A column featured in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday suggested Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers should change their name that “honors police force with brutal, racist history”.

Steve Chapman wrote in his column; "The message to racists, said a member of the Texas Civil Rights Advisory Committee, was plain: “If you will only assemble a mob, or threaten to do so, the power of the Texas Rangers will be on your side to deny civil rights to school children.” 

On June 4th, the city of Dallas, Texas removed the statue of Texas Ranger E.J. Banks over claims; 'Acted to stop integration of black students in 1956'.

In Minnesota on Friday morning, the Twins removed the statue of former owner Calvin Griffith outside of Target FIeld, along with issuing an apology that can be read below.

Chapman says the book “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers” by Doug J. Swanson can be used as the 'why' the organization should change their name.

In Swanson’s book, “The terms ‘death squads’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ would not enter common usage for another sixty years or so but that was what the Rangers were and what they did.”

He continued in his column that; 'They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents. They committed war crimes. Their murders of Mexicans and Mexican Americans made them as feared on the border as the Ku Klux Klan in the South.'

The Texas Rangers have not released a statement in response to the column at this time.

 

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