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The Brownsville Affair

Sergeant Mingo Sanders, Fort Missoula, 1895

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1. Sergeant Mingo Sanders, Fort Missoula, 1895

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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. Buffalo soldiers of the 25th Infantry, some wearing buffalo robes, Ft. Keogh, Montana
5. Chaplain T. G. Steward
10. 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.
11. 25th Infantry Bicycle corps, 1896
16. Sergeant Mingo Sanders, Fort Missoula, 1895
21. Springfield 1903 rifle

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Roosevelt's Response Immediately following the raid, Major Penrose confined all his men to the fort. He ordered that every rifle be inspected and every cartridge counted. Rigorous inspection showed that no rifles had been fired and no ammunition was missing. However, both Mayor Combe and one of the regiment’s officers found spent cartridges belonging to the army’s new Springfield rifles on the ground in town. From this evidence the Major concluded that, against all logic, his men must have been responsible for the raid. Neither Major Penrose nor Mayor Combe thought to inspect the cartridges to determine how recently they had been fired.

Brownsville’s citizens immediately formed an investigating committee. Its members, in the words of the committee’s head, retired Army Captain William Kelly, "had no special animus against Negroes as such." The committee wasted no time in inspecting Fort Brown, pointedly noting the lack of damage to any of its buildings, and interviewing witnesses. Despite their self affirmed open mindedness, not one member of the committee doubted the guilt of the soldiers. Their interviews began:
State what you know about this attack of the Negroes on this town.

The citizens' committee took two days to arrive at the conclusion everyone in the town, committee included, had started from: the raid had been the work of a handful of soldiers. As proof, they had testimony from citizen witnesses, many of whom claimed to have clearly seen the faces of their attackers despite the intense darkness and panicked confusion of that night. Comfortable in their conclusions, the committee drafted a telegram to President Theodore Roosevelt demanding that the 25th Infantry be removed from Fort Brown and replaced with a unit of White soldiers. By August 21st their demands were granted, and the 25th Infantry marched out of Texas to Fort Reno, in Oklahoma.

The army too investigated the event. Major Penrose immediately questioned the two men who had been out of bed at the time of the event: Private Howard, on sentry duty, and Matias Tamayo, the post scavenger. Both swore they had seen no movement within the fort prior to the shooting. From the non-commissioned officers in charge of the troop barracks, he received sworn statements that no soldiers had left the fort and no guns had been disturbed prior to the alarm call. No man came forth with any information about the perpetrators, and all those who were questioned swore that they knew nothing about the incident at all.

Taking these claims as a conspiracy of silence, the army appointed General Ernest Garlington as Inspector General to interview the troops and ferret out the culprits. When he too failed to get any confessions, an ultimatum was delivered to the troops, directly from their Commander in Chief, President Roosevelt:

Unless the men came forward with what they knew of the raid and allowed the army to apprehend and punish their guilty comrades, every single soldier who had served at Fort Brown at the time of the raid would be discharged from the army without honor.