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The Brownsville Raid
Around midnight on August 13, 1906, shots rang out on the road between Brownsville, Texas, and Fort Brown, the old army garrison. Ten minutes later a young civilian lay dead, and angry residents swarmed the streets, convinced their homes had been terrorized by newly arrived soldiers. Inside Fort Brown, the alarm was sounded. Soldiers leaped from their bunks and grabbed their rifles, thinking they were under attack by hostile townspeople. The soldiers were black; the civilians were white.
Still proclaiming their innocence, 167 black infantrymen of the segregated Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiment were summarily dismissed without honor (or a trial) by President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Brownsville Raid, first published in 1970, is John D. Weaver’s searching study of the flimsy evidence presented in a 1909-1910 court of inquiry. That court had upheld the president’s action and closed the case against the soldiers, not one of whom had ever been found guilty of wrongdoing. The case remained closed until 1971 when, after reading The Brownsville Raid, Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins of Los Angeles introduced a bill to have the Defense Department rectify the injustice.
Amid a flurry of national publicity, honorable discharges were finally granted in 1972. All were posthumous except for that of Private Dorsie Willis, who received his in a moving ceremony on his eighty-seventh birthday.
Still proclaiming their innocence, 167 black infantrymen of the segregated Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiment were summarily dismissed without honor (or a trial) by President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Brownsville Raid, first published in 1970, is John D. Weaver’s searching study of the flimsy evidence presented in a 1909-1910 court of inquiry. That court had upheld the president’s action and closed the case against the soldiers, not one of whom had ever been found guilty of wrongdoing. The case remained closed until 1971 when, after reading The Brownsville Raid, Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins of Los Angeles introduced a bill to have the Defense Department rectify the injustice.
Amid a flurry of national publicity, honorable discharges were finally granted in 1972. All were posthumous except for that of Private Dorsie Willis, who received his in a moving ceremony on his eighty-seventh birthday.
- GenresAmerican HistoryHistory
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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August 20, 2017
"The Brownsville Raid" by John D. Weaver: what happened when three companies of black troops were assigned to Brownsville, TX, in 1906. The white-majority town went into mass hysteria, and a never-solved shooting (more likely a border raid) was blamed on the black troops.
They swore they didn't know anything about it, and the army said, "If you don't know anything about it, you're all discharged without honor."
Weaver wrote the book in 1970, and Augustus Hawkins, a black member of Congress from CA, used it to take steps that got the discharges changed to honorable. Two of the troopers lived to see it happen.
They swore they didn't know anything about it, and the army said, "If you don't know anything about it, you're all discharged without honor."
Weaver wrote the book in 1970, and Augustus Hawkins, a black member of Congress from CA, used it to take steps that got the discharges changed to honorable. Two of the troopers lived to see it happen.
Displaying 1 of 1 review