Brownsville, Texas, August 1906 – part 2

Part 1 covers 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.

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.

Brownsville’s city fathers petitioned Texas Governor Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham; President Theodore Roosevelt; state Senators; and, congressmen in Washington to remove the Black soldiers from Fort Brown. They sent costly telegraphs, each one more urgent than the last, each one more melodramatic than the one before.

By August 17, 1906, their exaggerations were becoming untenable. “Hordes” originally numbering eighteen to twenty men were suddenly “twenty to thirty”; the number of rounds fired had dramatically risen; and basically all of Brownsville (instead of three city blocks) had been shot up. In addition to the now-thirty men who had invaded Brownsville, the governor and president “learned” that even soldiers who had remained inside the garrison had fired their weapons in the direction of the town.

These telegraphs failed to mention that investigations had come up empty, with no proof that anyone connected with Fort Brown had been involved in the fracas. But the city fathers did mention that their investigation had confirmed that the murderers had acted unprovoked, that no one in Brownsville had done anything to set them off.

Each telegraph included the request to replace Black soldiers with white. Each was generally ignored, with only a formulaic response, plus Governor Lanham’s promise to send the Texas Rangers to keep peace.

Citizens of Brownsville were even more outraged when news bureaus in Austin and Houston dismissed the affair as insignificant, pointing out that all was now quiet. The Brownsville Daily Herald screamed, Didn’t people understand that these Black soldiers had been planning to murder the citizens of Brownsville before they even left Nebraska?

It seems that when the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry had received its marching orders, a Texas unit stationed in Austin had sworn that if Black soldiers stepped foot on Texas soil, it was their intention “to use ball cartridges on the negro soldiers,” that is, they would kill them. Therefore, Brownsvillian logic went, these 167 men were bent on revenge on whites long before they left Nebraska and had merely been biding their time.

The War Department had even publicly warned that there would be trouble if a Black unit were stationed in Texas, the Daily Herald said. Further, since the white commanding officers knew about the hard feelings, they should not have ever allowed the men to leave the base. The Daily Herald writers seemed deaf to the petulance of their rationalizations. Texas and Washington owed Brownsville! They had earned the right to have these awful Black soldiers removed! Or so thought Brownsvillians.

On August 21, city fathers were relieved when they believed that the War Department finally saw the wisdom of Brownsville’s request. They received word that Company H of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry had left Sinton (near Corpus Christi, Texas) and promptly assumed that the generals were sending these white men “to control the negro troops, protect our people and see that the law looking to the apprehension and prosecution of the guilty parties be allowed to take its course.” That was the reason they had requested white replacements.

The next day, Brownsvillians were ecstatic to learn that the Black soldiers in their midst had been ordered to leave Fort Brown. They were headed to either Fort Ringgold or Fort Reno (Oklahoma). Their destination mattered little – they would be gone.

Editors of the Brownsville Daily Herald likely saw no irony in the article they ran alongside the news of the transfer. Seems that an English-language narrative based on the farcical proceedings surrounding Joan of Arc’s trial and execution had just been published. Well, actually not so much her trial, but the appeals filed twenty years after she was burned at the stake, appeals which acquitted her and led to her eventual canonization. Went right over the heads of the men at the Brownsville Daily Herald…

With white troops on their way, the Daily Herald began the task of rewriting the town’s history regarding its acceptance of Black soldiers in their midst. They had been happy, they wrote on August 22, 1906, to hear that an all-negro infantry was being sent to Brownsville. The previous white soldiers had been such troublemakers, the townspeople fully expected better things of the Black soldiers headed their way.

The Daily Herald continued with its revisionist journalism. The Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry had lived up to their expectations. Bartenders and shopkeepers loved doing business with Black soldiers, because they tipped well and had been so respectful. Businessmen in Brownsville would miss the Twenty-Fifth, because they had been such great people to have around. (Really? Did they think no one would save newspapers from a week or so earlier?)

The same paper that ran that story published two contradictory articles. In one, the editors reprinted a racist poem penned by Judd Mortimer Lewis of Houston, first published in the Houston Post. Since Judd Mortimer Lewis eventually became Texas’ first poet laureate, remembered as a sunny, folksy kind of guy, it’s good to remember that his pen once worked on behalf of the eradication of Black Americans.

Here is his poem in response to the Brownsville incident, verbatim.

Of a governor who’s slow to act
When minutes mean to die or live;
Of people’s servants loath to move,
And of a chief executive
Who asks for full particulars
Of “that” and “this,” the “how,” and “why,”
Say, have we time for all of this,
When hours may mean to live or die?

Say, have we time? Your wife or mine,
Your child or mine – your prattling child –
Crouched in the dread of awful things
Our daughters murdered and defiled
Black fingers crooked about fair throat
The leering fiend – the tortured breath –
Where’s time for laggard red tape now,
When moments may mean life or death?

We of the South have known it long;
The brooding horror we have known!
The black and mouthing, leering fear,
Where we our loved ones leave alone!
And shall the beast be armed and set
Above us, left to break his will
On us, and our defenseless ones?
His only dream to rape and kill?

Justice! we ask; and speedily!
Remove this incubus, and now!
Safeguard our homes, then hesitate,
Then question “When?” and “Where?” and “How?”
If minded, till the crack of doom!
Or tell us, “No!” that we may know
That to our own strength we must look,
With our own arms give blow for blow!

And we will act! Aye, we will act!
By all we love and we revere,
For wives with horror-haunted eyes!
For prattling babies more than dear!
For daughters more than sweet and fair!
For them we’ll fall, or for them stand!
Justice! we ask not any more –
By God we ask not! We DEMAND!
— Judd Mortimer Lewis, 1906.

The Daily Herald further requested that the federal government cease and desist from sending Black soldiers to the South. They intimated that the Brownsville affair would be repeated wherever “negro troops” were stationed – as if that would be the fault of Black soldiers.

More than a week after the midnight shootings, Brownsville finally got around to a “real” investigation. They imported Judge Stanley Welch of Corpus Christi, along with Captain McDonald of the Texas Rangers.

Captain McDonald (photo) was the same man who had been instrumental in railroading Henry “Monk” Gibson for the murder of Lora Conditt a year earlier, over the courageous objections of Sheriff Albert Egg of Edna, Texas. Felix Powell later confessed to the murder of Mrs. Conditt, but that did not help Henry “Monk” Gibson, a Black man, who had been executed after a sham trial. And now, Captain McDonald was in Brownsville to investigate.

Judge Welch was known as a “silver-tongued orator” capable of smoothing things over between feuding factions. He had just come off the racially-charged murder trial of Gregorio Cortez, in which that Mexican-American man had been convicted of murdering a lawman. Eyewitnesses confirmed the man’s story that the sheriff had opened fire on Cortez and his brother (and the brother eventually died). But apparently self-defense was not considered an option unless one were a wealthy white male.

Major Charles Penrose, commanding officer of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry, yielded to tremendous pressure on August 23, 1906. Standing by his report – namely that all soldiers were accounted for at the time the alarm sounded in Brownsville, and that not one single rifle showed signs of having been fired – Major Penrose said it was possible that his men had somehow pulled off the daring raid. His “possible” statement opened the door for the arrests of twelve men in the company, with absolutely no evidence brought against them.

Mrs. Evans, the white woman whose claims of having been assaulted by a Black soldier had started the whole ruckus, renewed her allegation. Although she had originally said that her assailant had been wearing a uniform and that she “knew” he was Black though she could not see him, now she stated that the man who assaulted her had been wearing khakis – and she assumed that khakis were part of a military uniform, ergo a Black soldier. No matter, close enough in Brownsville.

Judd Mortimer Lewis continued his racist rhetoric in the Houston Post, calling on the spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte to settle things in Brownsville. The people of Brownsville were thrilled to have such an eminent writer take up their cause!

But: It now appeared that The Powers That Be had recognized the sham perpetrated by the people of Brownsville. Major Penrose’s full report had spoken of the “engagement in battle with citizens,” clearly suggesting that there was wrong-doing on both sides.

Further, those white troops sent to Brownsville were not coming to replace the Black soldiers, but to escort them from the city (offer them protection). Fort Brown was to be abandoned. The Daily Herald editors saw that as “a verdict against us attained by misrepresentations,” claiming that an empty fort would “leave our frontier unprotected.”

The charade of an investigation had caused twelve soldiers to be arrested, but the federal government was not going to leave the men to be tried in Texas. They would move out with the rest of their company, under the command of Major Penrose.

The Brownsville Daily Herald ran a letter of recommendation from the Corpus Christi Caller. Citing “the calm dignity” and “absence of sensationalism” [of the Daily Herald’s reporting], the Caller stated that if the citizens of Brownsville decided to take matters into their own hands – a not-so-veiled threat to lynch the Black soldiers – they had only to ask, and the men of Corpus Christi would join them. They described the Brownsville affair as a “reign of terror” inflicted both by Black soldiers and by Washington’s inaction.

Judge Stanley Welch likely surprised everyone in Brownsville when he revoked the arrest warrants that Captain McDonald had issued for twelve of Major Penrose’s men. All twelve soldiers were now free to leave with the rest of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry.

Major Penrose initially intended to leave Fort Brown shortly before midnight on August 24. Word of the departure time leaked out, with the expected result that many men in Brownsville proposed taking the law into their own hands. The commanding officer therefore let it be known that the Black soldiers would not leave until a War Department representative arrived to examine the case.

Assuming that the Twenty-Fifth would be in town for a while, Brownsville residents went to bed. When they awoke, they found that Major Penrose had spirited his men out under cover of darkness. They had marched through town around 3 o’clock in the morning so quietly that no one heard them. The special train pulled away at 6 a.m.

Part 3: More about Major Charles Penrose and Captain McDonald in Part 3. This ain’t over yet!

A Change Dot Org petition to have Judd Mortimer Lewis’ name removed from an elementary school in Houston, Texas can be signed here.

Image credits: Top photo: Shopify stock photo.--Captain Bill McDonald. Photo taken prior to 1918. Image is public domain.

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