ALLEE, ALFRED YOUNG (1905-1987). Alfred Young Allee, Texas Ranger, the son of Alonzo W. Allee, was born on September 14, 1905, in La Salle County, Texas. He was a member of the Texas Rangersqv for thirty-seven years, following in the footsteps of his father and his grandfather, Alfred Y. Allee I, both of whom also served in the rangers. Allee's first work in law enforcement was as a special game warden on the 7D Ranch in Zavala County in 1926. The next year, he became a Zavala County deputy sheriff. In 1931 he applied to Capt. William W. Sterlingqv to join the Texas Rangers and was assigned to Capt. Light Townsend's C Company. His early years were spent preventing smuggling and cattle rustling on the Rio Grande border. In 1933, however, Allee, like many of the rangers, resigned following the election of Miriam "Ma" Fergusonqv as governor. During this period he served as a deputy sheriff in Beeville. With the election of James Allredqv as governor in 1935, most Texas Rangers, including Allee, returned to duty. In 1952 Governor Allan Shivers sent Allee's D Company into San Diego, Texas, to protect the newly founded Freedom party from molestation by the Duval County political machine run by George Parr.qv In January 1954 Allee was involved in a scuffle with Parr in the hallway of the Alice City Courthouse when Parr tried to take a ranger's gun after a disagreement. The fight ended with Parr sustaining light injuries and filing attempted murder charges against Allee. Parr later dropped these charges "for the good of the community."
In April 1963 Allee's company was sent to Crystal City to supervise the city elections, for which local Hispanics had organized in an attempt to gain proportional representation in the city government (see CRYSTAL CITY REVOLTS). The rangers remained in Crystal City after the election of Los Cinco Candidatos and the subsequent resignation of the majority of city workers, who were predominantly Anglo. Allee soon found himself once again the subject of a lawsuit, this time filed by the new mayor of Crystal City, Juan Cornejo, who accused the ranger of physically and verbally abusing him. The charges were later dropped because of a lack of witnesses, and in fact most of the witnesses Cornejo named stated that Allee did not lay a hand on the mayor. In 1967 Allee and the rangers were again sent into a racially charged situation, this time to prevent violence during the Starr County strikeqv by melon pickers. Once on the scene, the rangers began to enforce the state's antipicketing laws; more than fifty arrests resulted. Numerous reports began to surface of alleged ranger brutality and use of excessive force. Two of these cases, the arrests of Rev. Edgar Krueger and Magdeleno Dimas, drew heavy attention in the media. In June 1967 and December 1968 congressional subcommittees on civil rights met in Texas and found that the rangers had used excessive force in their handling of the striking farmworkers. In 1974 the United States Supreme Court concurred with the subcommittees and found in favor of the workers in the class-action suit Allee et al. v. Medrano et al. Allee, the last of the pre-Department of Public Safety rangers, retired on September 30, 1970. He died of cancer on January 13, 1987, in San Antonio. He had married Pearl Leach in 1928, and their son, Alfred Young Allee, Jr., also joined the Texas Rangers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charles Schreiner III et al., A Pictorial History of the Texas Rangers (Mountain Home, Texas: Y-O Press, 1969). John Staples Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974). Robert Stephens, Tribute to a Ranger: Captain Alfred Y. Allee, Company D, Texas Rangers (1968). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Norman Youngblood
