Brownsville, Texas, August 1906 – part 1

In my post entitled Juneteenth in Texas, I mentioned the so-called “Brownsville Massacre,” the terrible injustice that was perpetrated upon 167 Black soldiers stationed at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas in August 1906 and beyond.

When I linked to that post on my personal Facebook page, a high school friend commented that she had never heard about most of the events in that post. That remark hit hard, as I realized that growing up, I too had known only a sanitized version of that affair.

This post and the two that follow are excerpted researchy for my autobiographical fiction novel-in-progress, [social media title] Middle Earth Houston. I’ve also started a change dot org petition to change the name of Judd Mortimer Elementary School in Houston, Texas. Please sign and share!

On with the narrative regarding this shameful event in Texas history.

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!”

Applies to American history as much as it does to history of the Holocaust.

In 1906, since Texas had no Republican senators or congressmen, Republicans in Washington, DC had given Cecil Lyon – Chairman of the RNC in Texas – a free hand to fill many influential posts in the state. From postmasters to judges, Lyon doled out federal jobs to fellow Republicans in a decidedly Democratic state. The Reorganized Party wanted him stopped, especially since he made a point of appointing only white men. Lyon agreed more with the goals of the Democratic Party than with the Northern Republicans, and he made that point clear.

In retaliation for abandoning Republican ideals of racial equality, the Reorganized Party nominated W. M. McDonald of Terrell, Texas to replace Cecil Lyon as Republican National Committeeman for Texas. McDonald was Black. Whatever chance McDonald may have had when his name was submitted on August 14 in Houston was obliterated by the events of August 1906 in Brownsville.

The War Department had stationed 167 soldiers from the all-Black Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry at Fort Brown, near Brownsville, Texas. These men had just returned from a tour of duty in the Philippines.

Residents of Brownsville (population 6,000) immediately resented the addition of Black troops to their rank and file. Taverns and shops refused to serve the men. Some soldiers reported physical abuse from local federal customs inspectors. Despite wearing the uniform of the United States Army, the men were treated with disrespect and outright hatred.

The night of August 12, 1906, Mr. and Mrs. Lon Evans of Brownsville returned from an outing to the “Mexican side of the river.” Mr. Evans walked home with a friend, while Mrs. Evans made her way to their 14th Street cottage on horseback.

As Mrs. Evans lay her hat on the top step of the back entrance to the house, preparing to unsaddle the horse, someone jumped out from behind the steps and grabbed her by the hair, pushing her to the ground. She landed face first on her knees. Since she still held the horse’s reins in her hand, the sudden action caused the horse to rear. Mrs. Evans’ assailant fled.

A neighbor named McLean hurried over to determine what was causing a commotion. Neither McLean nor Mrs. Evans could see her attacker, McLean because he arrived too late, and Mrs. Evans because she had gone down face first. When the police arrived, she would insist that it had been a “negro dressed in a soldier’s uniform” who had assaulted her.

This was the excuse the authorities had been waiting for. The commanding officer at Fort Brown decreed an early curfew the night of August 13. Everyone in Brownsville “knew” that those Black soldiers were chomping at the bit to rape their white women!

(All this, yet the same Brownsville newspaper reported the same day that the fort in Laredo experienced enormous difficulties with its soldiers. Those all-white military men imbibed a bit too freely and wreaked havoc on Laredo. No curfews were imposed, nor were women advised to stay off the streets. Instead, police in Laredo merely posted more officers on paydays when drunkenness would be at its worst. But then again, they were white. Clearly the Daily Herald editors lacked a sense of irony.)

Shortly before midnight on August 13, a twenty-three-year-old bartender named Frank Natus was mortally wounded as he locked the back gate of the Ruby Saloon, closing up for the night. “Witnesses” claimed to have seen marauding hordes of black soldiers – at least eighteen to twenty men – randomly shooting into homes.

Reading the accounts of the rampage in the Brownsville Daily Herald, there can be little doubt that nearly all of the “eyewitnesses” or “evidence” had been fabricated to point the finger at Black soldiers for the express purpose of running them out of town.

Somehow at midnight, witnesses had been able to “see” that the murderers were armed with Krag-Jorgensen rifles, which conveniently happened to be the rifles used by the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry. The witnesses did not just see people shooting, nor did they just see people shooting with rifles, they saw people shooting with Krag-Jorgensen rifles.

The Herald reporters were also able to state with unbelievable specificity that exactly two lights were still on at midnight in the Cowan’s home and were visible from outside the home. While a reporter would have been able to glean a description of the damage done to that house from the aftermath of the incident, the precise description of the attack from outside the house – with no witnesses on the street – would raise serious red flags about sources.

Additionally, although three Brownsville police officers on patrol together (in itself suspicious) allegedly encountered one of the murderous groups, they did not manage to wound even a single soldier. “The negroes opened fire on the officers,” the Herald said, “who returned the fire with their pistols, but without effect.”

Moreover, although up to two hundred rounds had been fired into seven or eight buildings (homes, hotels, saloons), all shots just happened to strike empty rooms. Except for the unfortunate bartender and one of the policemen (who was wounded, not killed), the firestorm killed none of the residents of the targeted establishments and residences.

If the “eyewitness” reports were not unbelievable enough, the paper said that by the time Frank Natus was killed, Fort Brown had been put on lockdown. The C.O. had ordered barracks searched for missing soldiers, and he sent patrols into Brownsville to look for anyone who could have been outside the fort’s walls without permission.

The patrols in Brownsville and on the base found one single soldier on the town’s streets. “It seems he had a pass and was unarmed,” the paper admitted.

Despite what should have been overwhelming evidence to the contrary, citizens of Brownsville concluded that Black soldiers had been behind the melee. A so-called “citizens guard” made up of 150 or so well-armed men lined the road between Fort Brown and Brownsville. “If the negroes attempt to leave the post it is the avowed purposes of the citizens to shoot them.”

Governor Lanham dispatched the Texas Rangers to keep the peace. But Brownsville’s white citizens did not want peace, they did not want justice. They wanted the Black soldiers gone, though they did not use polite language when expressing that sentiment.

August 14, 1906, with no inquiries having been made regarding guilt or innocence, the Brownsville Daily Herald wrote, “The blame for this terrible occurrence, however, lies justly at Washington, with the authorities who use such senseless policy as to transfer negro soldiers from a northern state, where the white people grant them social equality, to a southern state where such a thing would literally be impossible.”

This echoed the sentiments on Page One of the same day’s paper. “So far as known, the causes leading to this dastardly crime were of a trivial nature. There had been hard feeling on the part of the negro soldiers against the towns people, since their first coming here, owing to the refusal of the saloons to allow them to drink at their bars.

“Coming from Nebraska, where social equality is granted to negroes, they could not seem to realize that here in a southern town such privileges would certainly be denied them. One or two saloons did set up a bar in the rear of their premises for the negroes, but the others flatly refused to serve them.”

And in fact, a third article – also on Page One of the August 14 paper – said, “That such a thing could have been possible would have seemed incredible had it been foretold even yesterday. True, it was known that hard feeling (sic) existed on the part of some of these soldiers against our people, because they had been denied the privileges of equality which it is said were accorded them in the state of Nebraska, and also because rather rough treatment had been accorded one or two of them who had been guilty of rudeness and insolence upon the streets.

“Some of our citizens, perhaps, looked for trouble. But that a squad of eighteen or twenty soldiers could sally forth from the garrison, bent openly upon murder, and the fact remained unobserved at the post, and no effort made to check them [seemed] strange indeed.”

With no investigation, neither formal nor informal, the citizens of Brownsville, Texas called for the immediate removal of the Black soldiers from their midst.

Firmly convinced that the murderers had to be among the 167 members of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry, on August 15 the citizens of Brownsville decided to set out to “prove” that fact. A full day of “investigation” yielded no evidence whatever that would support their firm conviction. Guards on duty swore that no one had left Fort Brown. Sergeants inspected all rifles in the fort and found that none had been recently fired.

The Brownsville Daily Herald therefore tried a different tack. Surely not all Black soldiers were evil, they wrote in a tone sugar sweet. Surely among the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry there were a few good men who would be willing to tell the truth. “The blood of the innocent cries out to these men to avenge this crime, and to prove themselves in fact, as in name, defenders of the American people!”

People in Brownsville quickly learned that some were not sympathetic to their cause. The San Antonio Gazette placed the blame for the “riot” solely upon Brownsville’s white citizens. Though they accepted without questioning that Black soldiers were responsible for the shoot-em-up, San Antonio editors felt that Brownsville had created circumstances so reprehensible that members of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry simply overreacted to unfair treatment.

On August 17, Brownsville protested the harsh words of the San Antonio Gazette. The “outrage was almost entirely unprovoked,” they said. Once again, reporters used the word “trivial” to describe racist incidents of the previous weeks. And despite the hundreds of armed men lining the road between Fort Brown and Brownsville, the Daily Herald described the town’s reaction to the violence as “reasonable and law-abiding.” Apparently they felt that they deserved some sort of award for not storming Fort Brown and lynching the soldiers.

One more time, the Daily Herald’s editors called on Black soldiers to hand over the perpetrators in their midst. One more time, there was silence from the men inside the fort.

Brownsville, Texas, August 1906 – part 2, the continuing injustice

Brownsville, Texas, August 1906 – part 3, the aftermath

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Image credit: Goff, O. S. (Orlando Scott), 1843-1917, photographer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The photo is undated, presumably from the last fifteen years of the 19th century. A soldier of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry.

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