The Third Annual Lee Quinn Nesbitt Symposium on Texas History and Culture, set for May 3, 2003, will be the biggest ever such event at the library. It will feature six speakers, and all six presentations will deal with the Texas Rangers.
    Robert M. Utley, the distinguished historian of the American West whose most recent book is Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, will make the symposium's closing presentation, "Images of the Texas Rangers." Utley, whose many books include The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin, and Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, is scheduled to begin his presentation at 3 o'clock.
    Paul N. Spellman, whose new book Captain John H. Rogers, Texas Ranger was published in January, will talk about Rogers at 2 o'clock. Spellman is also the author of Forgotten Texas Leader: Hugh McLeod and the Texan Santa Fe Expedition.

    The symposium will begin at 9:30 that morning with "The Rangers and Violence in Texas, 1870-1890" by Allen G. Hatley. He will be followed by Chuck Parsons, who will make a presentation on Leander H. McNelly at 10:30. Hatley is the author of several books, including his recent Bringing the Law to Texas: Crime and Violence in Nineteenth Century Texas. Parsons too has published many books. His most recent book was the biography Captain L. H. McNelly—Texas Ranger: The Life and Times of a Fighting Man.
    After a break for lunch, the symposium will resume at one o'clock with James C. Kearney's presentation "Everett Ewing Townsend, Father of the Big Bend." At 1:30, Harold J. Weiss, Jr. will speak on "Captain Bill McDonald in Fact and Fiction."
    Books by Utley, Spellman, Hatley, and Parsons will be available for purchase, and each author will be available to sign their books after their presentations. Tickets to the symposium will cost $7, but each person who buys a ticket will be given a coupon good for $5 off the purchase of any book.