Reviving the racist history of the Texas Rangers was a team effort

MANSFIELD, TX

On August 30, 2021, the Texas Rangers gifted 86-year-old Floyd Moody what he told eyeblack was “one of the highlights of my life” — throwing the ceremonial first pitch at Globe Life Field. “I thank God for the Rangers,” the pastor and civil rights activist told MLB.com after the ceremony. “What they are doing and what they might do in the future.” 

Five years later, the Rangers permanently enshrined a 12-foot tall sculpture of a man protecting a violent mob that wanted Moody dead.

In the summer of 1956, Moody was a rising 11th grader attempting alongside four other Black teens to register for Mansfield High School, a public school just south of Arlington, where the Rangers play. Two years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Mansfield High was still all white.

Texas governor Allan Shivers responded to the teens —  and SCOTUS— by sending two Texas Rangers to enforce their removal and preserve law and order” and protect the white mob that formed around the school. One of the two Rangers the governor sent was E.J. “Jay” Banks. An old picture shows Banks nonchalantly leaning on a tree in front of the school while an effigy of Black body sways in front the entrance. Others show the Ranger smiling in front of the school with the effigy dangling over his head.

Moody said he wasn’t personally intimidated by the effigy or the “Go North, Niggers” ¹signs. “At 16, I guess you don't have sense enough to be afraid,” he said. Still, Moody and his friends didn’t register that day. And in 1961, Love Field welcomed a bronze statue titled “One Riot, One Ranger,” a motto derived from a 19th century origin story but modeled after Banks. Meanwhile, Mansfield wouldn’t integrate until 1965.

Following the George Floyd protests, in 2020, the City of Dallas removed the work as a direct response to growing controversy and awareness of the Rangers’ racist history. But, last month, Moody’s favorite baseball team resurrected the statue, placing “One Riot, One Ranger” on the left field concourse.

In the ultimate irony, it takes more than One Ranger to raise the dead. The franchise was enabled by local governments, defended by the cops who gave them their namesake, and empowered by the league who allows them to play ball.

One Ranger? This was a team effort.

“I reached out to the team, and then I was redirected to people who handle that aspect of their operations,” said Jason Thomas, the NAACP’s Arlington, Texas chapter president. “Because I didn't get a response, I reached out to the city of Arlington for assistance.” Arlington mayor Jim Ross confirmed his involvement in an effort to ensure the team’s leadership engaged with the NAACP. 

“It seemed like it was void of any thought, and it didn't have any public engagement,” Thomas told eyeblack. “No one asked any questions about this, especially given the fact that it was removed in the height of the George Floyd era.” He added that putting the statue so close to Mansfield was “tone deaf.”

Russell Molina, a board member for the Texas Rangers Association Foundation (TRAF) — a non profit supporting the law enforcement agency that is, according to MLB’s press release,  “dedicated to preserving and promoting the history and legacy of the Texas Rangers,” — has has clamored for statue’s public display since 2023. Molina also disputed that “One Riot, One Ranger” was based on Banks. But, Molina’s claim² directly contradicts a 1976 interview Banks and the sculptor herself, Waldine Amanda Tauch — both of whom attested to the now-infamous Ranger modeling for the statue.

Ross told eyeblack that Rangers principal owner Ray Davis was heavily involved in acquiring “One Riot, One Ranger”, which the city of Dallas had loaned, but not yet transferred, to the TRAF. According to Ross, a minority owner informed him that Davis was confident that repurposing the sculpture shouldn’t be offensive because the Black mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, gave it to the team.³

“Well, this one Black guy [approved]?,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, whose congressional district includes Globe Life. (And for whatever it's worth, is also a Black man.) “That's not good. Our white friends should not do that to us.” 

When Veasey heard about the statue after it gained attention on social media, he reached out to Major League Baseball’s Washington, D.C. office. The Congressman said MLB was responsive to his inquiries, but told him the league wants teams to make their own decisions and  claiming a past precedent of allowing teams to integrate its teams with Black ballplayers.  “Just like they did with the Dodgers and with integration, they pretty much let each team decide how they want to operate their club,” Veasey said of MLB’s reasoning. ⁶

Veasey wrote to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, Davis, and Bob Simpson, the franchise co-chair, calling attention to photos of Banks unbothered by the blackface effigies he protected. He said Davis has yet to respond.

“He seems like a pretty good guy to me, but he's 84 years old, and he's a conservative man that's made a lot of money in the oil and gas business, and he's from small-town Texas. He probably sees things a little bit differently than I do. But maybe once he learns more about the history of Ranger Banks, he will change his mind.”

Five years earlier, Davis had his shot to learn about Ranger Banks, and he didn’t even have to leave the ballpark. 

Rev. Kyev Tatum — another Black man — who leads the Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas, worked with the franchise to facilitate the team’s remembrance of Mansfield’s history back in 2021. Moody threw the first pitch. His daughter, Beverly Lightfoot sang the national anthem along with the Ministers Justice Coalition choir. It was a whole thing, and you can read about the day on MLB’s Texas Rangers website.

Tatum says that day was “unbelievable,” and led him to pursue multiple racial justice oriented initiatives with the Rangers, such as Black on Base, which promotes racial unity through telling the stories of the Negro Leagues. Spotlighting sculpture and “felt like a sucker punch, and on Thursday, Tatum has since called for a total economic boycott of the franchise until the statue is removed.

“They don't care. That's pure hatefulness. And it shouldn't be in baseball.”

Veasey echoed the same sentiment. “I grew up on this baseball team and it's really sad that it's come to this,” said Veasey. “But I'm not gonna be embarrassed knowing that the history of this man and what he did that day is being lionized at the ballpark.” For this lawmaker, buying Rangers tickets resembled the indignity of eating at a Whites Only restaurant.

Ross, the Arlington mayor, told eyeblack he isn’t pleased by the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue’s presence at the ballpark, either. Though Globe Life Field sits on city-owned land — a common arrangement for pro sports stadiums in the United States —  because the team’s lease allows it to operate the stadium, there’s "not a damned thing I can do about it." 

“That’s a cop out,” Tatum said after I shared the Arlington mayor’s reasoning. “Taxes are paying for the building.”

Were Davis interested in canvassing more Black people to help decide whether he should promote segregationist artwork, I found another one close to home. “Maybe we just shouldn't be enshrining people?” asked Doug Glanville, an ESPN commentator and former outfielder for the Texas Rangers. “If we can't tell the whole story, or if we can't understand that the symbols can evoke such pain for some people in an environment where you want everybody to celebrate the joy of coming together.”

Glanville told eyeblack he didn’t know the history of the team’s name while he played there, and learned about the statue recently. “Maybe most people walk in the stadium don't have to think about it. 'Like, okay, well, you know, here's a statue, whatever, There's a million statues.' But then when you kind of know what he said, and his story, for me, I’m like — Am I welcome?” 

We’ll see if the franchise changes course on its segregationist statue. The City of Dallas appears to think the statue is here to stay. Guy Bruggeman, the city’s Public Art Collection and Conservation Manager — and the project lead in the “One Riot, One Ranger” relocation to Globe Life Field — assured attendees of a March Public Art Committee Meeting that the monument “is in a good, safe home.” 

How did Floyd Moody learn his favorite team dusted off a statue resembling his antagonist? 

“Someone called my granddaughter asking to interview me about a statue,” Moody said. “I hadn’t heard of any statue.” That was me, I told him. I had texted or emailed every member of his family I could find in search of someone who might share what “One Riot, One Ranger” means to people on the other side of the riot.

Moody, for his part, doesn’t want the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue parked in Globe Life Field, but would prefer it moved, with greater context, to the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.⁵ “The guy wasn't there to represent the law. He was there to represent keeping segregation going,” said Moody.

The pastor made a point of emphasizing that he makes every effort not to speak with bitterness about that day. Which is part of what makes the “One Riot, One Ranger” sculpture such a vile misrepresentation. More than just celebrating the Rangers broadly or Banks specifically the sculpture implicitly skews Moody and his classmates as the threat. For no other reason but that a few local children attempted to exercise their full citizenship a little too close to home.

“He was there to keep peace from the Black folk,” said Moody. “But it was a mob of other folk that was there to do harm. After we were denied entrance in that school, we left and we didn't do anything to cause anybody hurt or harm.”

“And I'm glad it turned out that way.”