Brownsville, Texas, August 1906 – part 3
“It turns my stomach to see lefty nutcases trying to rewrite history,” the ‘brave’ letter-writer who signed his name “Bosco” said. “Let it be.” - Brownsville Daily Herald, 2006.
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Part 1: The “incident,” along with various attempts by the “good” citizens of Brownsville, Texas to pin the shooting on the Black soldiers of Fort Brown. All such efforts had proved futile. Part 1 closed with the Brownsville Daily Herald’s request for Black soldiers to ‘give up the perpetrator among them’ as the culprits who had shot up their fair city.
Part 2: Brownsville telegraphed as many prominent men as possible, demanding that Black troops be removed from Fort Brown. Their efforts were supported by racist poetry penned by Judd Mortimer Lewis. It appeared that the War Department listened, as a white unit from Sinton, Texas was dispatched to Brownsville. However, they were sent to accompany the Twenty-Fifty Infantry unit as it left Fort Brown, as their protectors. The fort was to be abandoned. Still believing in the innocence of his men, Major Charles W. Penrose spirited his men out under cover of night around 3 a.m. on August 25, 1906.
To sign the petition to have the name of Judd Mortimer Lewis Elementary School in Houston changed, please sign here.
In this narrative - all three parts - I will mention names of those who bore false witness against the men of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry at Fort Brown, in Brownsville, Texas, in August 1906 and at all dates following. This is in keeping with a principle articulated by Hans Scholl in White Rose Leaflet 4: “Do not forget even the little scoundrels of this regime. Note their names, so that no one escapes! After all these atrocities, they should not be able to change sides at the last minute and thereby pretend as though nothing had happened!”
This principle applies to American history as much as it does to history of the Holocaust.
Once Major Penrose led the Twenty-Fifth Infantry out of Brownsville to safety, city fathers in Brownsville called on Texas politicians to exert pressure on the Army to send white troops to Fort Brown to replace them. Senator Culberson’s appeal noted that the United States needed to protect her borders (Brownsville is across the river from Matamoros, Mexico). “It would be regrettable,” Senator Culberson wrote the War Department, “that this fort should be abandoned because the people of a border city like Brownsville object to negro troops under circumstances of raid and murder, such as recently occurred therere (sic).”
Although the hated Black soldiers were gone, the editors of the Daily Herald would not let the matter drop. On August 25, 1906, they published correspondence by and between Major Penrose, Judge Stanley Welch, and Captain McDonald. Reason for the publication of the telegrams and letters was ostensibly to prove McDonald’s case.
Over a century later, it is clear that the documents proved exactly the opposite. Even as Major Penrose yielded to pressure, stating that it was “possible” some of his men had been involved, he plainly repeated the results of his investigations – not once, but in three separate documents. His inquiries had shown that all men were accounted for at the time of the alarm (except for the single soldier who had a pass and was not armed), and that not one single rifle had been fired.
Additionally, Judge Stanley Welch’s order to revoke the arrest warrants unmistakably was based on the simple fact that McDonald had not one shred of evidence supporting his claims regarding the twelve men he wished to arrest.
McDonald’s pleas to have the warrants reinstated demonstrated beyond all doubt that he was merely on a fishing expedition. In a telegram to Governor Lanham, McDonald wrote, “The officers are trying to cover up the diabolical crime that I am about to uncover.” The same day (August 24), he wrote Senator Bailey, “Am about to uncover the whole thing and some of the officers seem to be trying hard to shield the guilty parties.”
When Captain McDonald tendered his resignation the next day, he resorted to an outright lie in a last-ditch attempt to convince Governor Lanham that the men should be returned to Brownsville so he could continue to “prosecute” them. McDonald told the governor that Major Penrose had admitted that six of his men were involved in the shooting!
More than one hundred years later, it is critical to note that Major Penrose stood firm in his conviction that his men had done no wrong, despite the fraudulent arrest warrants issued by Captain McDonald, arrest warrants which had been revoked by Judge Welch due to lack of evidence.
The people of Brownsville did not stop their nonsense simply because the Twenty-Fifty United States Infantry had left Fort Brown. The Daily Herald wrote on Monday August 27 that at 3 a.m. on Saturday August 25, someone had broken into the fort’s arsenal. Nothing was stolen, but the lock had been removed from the door.
“It is not to be supposed for a moment that any of the white soldiers who had just arrived were at such a trick,” the Brownsville Daily Herald “reported” on the 27th. Nor did they even consider the possibility that McDonald or one of his men (or Brownsville citizens) would have wished to plant evidence. No, although the Black soldiers were well on their way to the train station at that hour, the Daily Herald “reported” that it was a “diabolical plot” of those dastardly Black soldiers demonstrating “the hatred which [they] had for Brownsville.”
J.S. Henderson of the Corpus Christi Crony was the first newspaperman to see through the blatant deception of Brownsville citizens and write about it. Henderson suggested that the violence was based on “racial prejudice” in Brownsville, combined with the city’s unwillingness to see its gambling income diminished by establishments forced to accommodate Black soldiers. Where Corpus Christi’s gaming tables accepted anyone’s money regardless of race, Brownsville (said Henderson) could not bring itself to do so.
He therefore postulated that it was entirely possible that white men in Brownsville had purchased government ammunition (easily accessible, he noted) and shot up the town themselves. And with that, Henderson assumed the position of most-hated man in Brownsville, leapfrogging over Major Penrose and the “lies” protecting his men.
Reporters in Brownsville therefore created a whole new fiction. For two full weeks, they had sought to find evidence that would substantiate the guilt of black soldiers. They now claimed that they had been on the verge of finding just that “proof,” but Major Penrose removed not only his Black soldiers, but also all incriminating evidence.
And when John Baptis (sic) Rayner seemingly came down on the side of Brownsville’s white residents, the Daily Herald couldn’t have been more delighted. Son of a white plantation owner and a slave, Rayner allegedly wrote that Blacks needed to be subject to their white masters and patiently learn from them.
At least that’s how the Houston Post recorded his “letter” to that newspaper. “We (negroes) must submit to the highest laws of intelligence before we can expect or hope to grow. … The enlightened public sentiment in the South knows what is best for us and is doing what is best to assist our growth in harmony with nature’s laws.”
Now of course, the same edition of the Brownsville Daily Herald also stated that if the citizens of Brownsville had had their way, every Black soldier at Fort Brown would have been lynched.
After waging a protracted war of words with Northern newspapers – particularly the Chicago Chronicle, which shared the views of J.S. Henderson of Corpus Christi – the furor finally died down. The people of Brownsville dragged it out as long as they could, but the rest of the world moved on to more important matters.
Eventually every member of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry would be dishonorably discharged in exchange for not prosecuting the Black soldiers for murder. That order came directly from President Theodore Roosevelt and his Secretary of War, William Taft (who would succeed Roosevelt as president), and was taken to be a political move, an attempt to appease both sides. Even Booker T. Washington could not convince the president to change his mind, and he tried.
In 1907, Major Penrose was subjected to a court-martial for “neglect of duty, to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” Unsurprisingly, Captain McDonald was a primary witness against him. Major Penrose was acquitted, but the best he could do for his men: Dishonorable discharge. At least they were not wrongly executed. To his everlasting credit, Major Penrose never wavered in his support of the Black soldiers under his command.
Over the next few years, forensics “experts” manufactured and falsified evidence to “prove” the guilt of Penrose’s men. The people of Brownsville seemed intent on proving that they had been wronged and used every means at their disposal to sway public opinion in their favor.
President Richard Nixon reopened the Brownsville case in 1972 at the insistence of Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins of Los Angeles. That commission, led by Lt. Col. William Baker, found that all 167 soldiers had been falsely accused and that they should not have been dishonorably discharged. All soldiers but the sole survivor were posthumously awarded honorable discharges – but without back pay for their families.
Dorsie Willis, the only surviving member of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry, was granted a $25,000 pension, but no compensation, back pay, or reparation for the dishonorable discharge and the injustice he had endured sixty years earlier.
On the 100th anniversary of the “Brownsville Massacre” (as it came to be called in Brownsville), Lt. Col. William Baker described his investigation from 1972 – 1974. He told how his work had encountered resistance from the Army, how the Army general staff had tried to convince the Secretary of Defense to block his work.
Baker said that ballistics evidence proved beyond all doubt that the men of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry had not been involved with the night’s rampage. “The evidence was powerful, overwhelming, and compelling in favor of the soldiers.”
He also noted that when Dorsie Willis received his paltry $25,000 settlement, “the certificate restored his honor, but not his lost years.” Baker saw the affair as one that transcended race. “The universality of its themes, due process, fair play, and the presumption of innocence are enduring concepts,” he wrote in 2006.
When the Brownsville Daily Herald published Baker’s report in 2006, one of its citizens proved that racism had not died in that place. “It turns my stomach to see lefty nutcases trying to rewrite history,” the ‘brave’ letter-writer who signed his name “Bosco” said. “Let it be.”
The location of Brownsville for this incident reveals how great a role “race” played in Texas justice of the early twentieth century. Brownsville and Caldwell, Texas had been two of the only Texas towns to protest acquittals of men like W. T. Eldridge. In August 1902, Eldridge (white) had fatally shot William Dunovant (also white) on board a train. Even as Dunovant was bleeding out in plain sight, Eldridge began pistol-whipping Dunovant, causing a large gash in his forehead. Dunovant died in a Houston hospital.
The Fort Bend County deputy sheriff who “arrested” Eldridge arranged for rooms for himself and his “prisoner” at a luxury suite at Houston’s Rice Hotel. When guests observed the two men partying at the hotel, they notified the Fort Bend County Sheriff, who asked Houston police to lock Eldridge up at their jail.
At the trial in November 1904, Eldridge’s friends claimed that ‘everyone knew’ there was a running feud between Eldridge and Dunovant. Therefore it was “self-defense” when Eldridge murdered Dunovant, whose pistol was still in his pocket when he died. (It had gotten caught on the alpaca lining of his jacket.) Because, they reasoned, Eldridge feared for his life every time he so much as saw Dunovant.
A Houston jury took less than eight hours to acquit Eldridge. Whereupon the editors of the Brownsville Daily Herald and the Caldwell News-Chronicle called for tighter gun control as a start to curbing violence. They seemed legitimately concerned about the ability of wealthy white men to skate on murder charges, effectively buying justice.
“There have been a half dozen or more cases recently in this state where men were charged with murder, the evidence showing that such murder was premeditated and the defendant was without a scintilla of evidence to support a claim of self-defence (sic), and yet the juries have acquitted such men and set them free to commit the same crime again.
“It has come to a point where to shoot at a man and miss him means a fine for carrying a pistol or a conviction for assault to murder, while to kill him means acquittal if the defendant has enough funds to employ the proper legal talent.” (Brownsville Daily Herald, April 19, 1906, page one)
Yet the same men who wrote such good and strong words would willingly subvert justice less than four months later.
It is easy to condemn the people of Brownsville for their actions in August 1906. We should forego the easy path and take the principles involved to heart. The best of us can behave irrationally wrong when we allow our common sense to be sabotaged by a single flaming issue.
In Brownsville in August 1906, that issue was race, specifically groundless hatred of Black soldiers. In Germany thirty years later, the issue was antisemitism linked to an absurd notion that the German-Jewish community was responsible for Germany’s economic woes.
In both cases – indeed, as with the Lora Conditt murder and others where Black Americans were assumed guilty of crimes they did not commit – justice was not had for those who had been aggrieved. In Brownsville in 1906, Mrs. Evans’ assailant and Frank Natus’ murderer were not found and brought to justice.
With all the wrangling over Black soldiers at Fort Brown, the people of Brownsville dishonored their own. Which is usually the outcome when that single flaming issue takes center stage, to the detriment of reason.
Sources (in alphabetical order): Brownsville Daily Herald; Caldwell News-Chronicle; Chicago Chronicle; Corpus Christi Crony; Houston Post; New York Times; San Antonio Gazette.
If the incident in Brownsville interests you, there have been whole books published on the topic. Additionally, the National Archives contain primary source materials that shed more light on behind-the-scenes efforts to railroad Black soldiers, as well as Major Penrose.
My three-part report is based on newspaper articles of the day. My nonfiction book-in-progress - One Family’s Houston - puts my great-grandfather’s life in context. He was an avid reader, and he also believed strongly in social justice. In my book, I am describing “his” Houston as he would have known it from the papers he read and the people he talked to.
What that means for the narrative regarding Brownsville: Everything in these three posts would have been readily available information for anyone who paid attention in Texas in 1906.
© 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please message me for permission to quote. And of course, please feel free to share!