History of Brownsville Texas

[odoc]

Readers :
what can you tell this old man about
Brownsville Texas , and black people ?.

[JamieC]

I'm not from Brownsville, TX. However, if you Google it you might find what you're looking for. Not being sarcastic!!

[saraphen]

I did the homework for you:

The Brownsville Affray, 1906

In July 1906, the U.S. Army stationed three companies of the all-black Twenty-Fifth Infantry at Fort Brown, Texas, adjacent to Brownsville. In recent years, southern Texas and the border region had seen periodic disturbances between American soldiers and local Chicanos who resented the military's presence. Soon after their arrival, black soldiers began complaining of police harassment and civilian discrimination.

On the night of August 13, a group of unidentified men fired more than a hundred shots into private homes and businesses near the fort, killing a young bartender. A well-organized citizens' group accused the black infantrymen, prompting a U.S. Inspector General's investigation directed by Major Augustus Penrose. Penrose later concluded that a handful of soldiers had knowledge of the shooting, but the shooters' identities could not be discovered because the black troops refused to answer investigators' questions. On November 6, claiming a "conspiracy of silence" to protect their guilty comrades, President Theodore Roosevelt announced the dishonorable discharges of 167 men in Companies B, C, and D. To avoid further trouble with border residents, Fort Brown and neighboring Ringgold Barracks were closed in October.
African-American leaders nationwide condemned Roosevelt's handling of "the Brownsville affray." One study suggests this event marked the beginning of African Americans' abandonment of their historical loyalty to the Republican Party. From 1907 to 1910, the U.S. Senate reexamined the case and eventually allowed fourteen infantrymen to reenlist but upheld the summary guilty verdict. In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense reduced the discharges to honorable status.

http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylo...lle_affray.htm

[odoc]

Thanks Saraphen,
I had a feeling you would be the one .
Was the 25th known for anything other then Brownsville?,
Befor, and after.

I had a book about the Brownsville incident. I think it was called "The Brownsville Affair". I'm not sure how far I got in the book but I remember I never finished it. Not sure where it is now. One more thing to search for.

[saraphen]

Originally Posted by odoc

Thanks Saraphen,
I had a feeling you would be the one .
Was the 25th known for anything other then Brownsville?,
Befor, and after.

You're welcome. Now you're on your own.

[DBlack]

I never knew that historically, we were loyal republicans in the beginning. perhaps the 40 Acres and a Mule scam resulted in negative sentiments towards republicans also.

Good information Saraphen, thx.

[saraphen]

Originally Posted by DBlack

I never knew that historically, we were loyal republicans in the beginning. perhaps the 40 Acres and a Mule scam resulted in negative sentiments towards republicans also.

Good information Saraphen, thx.

When the Dixiecrats (Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms, et al) joined the Republican party during the Civil Rights movement, that really did it.

[Samoon]

I'm a bit surprised...I thought that it was common knowledge that initially many black voters WERE Republicans. One of the first things that we learned in our school and at home. But glad to know that it's been put out there.

[Auset32]

Charles Fuller is widely known as a playwright. His first professionally produced play was The Perfect Party. Since then, Fuller has written numerous plays, most well-known of these are The Brownsville Raid, Zooman and the Sign and A Soldier's Play. The Brownsville Raid centers on a mysterious shootout in 1906 in Brownsville, Texas. Based on actually events, Fuller tells the tale of how 167 soldiers were dishonorably discharged from the 25th Infantry, an all-Black unit stationed there. Zooman and the Sign (winner of an Obie Award for excellence in an Off Broadway production) is about the affects of violence in the inner city. The story features the conflict social causation versus personal accountability and the role of just men in society when a twelve year old girl is accidentally murdered by a teenager named“Zooman” and the neighborhood does nothing.

Each of his plays demonstrates a strong historical basis, but Fuller insists these influences are much broader in range. In an interview with Esther Harriot, Fuller addressed the question of the origins of his plays with, “Everything I touch [inspires me], really everything. I can't really point to one thing.” Of course, he does acknowledge history and other novels as influence in his work. In A Soldier's Play, Fuller's tale focuses on the murder of a non-commissioned black officer Vernon Waters at Fort Neal in April of 1944. Captain Richard Davenport, a black lawyer of the 353rd Police Corps Unit, comes in to investigate the murder. Davenport functions as the narrator during which, through his interviews and interrogations, we gain insight into the dynamic of Company B in the 221st Chemical Smoke Generating Company. An all black company in a segregated camp in Louisiana, the play's subject is self-hatred illustrated by the relationship between Private C.J. Memphis and Tech/Sergeant Waters, who are both dead at the beginning of the play. Waters' goal is to show the white man “blacks are just like them” through acting white himself. C.J., a laidback, superstitious, southern musician, embodies the stereotype of the black man that Waters loathes and seeks to expunge.

This gripping military drama about racism, self-hatred, humanism and personal responsibility won Fuller the Pulitzer Prize in 1982; the second African American author (the first being Charles Gordone in 1970) to win the Pulitzer Prize. In his 1981 drama review of A Soldier's Play, Frank Rich wrote “[A Soldier's Play is] a mature and accomplished work — from its inspired opening up of a conventional theatrical form to its skillful portraiture of a dozen characters to its remarkable breadth of social and historical vision. It's also a play that speaks to both blacks and whites without ever patronizing either group. Mr. Fuller writes characters of both races well — and he implicates both in the murder of Sergeant Waters.”

Along with great praise for his honest portrayal of men and responsibility, he has also received much criticism, especially from Amiri Baraka in his essay “The Descent of Charles Fuller into Pulitzerland and the Need for African American Institutions.” Among his many accusations, the most stinging was “They have created as political a theater as any in the Black Arts Movement, only it is the politics of our enemies.” Basically, Baraka accused Fuller of writing from the perspective of the “black bourgeoisie” to appease the white audience. However, defenders of Fuller, such as Nilgun Anadolu-Okur in his book Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller, cite his triumph over narrow quality seen in some African American plays and his maintenance of a “more flexible repertory reflecting its socially orientated realism.”

Fuller currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Works:

* The Village: A Party, Princeton, N.J., McCarter Theater, November 1968; produced as The Perfect Party, New York: Tambellini's Gate Theater, 20 March 1969.
* An Untitled Play, first produced in Philadelphia: Afro-American Arts Theatre, 1970.
* In My Many Names and Days, first produced in New York: New Federal Theatre, September 1972.
* The Candidate, first produced in New York: New Federal Theatre, April 1974.
* In the Deepest Part of Sleep, first produced in New York: St. Marks Playhouse, 4 June 1974.
* First Love (one-act), first produced in New York: Billie Holiday Theatre, June 1974.
* The Lay out Letter (one-act), first produced in Philadelphia: Freedom Theatre, Spring 1975.
* The Brownsville Raid, first produced in New York: Theater DeLys, 5 December 1976.
* Zooman and the Sign, New York: Samuel French, 1982.
* A Soldier's Play, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982
* We, first produced in New York, Theatre Four, 1988
* Eliot's Coming, first produced in New York City, 1988
.
A little bit about Mr. Charles Fuller playwright. I saw the Brownsville Raid, Zooman and the Sign and A soldier's Play.Seeing these historical events dramatized is so important. They were all excellent. Its a shame that the Black theater appears to be dead.

Auset32