#OTD on January 23, 2016, @BullockMuseum opened the bilingual exhibit “Life and Death on the Border.”  It offered an unflinching look at the role of the TexasRangers in the 1910s border violence.   

This was an important moment in Texas Ranger history because it was the first time a state public history institution recounted a dark chapter in the Force’s history, and did so in collaboration with descendent families and academic expertise.  

The exhibit was the product of a collaboration between BullockMuseum staff and Refusing to Forget.  We approached Margaret Koch, then head of exhibits, now the Museum’s Director, in 2014, about possibly hosting an exhibit marking the centennial of some of the worse violence.  Refusing to Forget members understood the importance of a state venue (which the descendants with whom we worked particularly emphasized). And the BullockMuseum is the premiere museum of TX history, with 500,000 visitors a year.  

Yet we had reason to be skeptical: would the Bullock Museum be willing to name Ranger perpetrators, and use words like “murder”?  The Bullock had been criticized by historians for telling a triumphalist and anglo-centered Texas history.  

Koch and her colleagues acknowledged they had constraints as a public institution at Texas, but convinced us that they were committed to telling an important if difficult story. They were aware of the limits of their exhibits and pointed to moves to make them more inclusive.  They worked closely with RTF members and descendant families to develop an exhibit that bookended an account of the 1910s border violence with depictions of the border community before and after. This let us avoid a simple story of victimization.  

In the heart of the exhibit, the wall text accurately described the rangers as engaging in a “reign of terror and intimidation.” A digital copy of the Canales hearings was available for reading and searching. It also told the stories of those who stood against the violence and condemned the Rangers: Anglo and Mexican alike: journalist Jovita Idar, Sheriff W. T. Vann, and State Representative J.T. Canales  

The exhibit reached some 40,000 visitors in the ten weeks that it was open, garnered international press attention (“In the Bullock exhibit, the truth is beginning to be told”), and won the “Leadership in History” award from the Association for State and Local History.  A traveling version of the exhibit will be on display at several venues in 2023-24, including South Texas College, Special Collections at TAMU-Laredo, El Paso History Museum, and Houston Holocaust Museum. 

Recently the Bullock has gotten caught up in attacks on the teaching of honest history, in which Texas and other states have banned the teaching of critical race theory, “divisive” subjects, and specific readings such as the 1619 Project.  In 2021, the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Bullock as a state museum, canceled the museum’s participation in an event for the book Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Jason Stanford and Chris Tomlinson.   

Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, who has made a political career out of inflaming anti-Latino and anti-immigrant sentiment, “told staff to cancel this event as soon as I found out about it.  Would the Bullock staff be allowed to design and run an exhibit like “Life and Death on the Border” in 2023?