THE BROWNSVILLE RAID. de Weaver, John D - (1973)

New York:: W. W. Norton & Company,, (1973). Near fine in glossy illustrated wrappers.. 1st trade paperback printing. An account of a racist incident in Jim Crow Texas. In 1906 the 25th Infantry Regiment, known as Buffalo Soldiers, were stationed at Fort Brown, Brownsville, Texas. On the night of August 13 shots broke out in the town, killing a bartender and wounding a police lieutenant. Immediately the residents of Brownsville blamed the black soldiers, even though their all-white commanders confirmed that all of the soldiers were in their barracks at the time of the shootings. Local townspeople produced spent bullet cartridges from Army rifles which they said belonged to the 25th's men, and despite evidence that demonstrated the spent shells were planted in order to frame the soldiers, it was accepted by investigators. The soldiers of the 25th Infantry were pressured to name who fired the shots, byt they insisted that they had no idea who had committed the crime, and as a result, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered all 167 of the black troops to be dishonorably discharged because of their "conspiracy of silence". This edition includes a new afterword in which the author explains that the original publication of this book in 1971 resulted in an investigation and Congress was urged to right this "grievous wrong" - all of the men were given retroactive honorable discharges. Chronology, bibliographic essay, references, index. 322 pp plus 3 pp publisher's ads.