The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 295
616 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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W. P. Webb's Texas Rangers
or Chicanos for whom the Rangers are "the Mexican-American's Ku
Klux Klan."' Some civil rights leaders would like to retire the Rangers
as law-enforcement officials or have them serve only for ceremonial
functions.8 On March 16, 1969, the San Antonio Express News had
a feature article contrasting the opinion of Senator Joe Bernal of Bexar
County, exponent of disbanding the force, with that of the Depart-
ment of Public Safety, which was requesting funds for more Rangers.
The newspaper quoted Webb on the Rangers and concluded: "Abolish
them? Hardly. They are a special breed." The entire Houston Chron-
icle magazine section of February 9, 1969, was devoted to the Ranger
problem under the title of "The Texas Ranger: His Heritage, His
Modern Role, and His Critics." Critic or advocate, the Texas citizen
must recognize that the role of the Ranger in the 1970's and the
qualifications for his job are several far cries from the Ranger's func-
tions at the end of the Mexican War in 1849 and even from the prob-
lems facing him when his history first attracted Webb in 1919. The
force has taken its lumps at various times in its long history-at the
time of the legislative investigation of 1919, during prohibition's "no-
ble experiment" of the 192o's, and in 1935, when, as it reached its cen-
tennial year, the Ranger force lost its separate identity if not its name,
and became one of the divisions of the Department of Public Safety.
Webb traces the general story in his Texas Rangers, but specific exam-
ples of Ranger service which he detailed in his series for the Michigan
State Trooper' have scant coverage in the book. One wonders which
details he would have included in his contemplated revision.
Webb took his B.A. degree at the University of Texas in 1915. He
was twenty-seven years old. He had taught in country schools on a
second-grade certificate before he entered the University in 1909. Then
he had taken two years out to earn enough to be able to finish his
college work. During the school year 1911-1912 he taught in a country
school in Throckmorton County; and, in 1913-1914, at Beeville, he
taught history because he had taken two courses in that field at the
University, one in mediaeval history under Frederic Duncalf and one
in institutional history under Lindley Miller Keasbey. After he re-
'Ben H. Procter, "The Modern Texas Rangers: A Law Enforcement Dilemma in the
Rio Grande Valley," in John Alexander Carroll (ed.), Reflections of Western Historians
(Tucson, 1969), 215.
sAustin American, September 3, 1969.
'Between 1924 and 1927 Webb contributed eighteen articles to the Michigan State
Trooper. See notes 43, 45, 46, 47, and 48.295
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971, periodical, 1971; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101200/m1/307/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.