Southwestern Historical Quarterly

On Friday, October 18, 1935, at a time and place of racial unease, a detachment of Texas Rangers dispatched by Governor James Allred arrived in San Augustine bringing liberation from the years-long depredations of the McClanahan-Burleson gang. East Texas Troubles narrates the Ranger campaign begun there during the Ranger transition from paramilitary frontier defense to elite law enforcement. At the same time Allred initiated reforms to end statewide political corruption, Rangers of Company C mobilized quickly to end overt criminal domination of both workingclass Anglos and African Americans powerless to resist intimidation from criminal factions in rural East Texas. Captain James McCormick and his force arrived on a three-fold mission: to drive out or arrest gang leaders, to investigate prior years' gang activities, and to prosecute the hundreds of accusations through indictment and trial.

Prior to Allred, law enforcement in San Augustine was subject to the whims of Governor Miriam Ferguson's political minions' carrying special (purchased) appointments, and their selective enforcement had accommodated thievery, extortion, and racketeering by Charles McClanahan and his thugs. Allred's pledge to eradicate the San Augustine anarchy led to revoking the "Ferguson Ranger" appointments, replacing them with determined professionals ("Allred Rangers") who began building community ties while publicly confronting and intimidating gang leaders. In two months, Allred Rangers had gained the advantage, ending the reign of terror.

As the situation there unfolded, McCormick's team adopted tactics that breached customary racial mores. Proactive outreach with the African American community was effective. Although violence in the White community drove requests for Texas Ranger reinforcements, aggressive investigations revealed the extent of crimes against the more vulnerable Black rural population. Once convinced that Ranger protection included them [End Page 110] as well, Black people provided information and testimony that reestablished stability and order. Despite the eventual demise of the McClanahan faction, however, Jim Crow would linger. Nevertheless, "the collaborative effort between black and white … and the Allred Rangers lifted the community … in an unprecedented defiance of cultural norms" (145).

Author Jody Edward Ginn constructed East Texas Troubles from court records, newspaper articles, archival holdings, interviews, and secondary material. Given the preponderance of material in which White Texans were principals during dramatic incidents such as the shotgun ambush of Edward Brackett or the daylight shootout in downtown San Augustine that killed four people, Ginn might have couched this narrative as a twentieth-century reform crusade. Yet reform also meant the racial alliance that gave Rangers the advantage, suggesting a glimmer of nascent moral sensitivity at work. In context, however, the Ranger-Black Texan coalition was a component of a larger community recovery effort important to, but not strictly the focus of, Ginn's research. Captain McCormick devised a sophisticated strategy that ran counter to freewheeling shootouts. The long-awaited cleanup was complicated, and tracing the larger story was difficult. Appeals, trial delays, or changes of venue, for instance, left gaps if public records failed to include their mention or reference, as occasionally occurred. "The limited volume and type of records surviving in San Augustine is far from unique as most localities lack the resources necessary for maintaining closed cases for decades on end" (178). The omissions are not fatal, however, and the San Augustine operation joins Ranger lore.

East Texas Troubles is not a "one-riot-one-Ranger" tale. The San Augustine cleanup was a yearlong effort during which Rangers developed tactics empowering local Black people to defy oppression in Jim Crow society. Fair disclosure: Ginn is the great-grandnephew of Allred Ranger Dan Hines. He does not romanticize Ranger interactions with Black San Augustinians or suggest they led to permanent racial healing, and his book is an objective and well-told chronicle of Ranger professionalism that briefly overrode social prejudice.