Professor Benjamin Johnson

And so that then...

In a world where most people at that point are living in cities or living in suburbs, you know, it's a very different society than frontier Texas in the 19th century.

The legend of the Rangers only grows and it's part of the embrace of the Western past.

That's correct.

So, yeah, 1935 is in some ways a turning point, certainly in terms of its bureaucratic organization, as a turning point for the Texas Rangers.

They become a part of the Texas Department of Public Safety, and they really then become...

for all intents and purposes, another professional law enforcement agency, right?

They've lost that character.

They're not going to war with anybody anymore.

They are charged with enforcing the law as a kind of elite investigative unit, which in some ways you could call it like the FBI of the state of Texas.

But again, other states have them, right?

Minnesota has the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, for example.

It's just nobody's ever made a television show about the Minnesota Bureau.

of criminal apprehension.

And I should say that this is often framed as a story of, oh, they become just like other police forces, therefore they're not as controversial and they don't do bad things.

But I think the better way to put it is they become like other police forces and they do the things that are very controversial and divisive about policing and the larger history of the United States.

So just, for example, two years ago,

So they end up in the Supreme Court twice in the 20th century.

And the first time comes out of a case that's just two years after they're folded into the DPS in East Texas.

A black farm laborer named Bob White is accused of raping and murdering a white woman who's married to a farmer who was White's employee.