From CULT OF GLORY by Doug J. Swanson, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2020 by Doug J. Swanson.

The first effigy was raised on Mansfield’s Main Street. Hanging from a strand of barbed wire, its face was painted black and its clothes were splattered with red paint. A hand-lettered sign on one leg said this would be a horrible way to die. A placard on the other leg said this negro tried to enter a white school. Two more effigies went up at the school itself. One hung by its neck above the main entrance, while the other swung from the flagpole. The school principal, a man named Willie Pigg, refused to cut them down because he didn’t put them up. “They might stay up there until Christmas,” he said.

As was their intent, such actions alarmed L. Clifford Davis, the Fort Worth lawyer for the NAACP. Davis warned in a telegram to Governor Shivers that “violence is almost certain to occur when these students attempt to enroll on Friday.” He asked the governor to send more law enforcement to Mansfield “to assure that law and order will be maintained.” Davis added, “These Negro students are exercising a constitutional right and the full strength of law enforcement agencies of the state should protect them.”

The governor wasted no time. He responded to the request that same day with an order of protection—but not for the NAACP or the black students. Shivers was looking out for the white folks.

At about the same time, a mob formed in the coal-mining town of Sturgis, Kentucky, to keep blacks from integrating schools there. But Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler believed the black students had a right to attend. “If anybody shows up to go to school,” Chandler said, “we are not going to let anybody keep them from doing it.” Chandler deployed the National Guard—with tanks—and the Kentucky State Police to enforce his order.

In Texas the governor didn’t need the National Guard, and he didn’t need tanks. He had the Rangers. Shivers ordered them to Mansfield. From Dallas, Captain Crower dispatched Sergeant Banks and several others.

Banks was brawny and good-looking and did not mind displaying these qualities for the cameras. “He was always on the cover of a magazine or newspaper,” one Ranger recalled without fondness. In early 1956, he was selected for the first-flight entourage when Braniff Airways inaugurated nonstop service from Dallas to Newark. “I was part of all these festivities because I was a ‘famous Texas Ranger,’” he wrote, “with the Rangers being the real symbol of Texas at the time.” When they arrived in New Jersey, Banks walked off the plane right behind Miss Texas. He made the celebrity rounds in New York, including an appearance on NBC’s Today show with his Stetson on his head and his pistol on his hip. “It seemed natural,” he said, “that a big event like this would need the famous Ranger in order to make for more jubilation.”

Jubilation was in short supply and Miss Texas nowhere in sight when the famous Ranger arrived in Mansfield on August 30, 1956. Banks wrote in his official report that he faced a “large crowd of angry white people gathered at school declaring their intention of resisting, by force if necessary, any effort by Negroes to register.”

Those angry white people, however, didn’t constitute his major concern, because Banks, with his rural upbringing believed he understood them. “The people gathered did not have the appearance of rough types,” he recalled. “They were just salt-of-the-earth citizens who had been stirred up by agitators They were concerned because they were convinced that someone was trying to interfere with their way of life.”

Second, and more important, the governor of Texas—unlike his counterpart in Kentucky—didn’t want the Rangers interfering with these protesters. “It is not my intention,” Shivers said, “to permit the use of state officers or troops to shoot down or intimidate Texas citizens who are making orderly protest against a situation instigated and agitated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”

The Rangers in Mansfield were therefore forbidden from escorting any black students past the mob and into class. The governor directed that any blacks who tried to enroll at Mansfield High School would be immediately transferred out of the district. And he ordered the Rangers to arrest any of them who attempted to enter the school.

With those instructions, Banks—wearing Rangers khaki and a black necktie—took up position outside the high school. The crowd of protesters milled nearby. Much more dangerous than the mob, to Banks, was a man distributing pro-integration flyers. This “inflammatory literature,” in the Ranger’s judgment, merited quick action. “I seized the literature and escorted him out of the area,” Banks said. “He was somewhat reluctant until assisted by the toe of a Ranger’s boot.”

Banks also expelled—though without having to kick him—an Episcopal priest. In full clerical garb, the Reverend D. W. Clark arrived from Fort Worth and delivered a sidewalk sermon to the mob, with a call for peace and understanding that included a plea to love one’s neighbor. “Negroes aren’t our neighbors,” a man in the crowd responded. More Bible talk from Clark only fueled the protesters’ outrage. “The swarm of angry faces grew tighter around the slight clergyman,” one reporter wrote. “Shouts became louder. Fists were shaken.”

As Banks saw it, Clark was “inciting the anger of the crowd when he attempted to preach to them, criticizing their actions.” He did not arrest—or even warn—anyone who had threatened the priest. Instead, the Ranger took Clark by the arm and led him away. “I suggested he go home and leave the disturbance for the experts to handle.”

At one point Captain Crowder also came to Mansfield and met with the school superintendent. “The tall Ranger captain went about his work quietly,” a local newspaper reported with reverence. “He let it be known that the Rangers were there to prevent violence and protect human lives and property. . . . That done, he planted a booted foot on a post and methodically began to whittle.” Crowder stayed only long enough for photographers to capture him in the pose that had become his trademark. “When he puts his booted foot up on a stump and starts to whittle,” an admiring writer observed, “law and order has arrived.”

From CULT OF GLORY by Doug J. Swanson, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2020 by Doug J. Swanson.