speaker 4: a law enforcement officer, right, criminalizing, making these kids and
Speaker 4: these parents out to be some threat, but also that
Speaker 4: they had records of violence.
Speaker 1: A reporter in the seventies called Ali the last of
Speaker 1: the old time Rangers. He joined the force in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, and his grandfather, father, and son were all
Speaker 1: Rangers too. Ali was a compelling figure for new Rangers.
Speaker 1: Here's how one of them, Jerome Price, remembered him.
Speaker 9: We the Rangery Company D at that time, it's under
Speaker 9: the head of Captain A Y Ali, the great Texas Ranger,
Speaker 9: captain whom I had admired as a young man, and
Speaker 9: hope that every vacancy was ever came up in the Rangers,
Speaker 9: that it could be under Captain Ali.
Speaker 1: But by nineteen seventy, Ali was also notorious in South Texas,
Speaker 1: especially among Mexican Americans gives sans and mostly for one incident,
Speaker 1: his response to a farm worker strike on the border
Speaker 1: in Star County.
Speaker 8: Delos Boni.
Speaker 1: Eso anay. It even inspired a new Koreo los Rinces
Speaker 1: de Dejas sung here by Deeto Reinosa. It describes an
Speaker 1: act of bloodshed against those farm owners then marry Tonio.
Speaker 4: And Joe Ang.
Speaker 1: It also inspired a lawsuit accusing Ali and his rangers
Speaker 1: and the local sheriff of violence an orbit trary arrests.
Speaker 1: It went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 10: On appeal from a three judge district court in Texas,
Speaker 10: and the controversy rose in connection with the effort of
Speaker 10: the union to unionize farm workers.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the case wound up giving more protections to labor
Speaker 1: organizers in Texas and at a federal Civil rights hearing
Speaker 1: in San Antonio, people came forward accusing Ali of slapping
Speaker 1: them and roughly grabbing them by the pants. Ali was
Speaker 1: at that hearing, and as the audience booed him, he
Speaker 1: defended himself, saying it was the organizers who'd been loud
Speaker 1: and abusive elsewhere. Ali called the accusations quote just a
Speaker 1: bunch of perjuries and complained that this civil rights was
Speaker 1: the dog gondess business I ever heard of. But he
Speaker 1: also later admitted to hitting an organizer named Magdaleno Dimas
Speaker 1: with the barrel of his shotgun. Dimas wound up hospitalized
Speaker 1: with a concussion and spinal damage. This was the same
Speaker 1: ranger captain who led the response to the student walkout
Speaker 1: in Uvaldi. It was an unmistakable history lesson.
Speaker 4: I remember talking to my Tia Rodriguez, who recalled the
Speaker 4: memories of walking into the school buildings to meet try
Speaker 4: to meet with school board members and seeing Texas Rangers
Speaker 4: on the rooftops with rifles, you know, pointed down at
Speaker 4: them at high schoolers basically, and parents at high schoolers
Speaker 4: and parents, yes, children, also elementary school children.
Speaker 1: Many students kept quiet about the protests for years afterward.
Speaker 4: But growing up it was the history of the school
Speaker 4: walk out was something that people talked about in private
Speaker 4: in their family homes and family barbecues at gatherings, but
Speaker 4: it was still a history that had not been actually
Speaker 4: publicly reckoned with. There was still a sense that, you know,
Speaker 4: the students had walked out were troublemakers. And so it
Speaker 4: was the lessons that I learned about the past were
Speaker 4: you know, that these calls for justice were unanswered, that
Speaker 4: they were continue knewing, but also that people who stood
Speaker 4: up and vocalized their concerns did so, and they may
Speaker 4: create sacrifices for it.
Speaker 1: Like texts itself. The Rangers have tried to move on
Speaker 1: from the violence of the twentieth century, but they still
Speaker 1: carry the same name and wear the same white hats
Speaker 1: of those Rangers of the past. For today's Rangers, what's
Speaker 1: changed and what hasn't next time on white hats.
Speaker 8: Everyone has something in the past, probably that they're not
Speaker 8: proud of. But you change that and the Rangers change
Speaker 8: and they progress. You know, if the Rangers have been
Speaker 8: around for two hundred years, they've vound to be doing
Speaker 8: something right.
Speaker 2: So this whole myth about them being the standard barrel
Speaker 2: for what just is supposed to be like.
Speaker 8: It's all BS.
Speaker 4: I can tell you that because I witnessed it, I
Speaker 4: experienced it the firsthand.
Speaker 1: This episode features additional field record by Katie mcmurran. Archival
Speaker 1: tape in this episode was from the nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: news film The Retribution of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker
Speaker 1: from the Jamison Film Company. Via the Texas Archive of
Speaker 1: the Moving Image and the University of Texas at San
Speaker 1: Antonio Institute of Texan Culture's Oral History Collection. You can
Speaker 1: read more about the stories in this episode in the
Speaker 1: Injustice Never Leaves You by Monica Munyas Martinez and Texas
Speaker 1: Ranger The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, The Man Who
Speaker 1: Killed Bonnie and Clyde by John Bosnecker. Special thanks for
Speaker 1: Reescher's help on this episode to the Legislative Reference Library
Speaker 1: of Texas and to the Vosses Oral History Center at
Speaker 1: the University of Texas at Austin. White Hats is a
Speaker 1: Texas monthly production. The show is produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Patrick Michaels and produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who
Speaker 1: also wrote the music. Additional production is by Isabella Van
Speaker 1: Trees and Claire Mcinernie. Additional editing by Ray Bartholomew. Our
Speaker 1: reporting team included Mike Hall, Kat Catanas, and Christian Wallace.
Speaker 1: Will Bostwick is our factchecker. Artwork is by Emily Kimbrell
Speaker 1: and Victoria Milner. I'm your host and writer Jack Adredra.
Speaker 1: See you next week.