The Brownsville Affair of 1906 was previously referred to as the "Brownsville Raid". Due to the recent reexamination of this historic event, and many like it in American history, the terms once associated with these events have changed due to restoration efforts over time. This does not mean that publications using previous titles should be considered undervalued. The Brownsville Raid, by John Weaver, set the foundation for revitalization efforts that challenged previous interpretations and is still largely cited by historians today.
Some materials in the collections and resources provided contain offensive and racist language and/or imagery, especially in depictions of African Americans and other people of color. These harmful and racist perspectives are not representative of the beliefs of the University, library, or staff. We hope that our research guide provides historical context rather than perpetuates negative positions, language, values, and stereotypes.
The purpose of this research guide is to provide a brief summary and background information on the Brownsville Affair while also preparing a list of sources to assist students, staff, and researchers in navigating this research topic. Resources include books, maps, photographs, newspaper clippings, videos, and links to externals resources and websites. Additional information for Mingo Sanders has also been included for further research.
On August 13, 1906, citizens of Brownsville, Texas alleged that African-American soldiers with the Twenty-fifth US Infantry at Fort Brown raided the city, resulting in property damages and the death of local bartender Frank Natus. As Garna Christian writes, "The Brownsville [Affair] occurred against a background of deteriorating Negro status: Texas in that same year extended railroad segregation to streetcars, eliminated the black militia, and held the second all-white Democratic primary. The state witnessed over a hundred lynchings between 1900 and 1910, the third highest in the nation." Furthermore, hostility towards African Americans in the Valley had been escalating. In 1875 and 1899, violence erupted between black soldiers of the Ninth (9th) Cavalry and white officers stationed at Fort Ringgold and white residents of Rio Grande City. The occupation of the U.S. military on the border, especially by African-American troops, angered Brownsville's white residents.
Hours before the alleged raid in 1906, a white woman reportedly had been harassed by a group of black soldiers from the 25th regiment, which led Major Charles Penrose to confine all soldiers to their posts that day. That evening shots rang out in the town and local witnesses claimed the responsible parties were a group of Black soldiers from Fort Brown. Immediately after the shooting Maj. Penrose conducted a roll call of all soldiers and a weapons check--the record indicated that all men were present at their barracks that night and all their weapons were accounted for. A formal investigation was conducted by Maj. Augustus Blocksom whose research did not yield substantial evidence on who was responsible for the shooting. Without any proof of evidence, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 black troops of the 25th Regiment. Six among them were Medal of Honor recipients.
The highest-ranking soldier to be dishonorably discharged was First Sergeant Mingo Sanders of the 25th US Infantry B Company. Sgt. Sanders was a distinguished career soldier who received combat experience in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, having served under Theodore Roosevelt's command. Sgt. Sanders was also a participant in the historic US 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps on their experimental 1,900-mile journey.
With the help of feminist and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell, Sgt Sanders and Private Elmer Brown of the Twenty-fifth US Infantry were able to successfully reenlist into the military on December 12, 1906. Despite widespread public criticism immediately following the unjustified conviction of 167 soldiers, serious reexamination of this incident did not occur until 66 years after the publication of John D. Weaver’s, The Brownsville Raid, in 1970. In 1972 the Army reversed the conviction citing that the events following the Brownsville Affair were not committed at the hands of the Twenty-fifth US Infantry finally validating their innocence in the historical record.
A cover of the Harper's Weekly magazine, featuring a black and white drawing of Mingo Sanders with his head down holding a piece of paper. At the bottom of the cover are the words 'Dishonorably Discharged.' Next to the full cover is a closeup of Sanders' head and torso, with the writing on the medals and arm-band legible. The writing reads 'One of the best' and 'Nearly 30 years a soldier'.
B Company's Baseball Team, pictured: 1. Harry Carmichael, 2. James Johnson, 3. Edward Daniels, 4. Henry Jones, 5. George Mitchell, 6. Charles E. Cooper, 7. Mingo Sanders, 8. Isaiah Raynor, 9. Wade Harris, 10. John Hollomon, 11. James Allen, 12. Joseph L. Wilson
1973 AP Wirephoto and news clipping of Edward Warfield receiving an honorable discharge from the military 67 years after the Brownsville Affair.
"Edward Warfield, who was in a company of black soldiers accused of carrying out the "Brownsville Raid" at the turn of the century, died today of an apparent heart attack at the age of 89."
Note: Dorsie Willis (not Williams) was the sole survivor.
At 86, Black Resentful of Army Action in Texas Raid
MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 27 — "Nowadays," said Dorsie W. Willis, "I just sit and eat and think."
DORSIE W. WILLIS, 91, VICTIM OF ARMY BIAS
Ex-Soldier Was Last Survivor of Brownsville Incident in 1906
MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 24 (AP) Dorsie W. Willis, the last survivor of a company of black soldiers that the Army discharged without honor in the Brownsville Incident of 1906, died today. He was 91 years old.
"Adapted from the map drawn by draftsmen in the Office of the Quartermaster General, for the Court of Inquiry, December,1909". This map includes the houses of people involved in the incident, local businesses, and Fort Brown. From the 1970 book written by John Weaver, The Brownsville Raid.
Cunningham & Co. postcard inscribed, "On the right is the Cowan residence into which the negro raiders fired twenty shots, August 13th 1906 Brownsville, Texas"
Read about the allegations and rush to judgement in "Infamous Outrage." Brownsville Daily Herald (Brownsville, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 35, Ed. 1, Monday, August 13, 1906; Brownsville, Texas. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .
Citizens of Brownsville rushed to judge the newly arrived Black servicemen despite later accounts that all soldiers were present and accounted for the night of the alleged incident. "Dastardly Outrage by Negro Soldiers." Brownsville Daily Herald (Brownsville, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 36, Ed. 1, Tuesday, August 14, 1906. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .
A northern newspaper offers a different account of the Brownsville Affair. "Negro Soldiers Are Indignant." Fort Wayne Sentinel, 9 Nov 1906, p. 13. Fort Wayne, Indiana. Retrieved from https://www.fold3.com/image/268989784
"Soldiers Have Chance." The Washington Post, 12 Dec 1906, p. 2. Washington, DC. Retrieved from https://www.fold3.com/image/208317326
See also the blog "Riders of the Bicycle Corps" for the transcription of the Washington Post article: http://bicyclecorpsriders.blogspot.com/2009/01/mingo-sanders.html
TR ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 soldiers of the 25th Infantry
Samantha Bustillos earned a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS-Anthropology) at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley (2021). Ms. Bustillos earned a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Anthropology at UTRGV in 2019. She worked at UTRGV Special Collections as an intern and later student assistant while earning her degrees. Samantha is a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholar and UTRGV Engaged Scholar. As an Engaged Scholar, she conducted and presented her research findings on biracial families in the Rio Grande Valley during the U.S. Civil War at UTRGV ES2 Symposium in 2019. Samantha also served as a docent for the Community Historical Archeology Project with Schools (CHAPS) in collaboration on the traveling exhibit "War and Peace on the Rio Grande." She is now employed with UTRGV University Library as a Library Assistant I.
The research guides compiled by UTRGV staff and students are intended to assist patrons who are embarking upon new research endeavors. Our goal is to expand their knowledge of the types of resources available on a given topic, including books, archival materials, and websites. In so doing, our compilers have taken care to include collections, digital items, and resources that may be accessed not only through UTRGV but also via other institutions, repositories, and websites.
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Affray at Brownsville, Tex. by
pt. 1. Summary discharge or mustering out of regiments or companies. Message from the President ... transmitting a report from the Secretary of War -- pt. 2. Proceedings of a general court-martial ... San Antonio, Tex., Feb. 4, 1907, in the case of Maj. Charles W. Penrose -- pt. 3. Proceeding of a general court-martial ... San Antonio, Tex., April 15, 1907, in the case of Capt. E.A. Macklin -- pt. 4-6. Hearing before Committee concerning the affray, vol. I-III.
The Brownsville Raid by
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.
Racial Borders by
When the Civil War ended, hundreds of African Americans enlisted in the U.S. Army to gain social mobility and regular paychecks. Stationed in the West prior to 1898, these black soldiers protected white communities, forced Native Americans onto government reservations, patrolled the Mexican border, and broke up labor disputes in mining areas. African American men, themselves no strangers to persecution, aided the subjugation of Indian and Hispanic peoples throughout the West. It can hardly be surprising, then, that the relations among these groups became complex and often hostile-hardly surprising, but rarely examined. Despised by the white settlers they protected, many black soldiers were sent to posts along the Texas-Mexico border-- perceived to be a "safe place to put them." The interactions there among blacks, whites, and Hispanics during the period leading up to the Punitive Expedition and World War I offer the opportunity to study the complicated, even paradoxical nature of American race relations. James N. Leiker has applied the sophisticated perspectives of new social history to the experience of the buffalo soldiers and their legacy in southern and western Texas in an effort to gain new insight about race in the West. Racial Borders establishes the army's fundamental role in transforming the Rio Grande from a "frontier" into a "border" and shows how that transformation itself brought a tightening of racial and national categories. But more importantly, it warns about the dangers of simplifying history into groupings of "white and non-white," "oppressors and oppressed." Leiker draws on Mexican and U.S. military records and Texas state and black national newspapers to do more than provide an account of the shifting loyalties of race and nationalism along the Rio Grande over a fifty-year span; he reminds scholars and reformers about the tangled history of race relations in America.
The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son by
A mysterious midnight shooting spree that began on a dirt road in Texas between Brownsville and Fort Brown on August 13, 1906, killed one civilian and shattered the lives of 167 black infantrymen who had been summarily discharged without honor by a stroke of President Theodore Roosevelt's pen. In The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son, John D. Weaver completes the task he began with his 1970 book The Brownsville Raid, which, two years later, led to the soldiers' exoneration. Weaver now traces the intertwined lives of Ohio's Senator Joseph B. Foraker, who risked his political career in an eloquent defense of the soldiers, who "asked no favors because they are Negroes but only for justice because they are men"; of Dorsie Willis, the Mississippi sharecropper's son who emerged from obscurity as the black battalion's last survivor; and of the New York aristocrat who linked the fates of those two men--the flamboyant and popular Theodore Roosevelt. Weaver's narrative explores these tangled lives against the background of "the color line," which W. E. B. Du Bois defined in 1903 as "the problem of the twentieth century." The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son gives a powerful human dimension to the facts of history. The senator committed political suicide by championing the men caught up in this "Black Dreyfus Affair" and Dorsie Willis, who spent fifty-nine years shining shoes in a downtown Minneapolis barbershop, told a reporter, "That dishonorable discharge kept me from improving my station. Only God knows what it done to the others."
Studies in Brownsville history by
Read "The Brownsville Raid: a historical assessment," by Wally Pierce
Studies in Rio Grande Valley history by
"Colored Death: The Tragedy of Black Troops on the Lower
Rio Grande 1864-1906" by Antonio N. Zavaleta, p. 343
Taking on Theodore Roosevelt by
In August 1906, black soldiers stationed in Brownsville, Texas, were accused of going on a lawless rampage in which shots were fired, one man was killed, and another wounded. Because the perpetrators could never be positively identified, President Theodore Roosevelt took the highly unusual step of discharging without honor all one hundred sixty-seven members of the black battalion on duty the night of the shooting. This book investigates the controversial action of an otherwise much-lauded president, the challenge to his decision from a senator of his own party, and the way in which Roosevelt's uncompromising stance affected African American support of the party of Lincoln. Using primary sources to reconstruct the events, attorney Harry Lembeck begins at the end when Senator Joseph Foraker is honored by the black community in Washington, DC, for his efforts to reverse Roosevelt's decision. Lembeck highlights Foraker's courageous resistance to his own president. In addition, he examines the larger context of racism in the era of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, pointing out that Roosevelt treated discrimination against the Japanese in the West much differently. He also notes often-ignored evidence concerning the role of Roosevelt's illegitimate cousin in the president's decision, the possibility that Foraker and Roosevelt had discussed a compromise, and other hitherto overlooked facts about the case. Sixty-seven years after the event, President Richard Nixon finally undid Roosevelt's action by honorably discharging the men of the Brownsville Battalion. But, as this thoroughly researched and engrossing narrative shows, the damage done to both Roosevelt's reputation and black support for the Republican Party lingers to this day.
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