#OTD in 1956, legendary civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, head of the @FBI, complaining of Ranger intimidation of Black citizens who had sued Dallas over school segregation.
Marshall, Chief Counsel of the @NAACP, was advising Dallas families in an effort to desegregate the city’s schools, pursuant to the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education two years before. https://www.nps.gov/brvb/index.htm
Marshall complained that Rangers and other state agents interviewed Black parents and threatened them with imprisonment and “economic pressure” while @NAACP attorneys were out of town.
Black Texans had reason to fear Rangers. Their torture of Bob White had led a Texas court, and then the U.S. Supreme Court, to throw out a conviction, before he was murdered in court. Rangers had participated in numerous lynchings and murders as well.. https://x.com/Refusing2Forget/status/1697578749280014573?s=20
FBI agents interviewed at least some of the @NAACP’s clients. One said a Ranger implied that this individual’s asserting of their constitutional rights could lead to him being fired from his job. That was an effort to stop the desegregation lawsuit.
Rangers and other state agents took most of the plaintiffs in the NAACP school desegregation case to a Justice of the Peace in Dallas where they were interrogated about their roles in the suit.
Given Hoover’s notorious opposition to civil rights, unsurprisingly the FBI concluded that no civil rights violations had taken place. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/federal-bureau-investigation-fbi
Texas’ state government then moved aggressively against the NAACP. A Ranger piloted a plan that carried an assistant attorney general to 8 cities in 3 days to raid NAACP offices and seize records. A state judge then issued an injunction against the org.
In the following years, the Rangers were important shock troops against Black and Mexican-American civil rights efforts, allowing white mobs to threaten Black children attempting to enroll in school, and beating activists. https://x.com/Refusing2Forget/status/1642143914785230849?s=20
The @txrangermuseum, supported by @cityofwaco, ignores most of these events, presumably because they are at odds with the goal of celebrating the Rangers. @wacotrib
Indeed, this June the Museum inducted Homer Garrison, head of @TxDPS in 1956, into its Hall of Fame, with no mention of this or similar incidents. https://www.texasranger.org/texas-ranger-museum/museum-collections/hall-of-fame/homer-garrison-jr/
Key sources for this post are Thurgood Marshall’s FBI file — view here — and Doug Swanson’s “Cult of Glory,” especially page 332.
