#OTD June 16, 1901, a large posse in search of Gregorio Cortez lynched an unnamed Mexican man near Belmont for suspicion of harboring Cortez, in an act of violence that shows the connections between mob violence and law enforcement. The events that brought Cortez to fame, and prompted widespread violence against Mexican-American communities in central […]
Rangers Captain Sam McMurry, from Company B, was sent to Thumber, Texas in the Spring of 1889 to take stock of an ongoing conflict between T&PCC management and its miners. T&PCC’s workers, primarily miners, were on strike and demanding better working conditions. McMurry had been sent by Adjutant General King to the strike to prevent
In late June 1914 #TexasRangers Ira Cline and H.L. Roberson killed Carlos Morales Wood, editor of the Spanish language newspaper La Patria Mexicana published in Valentine, TX, while he supposedly resisted arrest. Cline and Roberson had a warrant for Wood’s arrest for the crime of “inciting riot” for “publishing articles in his paper purporting to
#OTD in 1979, the University of Notre Dame Press published “Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers,” by Julian Samora, Joe Bernal, and Albert Peña. The book surveys Ranger history from 19th century frontier violence to the Mexican American civil rights struggles to which the authors had contributed. “The victims of the Rangers .
#OTD June 30, 1893 John Hughes was promoted to Captain of Company D of the Texas Rangers, bringing a more equitable and collaborative approach to border policing in west Texas. In the late 1800s, smuggling was a common occurrence in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez borderlands.. The so-called (H)olguin or Bosque Gang controlled smuggling and other
#OTD in 1923, the Ku Klux Klan attempted to kidnap farmer and rail worker Otto Lange from his front porch in Burleson County. The resulting case shows the complicated relationship between Rangers and the Klan. Lange was with his elderly mother and young daughter when the Klan arrived. When he resisted, Klansmen pistol-whipped his mother,
#OTD on July 8, 1945, Bee County Sheriff Vail Ennis, with Texas Ranger Frank Probst and another deputized man, shot and killed brothers Felix, Domingo, and Antonio Rodriguez. Ennis mowed them down with a Thompson submachine gun. A fourth brother, Geronimo, was injured. Sheriff Ennis had a long history of abuse and killing. He had
On July 23 or 24, 1915, the brothers Lorenzo and Gorgonio Manríquez were killed near Mercedes, Texas, by deputy sheriffs, in a chain of events that unleashed violence across south Texas in late summer and fall of 1915. The double murder and subsequent events reveal many of the dynamics that made 1915 so violent: wrenching
In the summer of 1888, Texas Rangers Ira Aten and Jim King went undercover to try to identify and arrest so-called “fence cutters.” They were unsuccessful. In frustration, Aten developed a plan to hide mines in the fences, blowing them up when cutters approach. To understand how military equipment, like mines, could be introduced into
#OTD in 1915, Adolfo Muñoz was tortured, riddled with bullets, and hung from a mesquite tree two miles south of San Benito after mysteriously disappearing from the custody of deputy sheriff Frank Carr and former and future Ranger Daniel Hinojosa. TSHA Handbook entry on Daniel Hinojosa. Muñoz, whose names are given as “Rudolfo” or “Muñiz”
