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The Brownsville Affair

Harper's Weekly, January 12, 1907

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2. Dorsie Willis, 1974 Minneapolis: It was a smiling 87-year-old Dorsie Willis that talked to reporters, 1/10, after he received a check for $25,000 from the U.S. Government for being the sole survivor of the Brownsville Massacre. In 1906, Willis and 166 other black soldiers were dishonorably discharged from the Army following a racial incident. Early last year the secretary of the Army ordered all of the discharges changed to honorable. 'I'm very grateful (for the check),' said Willis. 'It's a great birthday present. But it comes too many years too late.'
3. 25th Infantry at Fort Missoula, circa 1900
4. Chaplain T. G. Steward
5. Buffalo soldiers of the 25th Infantry, some wearing buffalo robes, Ft. Keogh, Montana
9. Senator Joseph Foraker, 1908 Senator Foraker was primarily a friend to big businesses, and a supporter of de-regulation and laissez faire economics. However, he insisted to his death that his championing of the Brownsville soldiers, although prompted by political interests, was a fight to see justice done. His continued efforts to reverse the President’s decision, long after his allies in congress had abandoned him, supports his words.
10. 25th Infantry Bicycle corps, 1896
12. Sergeant Mingo Sanders, Fort Missoula, 1895
22. Springfield 1903 rifle

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Punishment and its Aftermath
The president’s ultimatum was chilling and unprecedented. Despite it, not a single soldier was able to come forward with any evidence. To a one they protested innocence and no knowledge of any guilty parties within their ranks. To General Garlington , this was proof of conspiracy, although he later admitted that he could not think of how else a genuinely innocent regiment could have responded. On October 22nd, the general submitted his official incident report and recommended that all the soldiers be discharged without honor. On November the 5th, the eve of election day, President Roosevelt ordered that the discharge take place. Only the following evening, after all ballots had been cast and counted and Black Americans voters had helped the President’s party maintain control of congress, did Roosevelt make his order public.

The order, and the timing of its release, produced immediate backlash from Black newspapers, leaders, and communities. Newspapers accused him of race prejudice and cowardice. Booker T. Washington wrote the President directly asking him to change his mind. Roosevelt ignored them all. On November 12th, three months to the day after the trouble began, 167 men of the 25th Infantry Regiment were stripped of their rifles, pensions, and professions. Not one of them had been granted a hearing or court martial at which to answer the charges leveled against them.

The President’s political enemies jumped on the incident. Ohio Senator Joseph Foraker spearheaded the congressional backlash. Although a fellow Republican, Foraker had his eyes on the Presidency. Further, he held personal grudges against President Roosevelt, whose hard stance against big businesses angered Foraker’s allies and financial supporters. In the Brownsville affair, Foraker saw his chance.

Ever meticulous, the former lawyer dissected Roosevelt’s decision down to its smallest detail. He exposed every inconsistency, every unproven assumption, every overlooked detail. Foraker succeeded in opening a congressional investigation into the affair, and in February of 1907 the Senate officially opened its hearings. Witnesses from Brownsville traveled to Washington D.C. to testify. These testimonies were picked apart, compared to statements given in August and found wanting. Practical experiments also proved that the light of Springfield rifle fire was hardly enough to reveal the origin of the shot, much less the level of detail that witnesses offered in their descriptions.

Despite these discrepancies, the Senate hearings upheld the President’s decision. Senator Foraker continued to push for justice, maintaining that it was the job of the prosecutor to prove guilt, not the defendant to prove innocence, a functionally impossible task. Ultimately, after four years of hearings, testimonies, and political posturing, 14 of the 167 men were deemed eligible for re enlistment. It remains a mystery how and why those specific 14 men were selected.