“I was first here when I was starting to research a number of aspects of one individual in this book who happened to be my grandmother’s brother, his name was Dan Hines; he was one of the East Texas Rangers, you will see him right here on the cover of the book, which by the way I didn’t pick this cover, it was done by the publisher recognizing the significance of this picture which we will talk about.

Dan Hines is standing there holding a rifle, a pistol in his belt and he is smiling over here at this young man, an African American man, also wearing a pistol belt in 1935.

Governor James E. Alred comes into office in 1935, replacing Ma Ferguson. One of the errors that people say is that she disbanded the Rangers In the recent movie, the Highwayman. They said that, but she didn’t disband the Rangers. But what she did was desecrate their reputation.

Ma and Pa Fergusonwere known for taking bribes, corruption, selling pardons and that’s a big part of their legacy. But there was another part and that was demoralizing and diminishing state law enforcement in particularly the Texas Rangers by running off reputable and experienced lawmen and replacing them with political cronies. S

She was also notorious for giving out in her last term, thousands, for what is called Special Ranger Commissions. This is not a Texas Ranger. There are those who think that anyone who has “Ranger” in their name is a Texas Ranger, but that just represents a lack of knowledge or expertise of how these officers, where they get their authority. They are based on separate laws and based on a separate entity by a totally different chain of command. We have Special Rangers to this day.

A Southwestern Cattle Raisers Investigator are likely to be carrying on with a Special Ranger's commission. They will be the first to tell you they are not a Texas Ranger, they are a special ranger. They do have legal law enforcement authority, and that’s the root of the problem.

So, she’s giving out these commissions to people with no experience and no supervision, because what Special Rangers are supposed to be is something like that, a cattle association investigator, a railroad investigator, and we still have those. Today, a modern one is the National Insurance Crime Bureau. If they work in Texas they can get a special ranger commission. It comes with state law enforcement authority to pack a gun.

Back in 1935, the only people legally authorized to carry a handgun were law enforcement officers, or special rangers. They could also make arrests. They would get what is called a warrant of authority. It looks very similar, the core document looks like a Texas Ranger document, like other state law enforcement. The difference is that they mark out the company name and then instead of it saying Texas Ranger, instead it would say Cattle Investigator, or Railroad Investigator. But when Ma Ferguson handed them out it was to anyone without any law enforcement experience. People who would get a Ma Ferguson commission were to support her campaign.

There are thousands of letters in her papers of people that wrote in and demanding a commission. If they could demonstrate they were part of her campaign, they would get one. They were not being paid by anybody, and so they were not being supervised by anybody. They were running around in the community with that law enforcement authority. Some of them kept them and didn’t do anything wrong with it, they just liked to show it to their friends, “Isn’t that cool?” But some of them, like in San Augustine, used them to oppress the community, and and build their power to help them engage in wider criminal activities.

The actual Special Texas Ranger law enforcement officers actually took over a still and arrested the guys and ended up actually running the still themselves. So there was a real problem in law enforcement and that’s the connection to the Highwaymen (the movie). Bonnie and Clyde were running rampart for two years. That’s what that movie was about. But it’s not about Bonnie and Clyde it’s about Frank Hammer, Manny Gault, and other law enforcement officers that tracked them down and finally killed them. You don’t see Bonnie and Clyde except for a little tidbit, you will see the side or the back until the last scene right as they are facing their inevitability.

Under the Ferguson's, state law enforcement was so decimated and so demoralized that Bonnie and Clyde are running all over the country, but definitely throughout the state of Texas. These criminals in San Augustine had taken over completely. They can’t get these people prosecuted and they are murdering people in the streets, in broad daylight, on the town square. You’ve heard about the infamous Hardware store shootout, and that’s when people there today know about the shootout, but until the book came out they didn’t know a lot of the details. There are a few myths that built up around it, and there are a variety of directions but still today the hardware shootout is well known in San Augustine, especially for anyone that is 60 or above, but even the younger people know about it. And that’s what I first learned about was the hardware store shootout, and then some other murders, again right on the town square.

Then, there was the beating of a Secret Service Agent on the fairgrounds in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people . It was like a story out of a bad western movie, “we don’t allow the feds in our town…. “ I’m paraphrasing but they told him that. And two, three, or four of them had Ferguson Special Ranger commissions, and the sheriff was involved in it, the sheriff at that time was one of them.
All of that violence when it first came out it got into the press and that is what brought it out to the public. That’s what got my attention for all of this. I dug deeper into the press, and I was on the force for almost 20 years. I was here in 2002 on the Mattie Show in 2002, and there’s a connection that I will talk about more at the end that there was a case in Center and Hines was here. So I’ve been working on this for a long time.

I was in law enforcement and that was my first career, but it was this story that led me into my second career, as historian. As I was researching, I was actually reading the records. Most criminal cases 90 95 percent plead out. The prosecution and the defense come to some kind of agreement and they plead out, and the person pleads no contest they are guilty and they take their punishment. And it has to be because if we were to try every case we would need a thousand times the manpower to try every case.

The bad thing about that for history’s sake is that when there is a plea there is no trial and when there is no trial there is no records of testimony. That court recorder sits up there and records their testimonies. Even if there is a trial, a small percentage of those who go to trial get an appeal and an appeal is the only way for those cases because the court reporter does (the records) in a special code – and I don’t pretend to know that because in my area it is not my specialty. It’s like another language. And they don’t transcribe that in English unless someone pays them to translate them. They get paid for going to court, but where they make their real money is during those transcriptions. They only get paid for that when an attorney uses it for his trial in the defense of their client.

It’s a very tiny percentage of those cases that go to trial. So in the case of San Augustine there were like 44 that were indicted during that clean-up. Hundreds of years of prison sentences were given out. I found 6 trial transcripts from it that survived in a court of criminal appeals that went all the way up . In Texas we have two separate top courts, the Texas Supreme Court only hears civil, lawsuits not like the US. Supreme Court which hears criminal and civil.

The Texas Supreme Court only hears civil and it usually is over money and that kind of thing, and Court of Criminal Appeals hears criminal cases and those records go into the state archives. That’s all that was appealed that made it all the way up and survived the courtrooms, the criminal appeals. That’s actually relatively a high percentage when you look at it the averages, maybe 90 to 95 percent of cases just plea out. And that’s what you find in these cases, the majority plead out, so there was never a trial, they didn’t ask for one, it was their prerogative and so we don’t get the record, unfortunately. The big case, and that is what was disappointing, over ostensibly was the ring leader of this gang. He got 99 years for the assassination of a man driving into town about the time he got across the bayou bridge and he shoots him from the bushes. And he got 99 years for that, he got away with it for half a decade, but the prosecutors at the time were smart and they had gotten the case dismissed without prejudice which means it can be tried again, and he could be charged again later.

Nobody was willing to serve on grand jury, much less jury, or testify; the witnesses were leaving town when they found they were going to be called to witness against one of these guys. A man that I got to meet who was an eyewitness to the hardware store shootout and he was still alive when I was working on this until a few years ago when he had found out I was working on this. He was an eyewitness. He had never told anybody.

His adult son, who was older than me, had never heard about it until after he told me, and then he called him up and said hey I’ve met this man working on his book and I told him something about this. His dad had been on one of those grand juries who had refused to indict this guy previously and he was twelve at the time and his dad told him don’t you ever tell a soul because you won’t survive it. He moved on with life and kept it a secret, until he finally shared it because of a lot of details debunked some myths on both sides. His name was Sidney Lister. He had moved away from San Augustine, had gone into the navy during world war two. When he got back from the navy he went to college and ended up in San Marcos College and got a job he worked at for 30-40 years and then retired in Austin living around his family. But he got the San Augustine paper his whole life every week. A lot of his brothers are here and are in their mid 90’s and are all as sharp as a tack.

People were in fear and wouldn’t testify. We had this one lady who was a child when all of this was going on and they lived way outside of town, and their house was way back on their own land, and her parents, in their own home, in the evening, with nobody around would whisper when they talked about the troubles and all that was going around. Perpetual fear.

The grandson from one of the victims told me from the earliest time he could remember, his dad kept a 45 revolver in the glove compartment of their car. He thought that those came standard with a Ford v-8. It was always there.

That is the thing that this book is about because a lot of times these folks get forgotten, but it shaped these families for generations. We had the grandson here with us back at the end of July in San Augustine, and he got interviewed by the Lufkin News Channel , I had actually talked to his cousin because they had actually not had contact for 50 years. She lived in California. And now they are back in contact. She reached to me because she had seen my dissertation. My book is based on my dissertation, and she was wanting to do some work and research into her family’s history. You’ll read about her mother. She got out of the car as they were driving across the bridge. Her mother had said because they always knew there was a problem, and they said they would do anything if there was a woman with them. So she went one day and got out of the car to visit some friends, and she lived with that guilt the rest of her life. Her daughter had reached to me and gave me the exact same story, the exact same family story and all the details as the gentleman who had told me years ago. This shaped that family and there were other families who were affected too.

When somebody is killed, this reverberates across time. It shapes everything. The Bonnie and Clyde victims, their families are out there. They were really pleased about the Highwayman because a film of that level finally were able to show Bonnie and Clyde as they really were, and doesn’t romanticize and glorify them. Having been an investigator and having to work with victims, that's the kind of stuff of my focus. I try to let their voices come through and let them tell their stories in their own words as much as possible here including the African American victims because that’s the key. There’s three cases from 1935; white juries convicted white men solely on the testimonies of the black victims and witnesses. They further testified that it was the Alred Rangers they fought in their day in court.

Their stuff about highway robbery. And then there were stuff about going to people’s homes and loading up their livestock or implements or whatever and driving away with them. That’s been passed down as their tradition in San Augustine to this day. Using their authority to scam people saying they owed them money, or pseudo law enforcement officers who told them they owed a fine and if they didn’t pay the money they were going to arrest them.

So these three cases represented each one of those type of events. One was a middle aged black woman who was the victim in this case and she testified and that’s what they had done. They had backed up a trailer to her house one day and loaded up her hogs, and drove away. She said I never told anybody because blacks don’t have access to the courts, against whites; they were not able to testify against white victims, much less themselves as a victim. They knew these guys, these special rangers who were running all of this and the local sheriff was in cahoots with them at the time. They were beating up and killing white people, so what chance did they have? So they kept their mouths shut and never told anybody.

And that’s where I came in. I interviewed many other members of the African American community. I talked with a lot of people in their 90s and some in their 100’s. They told me one thing, and it makes total sense, in that place and time if some strange white lawman showed up at their house and told them they heard something about them, how did all these Alred Rangers even find out about them? They did not tell their stories to anyone except another African American, and they would not be telling their stories because they were afraid they would be set up. They had to have a liaison from the community and they believe it was this young man. They told me who they think this young man was. Unfortunately I could not begin to verify it so I don’t give his name. Its clearly evident that he is wearing a gun and hanging out with this thoroughly well known Texas Ranger. The picture itself is immensely significant for the period.

I told a colleague a couple of years ago right after I turned in the initial manuscript to the publisher for review, I was at a Texas State Historical Association for an event. The chief historian who was head of their publication walked by and he’s a Jim Crow era, KKK, specialist, this is his period. He was a senior scholar, chair of Texas University department, and now he’s chief of History affiliated with UT, a very traditional and academic type. He heard me give that description about the cases with the white juries convicting white men and not giving testimonies because they were black, and he just about got whiplash turning around, and said, do you have a publisher? Thank you but I do. That's how meaningful it is and how it goes against common misconceptions between academics who are supposedly studying this.

A lot went on. It’s a lot more complicated and there were a lot more people working together. There’s collaboration between the white community and the black community and the authorities who finally bring this community justice and peace. I found two copies of that photo. One was in the paper, the Dan Hines family had one in their scrapbook his wife at the time had put together for his daughter and she had kept throughout her life and is now in possession of her granddaughter.

Then there was another one in the paper with a guy named Leo Bishop. He’s better known because he came back later and stayed there. So a lot of people in that community who live there now seem to know about him. They knew him when they were kids and went to school with his kids. Leo’s papers had the exact same photo. There were more photos with this one too. There was a photo of Leo and the young man and then there was another picture with Dan by himself by the front of the car. On the bottom of that copy somebody had handwritten in, two ladies. Think about this. Officially, the common understanding of the first African American ranger was appointed in the 1970’s. Was he really appointed rangers? A lot of the records were disposed of years ago unfortunately, so we can’t say that he wasn’t without a name for sure on the records we don’t know. He may have been an honorary thing because he worked with them. Maybe they gave him a special ranger commission. Maybe this pistol was one of theirs and he was just wearing it that time for the picture. Clearly they had a very close and trusting relationship which was unique for which the times they lived.

That’s the overview of this story in San Augustine. While Dan Hines was there he also worked some other cases. He actually became acting captain of Company A. So what’s happening during this time is that Alred sends in all the active rangers , gets rid of the Ferguson rangers, reappoints respected and experienced lawmen like the one s he sends in to San Augustine, but then he sets about with the 44 Texas legislatures to create the Texas Department of Public Safety. Takes the rangers out from under the edge of the general’s arm, which is the state military forces.

They didn’t start out as law enforcement. Texas Rangers originally were frontier defenders . They were a mounted military unit for frontier defense, mostly volunteer in the beginning not institutionalized until 1874, but then they started evolving because the frontier closes and so they start pursuing fugitives on the frontier because that’s where they were at and that's where fugitives go to evade justice. That’s a rough process. In 1901 they make them full peace officers and they start doing more and more of that kind of work. But then the governor started abusing the appointment process and taking direct control of it.

Traditionally, the governor only appointed the adjunct general who would be an experienced military administrator. Then the adjunct general would appoint experienced men as ranger captains and those captains would appoint the members of their company. But, these governors starting around 1910 started taking direct power and the law is kind of vague, so they reorganize once again for the final time into the department of public safety. They put the rangers together with the highway patrol which had been under the highway department. They create some new bureaus, and then on August 10^th of 1935, the Texas DPS comes into being.

I talk a good bit about that in the book, and I’ve got some quotes from the first chairman of the DPS Commission on that first day and I’ve got some quotes from the first director of the DPS. When you get a creative new agency you get some growing pains. The first major reorganization, Captain McCormick, which was the commander over this region in the beginning of this reorganization becomes the acting chief of the Rangers and so he has to go to Austin and based out of there they make Dan Hines the acting Captain in this region.

So in addition of serving San Augustine, he’s going out and working cases as far away as Athens, but he works a particular case here which I hope I will eventually publish. That’s what I talked to Ms. Mattie about because she knew the individual personally.

Anybody ever heard of the murder of Marly Childs? It was a conspiracy of his young wife and her even younger lover from the local civilian corps camp. What I heard was that Marly was a pretty well to do citizen of Shelby County, perhaps elected as the tax collector according to one account. He was worth about 35,000 during the depression, and he had this younger wife. He had had polio infantile paralysis. My father had it as a child. But he recovered from it. Marly had it really bad in the 30’s and had a life-long affliction from it. It seems that his wife, a young lady named Rebal, she was from Timpson. Rebal was a very pretty and talented lady. But, she apparently got frustrated living with this older invalid man, and started an affair with a 19 year old boy from CCC Camp.

He would go away but sometimes he would come back if it was early, but somebody told me that they tore this house down some years later not too far off the Square. They told me that the young man had written love letters on the boards all over the attic. She was probably about 6-10 years older than him, something like that. Basically she led him around by the nose. He would hide up there in the hot attic, there was no ac in the thirties, for hours until nighttime when he could finally sneak out once Marly went to sleep. She got tired of that and it says that needed to take further action. He waits outside the kitchen window, and at a predesignated time, she sends Marly to get her a glass of water or something, and as soon as he in view of the kitchen window, the boy outside shoots him.

This was a nationally publicized case. District Attorney, Wardlow Lane gave a detailed (met one of his descendants in San Augustine recently) he gave a detailed account which was published in True Detective Mysteries, which was the big crime magazine at the time. It was before TV and this was extremely popular. He talked about how he brought in Dan Hines and Pat McCormick to work and solve the case, and Rebol and the boy go to prison. The boy spends decades in prison and Rebol only spends about five years, and it’s a pretty easy stint because she becomes one of the Glor E Girls the singers at the prison,and then it started getting so popular that they started singing in other places traveling around. So while she is technically incarcerated, she and her small girl group are traveling around even out of state as the Glor-E Girls. John Lee Hancock, the director of the Highwaymen is actually involved with a possible movie project. There is a script written that is dormant right now, so I don’t know if it will ever get made or not; he knew very little about the background and how she got into prison, but she is the lead character in this movie script, and she’s from here. Focused on her time as a Glor-E Girls.

I’ve been working on this since about 2000. What’s my connection, am I from San Augustine? No, Dan Hines is my great grandmother’s brother and I grew up hearing stories about him. She lived to be 96, passed away when I was not quite 21. I grew up hearing stories about her baby brother who became a ranger and had gone into towns in East Texas and cleaned it up and was given a set of engraved pistols. I ran into a local Texas Ranger when I worked in Hayes County and I asked him about searching about my ranger ancestry, and how did I know that would turn into a whole new career, but here I am.

The perpetrators are all long dead. There are a handful of children of some of them. Dan Hines youngest daughter passed away, but his middle daughter still lives in Bossier and was on the city counsel. A lot of people there and elsewhere have read my book. I put names in there. A lot of my colleagues will get caught up in their books and they ignore what the average people want. This is about history, this is about our family lives. That’s really what will grab our interest, so a lot of times they don’t make that effort to name all the people involved. I’ve made a concentrated effort to name all those people, so I’ve had people come to me and say, I had no idea it was my uncle involvement as holding the man who was shot to death or who was a prosecutor for these cases. These are people they knew but they never knew that. They knew about these stories in general, but they never knew how personal these stories are to them.