PBA Galleries

Senate Report No. 355, Parts 1-3. 78 pp. (8vo), without wrappers, probably as issued. Bound in stiff cardboard with front cover paper label. With period photographic postcard, “On the right is the Cowan Residence into which the Negro Raiders fired twenty shots, Aug. 13th, 1906, Brownsville, Texas”.

This last congressional document relating to the Brownsville Affair of 1906, following three volumes of earlier Senate hearings and testimony, is perhaps the most significant because it includes a spirited defense, by two Progressive Republican Senators, of the 167 Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, recipients of the Medal of Honor among them, who were dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt. This defense, which examines the incident in detail and cites testimony that contradicted the US Army Inspector General’s flawed investigation of violent racial conflict between some Black troops and white citizens of Brownsville, Texas, was basically ignored for over sixty years until 1972, when the Army found most of the accused innocent of the charges and President Nixon issued a belated pardon and honorable discharge of the troops, only two of whom were then still living. An important document of African-American military history.