Old Riot, New Ranger: Captain Jack Dean, Texas Ranger and U.S. Marshal by Bob Alexander

Abstract

Reviewed by: Old Riot, New Ranger: Captain Jack Dean, Texas Ranger and U.S. Marshal by Bob Alexander Jody Edward Ginn Old Riot, New Ranger: Captain Jack Dean, Texas Ranger and U.S. Marshal. By Bob Alexander. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2018. Pp. 522. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Texas Rangers history enthusiast Bob Alexander recounts, in folksy style, Jack Dean’s impressive forty-three-year law enforcement career as a highway patrolman, Texas Ranger, and United States Marshal for the Western District of Texas. As Alexander notes, Dean is one of only five men to have served both as a Texas Ranger captain and as presidentially appointed U.S. marshal. After a chapter-long foray into Dean’s early life and numerous crime and law enforcement anecdotes, Alexander chronicles Dean’s lengthy career, which began with his application to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in December 1960. As was typical (and now required), Dean served ten years as a highway patrol trooper before being promoted to the Rangers in July 1970. He entered service during one of the many moments of significant generational change in Ranger history. Dean’s first assignment was in the Rio Grande Valley in the wake of a federal lawsuit over the 1966–67 farm workers’ strike, which Alexander recounts at length. However, Dean was not involved in the events surrounding the strike and only served under the Ranger captain associated with them for a month; thereafter he worked under the comparatively progressive new captain, John Mansel Wood, who had been tasked with rebuilding relations with local people in the region and training a new generation of Rangers how to enforce the law in the post-Civil Rights movement era. Alexander goes on to explore Dean’s twenty-three-year Ranger career, during which he worked a number of notable cases. The best known of these was the assassination of Federal Judge John H. Wood by notorious hit man Charles Voyde Harrelson, a story previously chronicled in Robert M. Utley’s Lone Star Lawmen (Oxford University Press, 2007). The stellar reputation that Dean developed throughout his Ranger career, working with prominent people in all levels of government, led to his appointment as United States Marshal for the Western District of Texas by President Bill Clinton and reappointment to that post by President George W. Bush. Alexander’s account of these years is fairly perfunctory in comparison to the exploration of Dean’s Ranger career; for example, the author omits any discussion of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the resulting emphasis on terrorism and homeland security in federal law enforcement, which would have been a historically significant addition. Ranger scholars will note some distractions, such as the misunderstanding of the Rangers’ system of rank and title; unlike traditional military organizations, the Rangers do not have “enlisted” or “non-com” officers or [End Page 130] an “Officer’s Corps of the Rangers,” terms which Alexander uses. But on the whole, casual readers should find One Riot, New Ranger to be an engaging and accessible read, and scholars may look to it as a starting point for studies on late twentieth-century Texas law enforcement topics. Jody Edward Ginn Austin Community College Copyright © 2019 The Texas State Historical Association