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To me, a writer who studies the lives of people and shares them through journalism, this episode involving supporters of the Texas Rangers (the original ones, not the ballclub) is somewhat frightening.
Public records show that supporters, including the director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, tried to discredit author Doug J. Swanson for his courageous analysis of Rangers’ history in his 2020 book, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.
In doing so, their actions only further underline Swanson’s main point. In this cult, if you dare to counter Ranger orthodoxy, you will pay a price.
They compiled a dossier on Swanson and drew up what I’ll call an “enemies list” of reporters who previously portrayed the Rangers in a negative light.
A top supporter of the Rangers hired a Houston public relations firm to counter Swanson’s arguments about the sordid history of the mostly beloved Rangers.
The supporter, Russell S. Molina, a Houston businessman and chairman of the non-profit Texas Ranger Bicentennial 2023, told me he paid for the public relations firm that attacked Swanson’s book.
In an interview, Molina insisted that Swanson created “a flawed book.”
“His version is different from other versions out there,” Molina says. To which I add, that’s why you write a new book.
Mythmaking
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Rangers. Historians trace their founding all the way back to 1823, long before Texas became a state.
Embedded in Rangers’ lore are their polished myth-making abilities.
Molina and Byron A. Johnson, the longtime museum director and public employee for the city of Waco, proved by their actions against Swanson that they do indeed belong to a cult of glory.
Johnson declined to discuss this with me.
In one email to Molina, Johnson identified weaknesses in the myth-making process.
Some inductees in the Hall of Fame fought for the South in the Civil War, they or their family owned slaves or they are perceived as anti-civil rights in their treatment of Blacks, Latinos and native Americans. Of 31 inductees, 17 have image problems, Johnson concluded.
The dossier
At one point during the back and forth between Swanson and arch-critic Molina, Molina told the author, “I know all about you.”
“What do you mean by that?” Swanson asked.
“We have a dossier on you.”
In response, Swanson, who previously worked 33 years at The Dallas Morning News as a top reporter, filed an open records request with the city of Waco for any documents that mention his name or his book.
The city, which owns and manages the Ranger museum, provided Swanson with what he says were 2,000 pages. But not all were relevant.
Among them:
- Swanson’s writing history, including his previous books.
- A list of 25 news reporters from various media who had written critical stories about the Rangers and might be expected to do so again.
- A list of Ranger Hall of Famers whose stains on their reputations make them vulnerable.
- A list of Hall of Famers who didn’t have similar stains and whose stories should be promoted.
Molina told me he is not an apologist for Rangers’ history, which he calls “the good, the bad and the ugly.” He acknowledges “there are things in the past you can’t celebrate.”
Swanson wrote in response to one critic, “The Rangers and their supporters have lied about their history. That is my conclusion based on my research. The proof of it is demonstrated in every chapter, repeatedly and thoroughly. It is beyond dispute.”
Love Field statue
You might remember the statue of the Texas Ranger that welcomed visitors to Dallas Love Field. In 2020, D magazine printed an excerpt from Swanson’s book about the Ranger honored in that landmark statue.
Swanson reported how Sgt. Jay Banks, model for the statue, did not in 1956 stop anti-segregationists from blocking school entry of Blacks in Mansfield and Texarkana. Apologists say he was following orders of the governor.
Shortly after the excerpt appeared, the statue was quietly removed.
Molina is trying to find a new home for the statue. He says he hopes to make an announcement soon.
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‘A fable factory’
To lead the campaign against Swanson, Molina hired Begala McGrath, a Houston PR firm.
In one memo, Jim McGrath called the book “an attack” on the Rangers. McGrath did not respond to The Watchdog’s request for an interview.
Rather than take the punch, museum director Johnson fought back.
But after seeing through open records the amount of work Johnson, a public employee, did on work time, especially helping the PR firm, Swanson asks, “Is that the proper role for a publicly funded library?” (The museum hosts a Rangers research center.)
Among Swanson’s findings, he writes that the Rangers’ idea of border patrol was, in some cases, murder of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
He writes that long ago Rangers “were the violent instruments of oppression. They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents. They committed war crimes. … They hunted runaway slaves for bounty. They violated international law with impunity. They sometimes moved through Texas towns like a rampaging gang of thugs.
“They conspired to quash the civil rights of Black citizens. They busted unions and broke strikes. They enforced racial segregation in public schools. They botched important criminal investigations. … And they completely lied about it.”
And that’s only from page 5 of a 466-page book.
In an interview, Swanson questioned why so much effort has been unleashed to harm him.
“Why is Molina still attacking me more than three years after the book was published?” he asked. “It presents truths they don’t want to acknowledge. … But these truths won’t go away. These guys are literally selling the myth. As I said in the book, the Rangers and their enablers operated a propaganda mill. Molina and his crowd are merely the latest iteration of that.”
As Swanson writes, “For decades, the Rangers operated a fable factory through which many of their defeats, worst embarrassments, and darkest moments were recast as grand triumphs. They didn’t merely whitewash the truth. They destroyed it.”
In a statement denouncing the book, the Texas Ranger Association Foundation reminded that Rangers catch criminals, help small town police departments and work cold cases.
“Some really good stuff,” the statement added. “They are deeply woven into the history of the state.”
The library
One more troubling piece of this campaign, in addition to creating a collection of reporters on an enemies list, is violation of a researcher’s privacy. Under established library rules and Texas state law, whatever books or research used by anyone in a public library is confidential. Violation is a misdemeanor for “official misconduct.”
Molina, who is not a public official, told me that Swanson “claimed he spent a lot of time doing research” in the museum’s research center. “That’s not true,” Molina told me. Records showed that as part of the campaign, librarians were asked if Swanson contacted them to discuss any “lies or myths.”
When I told Molina that state law and library ethics require that researchers’ activities in a library must remain confidential, he answered, “I have no idea about that. I just know he didn’t spend a significant amount of time doing research to back up this book, and if you asked him, that’s the truth.”
I asked him. “The book took six years,” Swanson answered. “The book has 43 pages of single-spaced endnotes and bibliography. It’s all there for readers to make their own assessments.”
Plus, he used other libraries across the state.
“Bottom line, I wrote my book,” he says. “I am proud of it. I stand by it.”
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