Thread by @Refusing2Forget

#OTD in 1916 José Morin and Victoriano Ponce disappeared while in the custody of Ranger Capt. JJ Sanders, pictured here in a photo from @txrangermuseum. The men were suspected of attacks against US citizens but neither had been tried or formally accused. /1

Newspapers reported the men were shot while trying to escape Ranger custody. While technically possible, ‘shot while escaping’ was a common Ranger excuse for executing prisoners, especially ethnic Mexicans, in cold blood. /2

Contemporaries recognized this excuse to murder captives, as this editorial in The Daily Bulletin of Brownwood, TX shows. But the author, presumably a white person, was more concerned with the (white) Rangers’ honor than the illegal murder of 2 Mexicans. /3

Others protested the incident’s racial dimensions. The Rangers arrested newspaper editor Manuel Gonzales with Morin and Ponce. When Thomas Hook, a local Anglo lawyer, helped get Gonzales released, Gonzales asked for advice on protesting his treatment. /4

Hook helped him and others write a petition to President Woodrow Wilson outlining the recent violence. They started with a description of the Rangers’ role in Morin and Ponce’s disappearances. /5

The authors also told Wilson the Rangers’ actions gave them “reason to believe that our liberty and even our very lives are menaced.” Wilson never responded, but Capt. JJ Sanders did. /6

Sanders encountered Hook in a local courthouse sometime later and demanded, “Are you that son of a bitch that wrote that petition at Kingsville?” When Hook defended the petition, Sanders pistol-whipped him. /7

Sanders later defended the attack, calling the petition signers “outlaw Mexicans” and claiming it was his “duty as a citizen to protect myself, my men and my people, from such outrageous talk.” /8

That Sanders felt pistol-whipping a lawyer in a courthouse was a suitable method of defense, though, just demonstrates the culture of extra-legal violence in which the Rangers operated. /9

Hook and Sanders described the incident during the Canales investigation, a 1919 state legislative hearing led by representative José Tomás Canales into Ranger violence toward Mexicans and Mexican Americans. /10

https://twitter.com/Refusing2Forget/status/1620045031146160131?s=20

The full hearing transcripts are online. You can read Hook’s testimony in Volume I starting on page 238 and Sanders’ testimony in Volume III starting on page 1382. /11
[LINK: tsl.texas.gov/treasures/law/…]

The #TexasRangers have a long history of attacking civilians and ignoring the rule of law, as JJ Sanders did to José Morin, Victoriano Ponce, Manuel Gonzales, and Thomas Hook and this year @Refusing2Forget is documenting it. Follow to learn more! /12

This thread is a part of the #OTD in Ranger history campaign that @Refusing2Forget is running this year. Follow this twitter handle or refusingtoforget.org/ranger-bicente…, and visit our website refusingtoforget.org to learn more. /13

Refusing to Forget members are @ccarmonawriter @carmona2208 @acerift @soniahistoria
@BenjaminHJohns1 @LeahLochoa @MonicaMnzMtz and @Alacranita, another co-founder is @GonzalesT956 /14

@emmpask @sdcroll @HistoryBrian @LorienTinuviel
@hangryhistorian, @ddsanchez432, @elprofeml, and @littlejohnjeff are other scholars working on this project. /15