The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville SoldiersTexas A&M University Press, 1997 - 271 pages 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." |
Contents
CHAPTERS | 3 |
No rebel flags will be returned | 30 |
as the supreme triumphs of war | 54 |
Copyright | |
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25th Infantry 60th Congress administration American appointment Archie Butt army asked battalion bill Biography Blaine Booker Brownsville affair Brownsville Raid Brownsville soldiers Busy called campaign candidate Cincinnati citizens Cleveland Colonel colored Company Congress court of inquiry delegates Democrats Dorsie Willis Dorsie's election father fight Foraker's Garfield governor Hanna Harlan Hayes to McKinley Hearst Henry Cabot Lodge honor Ibid January John Joseph Benson Foraker justice Last Survivor later Letters of Theodore Lincoln Lincoln Steffens Live Morgan Morison morning mother Negro Nellie never night nomination Ohio Ohio's Ollie Philippines political president president's Pringle race recalled replied reported Rise of Theodore Roosevelt wrote Rough Riders secretary Senator Foraker Sherman South southern speech Taft's Texas Theodore Roosevelt tion told took United vote W. A. Swanberg W. E. B. Du Bois Washington Weaver weeks White House William Howard Taft William McKinley William Randolph Hearst York young