Kemp Dixon

Kemp Dixon, an Adjunct Professor of History at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, grew up in McKinney, Elgin, and Austin, Texas, with a Texas Ranger father, Norman K. Dixon, who was raised in Vermont, Ohio, New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York.

When his athletic scholarship at the University of Florida suddenly ended during the worst of the Great Depression, Norman Dixon wound up in Texas working as a member of an wildcat oil well crew and boarding at a farm house where he met a 17-year-old farm girl, Leona Spellman. They soon married and five years later he became a Texas Ranger, working under one of the great 20th Century Rangers, "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas.

Norman Dixon was gone from his family for long stretches of time as he went after murderers, swindlers, cattle thieves, and many German Texas suspected of loyalty to Hitler during World War II. Before long, he was on loan to the state legislature, the attorney general, and governors to investigate scandals involving government officials, Texas state universities, and an abusive sheriff, among others.

During his last decade in law enforcement, he became the chief investigator for the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, leading to his role during McCarthyism as the top state officer charged with protecting Texans from the Red Menace.