Refusing to Forget

21,000+ people used our resources this year—teachers, students, journalists, families. Help us keep this history accessible. Support Refusing to Forget this #GivingTuesday.
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The forced resignation of Kate Rogers of the Alamo Trust, the firing of Tom Alter from TX State, & lawsuits against historians & journalists are all aimed at suppressing certain historical truths.

Virtual Talk Tonight! Join us as we bring together these powerful voices to reflect on this urgent moment & the ongoing struggle to protect truthful history. @stevanzetti.bsky.social @drmphillipsut.bsky.social
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Our virtual event is just one week away! Join us as we bring together these powerful voices to reflect on this urgent moment & the ongoing struggle to protect truthful history.
@stevanzetti.bsky.social @drmphillipsut.bsky.social
Access this event on our Patreon:
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La caminata honors 'the last colonial rebellion', Trump fights SNAP payments in court, election day set for Tuesday Trinidad Gonzales, who co-founded the history project Refusing to Forget, said the murders happened "in response to the last colonial rebellion by ethnic Mexicans against U.S. sovereignty."

On Sunday, local community members made the yearly walk to the Matanza of 1915 historical marker. RTF cofounder @gonzalest956.bsky.social, said the murders happened "in response to the last colonial rebellion by ethnic Mexicans against U.S. sovereignty."
www.acrosstheamericas.com/la-caminata-...

Dia de los Muertos Altar - Refusing to Forget Day of the Dead is a celebration of Life.

🕯Día de los Muertos is upon us.🕯
Join us in remembering the stories and honoring the lives of those who have been victims of racial violence in Texas and those who have fought against these cultures of violence.
View our virtual ofrendas on our website.
refusingtoforget.org/dia-de-los-m...

Refusing to Forget members are @ccarmona.bsky.social, Juan Carmona, John Morán González, Sonia Hernández, @benjaminhjohns1.bsky.social, @leahlao.bsky.social, Monica Muñoz Martínez and @alacranita.bsky.social, another co-founder is @gonzalest956.bsky.social. /20

Refusing to Forget (@refusing2forget.bsky.social) An award-winning public history project committed to sharing the history of state-sanctioned violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas.

This thread is a part of the #OTD in Ranger history campaign that refusing2forget.bsky.social is running this year. Follow this handle or refusingtoforget.org/ranger-bicentennial-project/ and visit our website refusingtoforget.org to learn more. /19

About Understanding our history of racial injustice America’s history of racial inequality continues to undermine fair treatment, equal justice, and opportunity for many Americans. The Equal Justice Initiat...

Despite Molina’s call to “learn more about the Rangers” and “their whole history,” Ranger defenders appear to have learned nothing from the dark side of their history, since they won’t even acknowledge egregious incidents like this one. /18 calendar.eji.org/about

Homer Garrison, Jr. Summary of service for this honored Texas Ranger

In summer of 2023, the TX Ranger Museum inducted Garrison into its Hall of Fame. His entry makes no mention of his blackface performance, Banks' cooperation with mobs, or Allee's thuggery. /17 www.texasranger.org/Hall-of-Fame...

They didn’t like his book on the Texas Rangers, so they tried to smear his reputation ‘Texas Rangers operated a fable factory.’ So says the author of a critical book who got knocked down because he refused to play along. Here’s what happened to...

In 2020, Dallas authorities removed a statue modeled after Banks from Love Field. Molina, chair of the Ranger bicentennial commission, tells the press that he is seeking another location. /16 www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdo...

Opinion: Examining the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Parts of Texas Rangers History In marking the Rangers’ bicentennial, we should engage with critiques of the organization’s history and have more open, honest discussions.

Ranger defenders ignore instances like Garrison’s performance. Russell Molina called for an honest exploration of Ranger history, absurdly stating that they “aggressively defended the civil and due-process rights of African Americans" during Jim Crow. /15 www.texasmonthly.com/opinion/exam...

Lee Roy Young becomes first Black Ranger - Refusing to Forget #OTD in 1988, Lee Roy Young became the first African American man to be allowed to join the Texas Rangers.

Not until 1988 would the modern Rangers, under extensive pressure from the NAACP, hire a Black officer. /14 refusingtoforget.org/lee-roy-youn...

In the 1960s, Ranger Captain A.Y. Allee brutalized numerous Mexican-American labor and civil rights leaders, including an 18 year old José Angel Gutiérrez. /13 bsky.app/profile/refu...

Later that year, Texas attorney general John Ben Shepperd obtained a restraining order against the Texas NAACP , forcing branches to suspend operation, in what Thurgood Marshall called “the greatest crisis” in the organization’s history. /12 medium.com/timeline/two...

60 years ago, 3 black teens tried to enroll in Mansfield High — ‘never’ was the reply Mansfield school superintendent told first black applicants ‘never’

Banks’ comment that white members of the mob “were just salt-of-the earth citizens who had been stirred up by agitators” was consistent with Garrison’s lampooning of the NAACP since that group was often blamed for being the proverbial outside agitator. /11 www.star-telegram.com/news/local/a...

During the 1956 protest against desegregation at Mansfield High School, John Pyles held a baby alligator as a warning to any African American who appeared on the school grounds that they would be “gator bait.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection/University of Texas at Arlington Library)

In 1956, Ranger Jay Banks declined to protect Black students attempting to enroll in high school at Mansfield and junior college in Texarkana from white mobs. /10 refusingtoforget.org/mansfield-sc...

Yet to Garrison and others in the TX DPS, the idea that Black people deserved the protection of the law was, literally, a joke. The laughter from the crowd shows that many in the DPS felt similarly. Worse, under his direction Rangers aided and abetted attacks on civil rights. /9

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Opinion; May 17, 1954; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; National Archives. View All Pages in t...

As Texas’ lead law enforcement officer, Garrison had an obligation to enforce the law equally. Eight years earlier, the Supreme Court had struck down segregated schools as a violation of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause. /8 www.archives.gov/milestone-do...

About three minutes in, Garrison begins signing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in a heavy dialect. The crowd applauds when the song ends, and an emcee comes on stage and says “we hope that we don’t have them with us again.” /7

“We had a meetin’ last night,” Garrison continued, “we think we’re entitled to the same privileges as anybody else.” The crowd titters and a second, unidentified man in blackface joins him, and the two banter. /6

Garrison appeared early in the 1962 DPS talent show. He came onto the stage in blackface and said “I represent the DPS chapter of the NAACP,” leading the other man on stage to immediately start laughing. /5 texasarchive.org/2009_00902

Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype Learn the history behind common African American stereotypes. #ANationsStory

Garrison’s blackface minstrelsy drew on nearly a century of racist history in which whites blackened their faces with burnt cork or shoe polish and portrayed Black people as “lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice.” /4 nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stor...

Homer Garrison, Jr. Summary of service for this honored Texas Ranger

At its opening in 1968, the @txrangermuseum was initially named after him. One of the museum’s galleries today bears his name, and just this year he was enrolled in the Hall of Fame. /3 www.texasranger.org/Hall-of-Fame...

Garrison’s importance to the Rangers is hard to overstate. He oversaw the Rangers transformation into a unit of the TX DPS, which he ran for 30 yrs. He approved a revised badge design –still worn by Rangers today- in 1962, the same year as his performance./2 www.texasranger.org/Pages/Resear...

On an unknown date in October 1962, Homer Garrison, Director of Texas DPS and Chief of the Texas Rangers, dressed in blackface for a work picnic and lampooned the NAACP. A thread on Garrison and racism in the modern Rangers./1 CW: racist language and depictions
texasarchive.org/2009_00902

Refusing to Forget members are @ccarmona.bsky.social, Juan Carmona, John Morán González, Sonia Hernández, @benjaminhjohns1.bsky.social, @leahlao.bsky.social, Monica Muñoz Martínez and @alacranita.bsky.social, another co-founder is @gonzalest956.bsky.social. /17

Refusing to Forget (@refusing2forget.bsky.social) An award-winning public history project committed to sharing the history of state-sanctioned violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas.

This thread is a part of the #OTD in Ranger history campaign that refusing2forget.bsky.social is running this year. Follow this handle or refusingtoforget.org/ranger-bicentennial-project/ and visit our website refusingtoforget.org to learn more. /16

Borders of Violence and Justice Brian Behnken offers a sweeping examination of the interactions between Mexican-origin people and law enforcement—both legally codified police agencies and...

The key source for this thread is @historybrian.bsky.social’s uncpress.org/book/9781469.... /15

Because Lopez was labeled as a “bandit,” Hamer and the other Rangers could easily escape any kind of sanction or punishment for his death. Instead Hamer need only report that he had killed some “bandits,” as Rangers so often had in the previous decade. /14