Evolution of the Texas Rangers

Criminal Justice

Protecting the Rights of All:

The Evolution of the Texas Rangers

Texas represents a fascinating study in what it means to be an American. The meeting place of many different cultures, the state experienced the best and the worst of frontier life and settlement. The Spanish settled among the Native Americans, and later still, settler arrived from the fledgling United States. Texas was, in those days, largely wide-open frontier. Its vast spaces could not easily be controlled. Each of the above peoples, therefore, possessed its own brand of culture; its own ideas about what was right, and what was wrong - its own ideas about justice. The sudden, large-scale influx of' Americans upset the traditional balance that had gradually been created during centuries of Spanish rule.

Somehow, order had to be maintained. First proposed by Stephen Fuller Austin, the Texas Rangers were a paramilitary force that served in the absence of sufficient regular troops. Considering the instability of conditions in the early days, the Rangers would remain mostly military until the 1870s, after which they took on their modern police functions. (Campbell, 2003, p. 115)

From that time onward, the Texas Rangers would play a pivotal role in safeguarding the rights and freedoms of people all across Texas.

As the Texas frontier became more sure, and more safely within the bounds of the United States, and also after the Civil War,

The Texas Rangers were reestablished in 1874 by a newly elected Democratic governor and the state legislature. Two distinct forces were created: a "frontier battalion" comprising six companies of seventy-five men each for controlling the Indians on the western frontier, and a "special force" of rangers sent to the southwest sections in order to suppress bandit activity along the Mexican border.

(Bechtel, 1995, p. 34)

While these activities could still be called "soldierly," they do represent the slow movement of the Rangers toward a genuine police role. After all, the protection of life and limb is deemed, by no less a document than the Declaration of Independence, to be necessary to the pursuit of happiness. The Texas Rangers, in something resembling their original form, proved useful so long as Texas was still sparsely settled and "wide-open" territory. But as modern ideas of policing and criminal justice began to develop, the Rangers saw dramatic changes take place in their organization and its role.

By the early twentieth century, Texas' other state and local police systems had become more formalized and disciplined, and hence the Rangers no longer were a significant means of protection and law enforcement. In 1935, the dwindling force was placed under the Texas Department of Public Safety and its duties limited to activities such as riot control and other special assignments. (Vila & Morris, 1999, p. 29)

The increasingly limited use of the Texas Rangers was actually a reflection of positive developments in Texan society. As local municipalities began to improve their own forces, and as the State of Texas implemented a more "scientific" kind of state police, the Rangers were, in effect, becoming an anachronism. (Vila & Morris, 1999, p. 29)

Yet, the Texas Rangers had carved out a niche for themselves in the history of the State. Having been celebrated as romantic heroes, during the wild frontier days, the Rangers continued to exist, confident no doubt, that they would one day again play a prominent role in the lives of the people of Texas.

As far back as the 1930s, the Texas Rangers became involved in the African-American struggle for full citizenship and civil rights. The Rangers were summoned to protect two Black men who had been called for jury duty. (Klarman, 2004, p. 154) Unfortunately, the same fabled Rangers operated on the other side of the fence when it came to their interactions with Mexican-Americans. According to Joan Moore in a 1970s work, "For decades the Texas Rangers terrorized the Mexican-Americans of the Rio Grande Valley, and even today, although they are reduced in numbers, los rinches are still used to 'handle' Mexicans." (Feagin, 2001, p. 218) the Rangers were also commonly used as a kind of border patrol. Though Mexicans and Mexican-Americans often suffered at their hands, the Texas Rangers came to be idolized by the State's White Population:

The Texas Ranger had acquired a strong and positive standing in myth, "eulogized, idolized and elevated to the status of one of the truly heroic figures in American history." In 1935, the historian Walter Prescott Webb published an influential study that reinforced the image of the Texas Ranger as "a man standing alone between a society and its enemies," a law officer who was also "a very quiet, deliberate, gentle person who could gaze calmly into the eye of a murderer, divine his thoughts, and anticipate his action, a man who could ride straight up to death." (Limerick, 1987, p. 257)

Thus, the Texas Ranger's achievement of mythic status was largely the outgrowth of the equally powerful myth of the frontier. Most importantly, the mythologized Texas Ranger personified the qualities of rugged-individualism and self-reliance. The Texas Ranger was a model for all Americans. He fought for what was his, and helped to protect the weak, and the less fortunate. The fact that the Texas Rangers eventually became a sort of elite state police force, in no way changed the public's impression of the organization. Perhaps, this is the real gift of the Rangers to Texas, and to the nation - that they represent, at least in the minds and hearts of their fellow citizens all that is good and noble in the American Character. Truly, the Texas Ranger is larger than life.