[Brownsville Affair] The Black Battalion. Debate in the United States Senate…1906.

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Rare pamphlet transcription of debate proceedings in the U.S. Senate on the “Dismissal of Three Companies of Twenty-Fifth Infantry”—African American troops or “Buffalo Soldiers”—in the Brownsville affair, a racial incident in Texas in 1906.

Here, Senator Joseph B. Foraker of Ohio defends the black troops and proposes a resolution requiring President Theodore Roosevelt to provide the Senate “full information bearing upon the recent order” to dismiss these troops from the military for allegedly attacking a white woman, killing a man, and wounding a police officer.

Although the charges were investigated and found baseless, the president ordered the troops to be dishonorably discharged. Foraker here vigorously defends and supports the black troops’ claim of innocence and appeals to the Constitution for their civil rights.

“Foraker condemned Roosevelt’s decision and labored in Congress to obtain justice for the soldiers. As a consequence, Roosevelt intensified his promotion of Foraker’s new Ohio rival, Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, as his likely successor and thus destroyed Foraker’s own presidential ambitions for 1908.” (ANB)

OCLC 26726528 lists only three copies: NYPL, Florida A&M, Atlanta U. Center.

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