The Brownsville Outrage: African-American Soldiers Framed, Discharged
The Brownsville Incident was one of the most famous injustices against African-Americans in the early 20th century.
After a white bartender was shot and killed, and a white police officer shot and wounded, African-Americans soldiers stationed nearby at Fort Brown were accused of the shootings. The soldiers had arrived at the Fort only three weeks earlier, and there were numerous racist incidents after they arrived. Even though they had been in their barracks at the time of the shootings, evidence was planted against them.
President Theodore Roosevelt on this day ordered 167 of the officers dishonorably discharged, which cost them their pensions and denied them eligibility for civil service jobs.
In 1910, the Army reexamined the case and accepted 14 for reenlistment, 11 of whom chose to reenter the army.
After years of protest about the false charges, the case was reopened by the Army in 1972. The person responsible for obtaining the reopening was Lt. Col. William Baker, who had heard the story of the Brownsville injustice as a child from his grandfather. In 1972 Lt. Col. Baker was assigned to the new Army Equal Opportunity Program, where he developed a process to facilitate African American officers expressing their grievances against the Army command. With Baker working on the inside and Rep. Augustus (“Gus”) Hawkins of California, the Army reopened the Brownsville case. As a result, the Army retroactively granted honorable discharges to all of the 167 soldiers who had been discharged. Only one of the 167 African American soldiers was alive at the time. In 1974 President Richard Nixon signed a law compensating the one known survivor and the widows of the original 167.
The one surviving victim was Dorsie W. Willis, 87 years-old in 1974. He received a personal apology from the Army and a $25,000 check for compensation from the government.
Lt. Col. William Baker died at age 86 on September 24, 2018 (see the New York Times obituary on October 10, 2018).
Read the book that helped reopen the case: John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (1970)
Learn more about the Brownsville incident: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/pkb06
Learn more about African American history: Henry Louis Gates, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 (2011)