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Was there racial separation in the Old West? Could a Black cowboy go into a Tombstone saloon?
Jeffery S. King
Washington, DC

Twenty-seven-year-old William Barret Travis carried considerable weight on his shoulders in the wee morning hours of March 6, 1836. The native South Carolinian had emigrated from Alabama to the Mexican state of Coahuila y Téjas five years earlier for...

Ten Texas Rangers who never stood down
Now riding into their third century, one of the nation’s oldest law enforcement agencies carries a double-barreled brand known worldwide—Texas Rangers.
In August 1823, in a settler’s cabin on the Colorado River in present Fayette County, Texas, colonizer Stephen F. Austin proposed formation of a 10-man force to serve as “rangers for the common defense.” A dozen years passed before the Rangers first...

The 1832 battle set the stage for the Texas Revolution.
The names are spoken with reverence in Texas: The Alamo. Goliad. San Jacinto. The great battles of the Texas Revolution, a conflict that lasted just under seven months. But the seeds of the war were planted years before that; the first real bloodshed...