J. T. Canales and the Texas Rangers

In 1919, Jose Tomas Canales, South Texas patron and state representative, filed legislation to reform the Texas Rangers that spawned two weeks of hearings in the state capitol. Only Canales could have brought about this series of events. His power, privilege, and perspective made him uniquely qualified to challenge the Rangers. Threatened with violence by a Ranger for daring to call out atrocities, attacked in print and in the state house for his own ethnic heritage, ridiculed as a shill for corrupt political interests, and accused of plotting the elimination of the Ranger Force, Canales persevered to present the full, often unsavory, history of the Rangers through public testimony.

In J. T. Canales and the Texas Rangers, author Richard H. Ribb chronicles the daily testimony and context of the 1919 hearings to reveal the main currents of social, racial, and political forces taking shape in early twentieth-century Texas. Canales was unsuccessful at the time in reforming the Rangers, but ultimately several of his ideas endured in subsequent legislation and policy. This analysis of the Canales hearings provides an unprecedented exposure of state-sanctioned violence and its aftermath.