On November 26, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 troops of the US 25th Infantry, an all-Black unit of the United States Army. All had been questioned in connection with a shooting that August in the town of Brownsville, Texas. All denied knowledge of the incident and their stories were corroborated by their white officers. First Sergeant Mingo Sanders, a soldier with twenty-six years of service approached the inspector general with details about the evening, but with no knowledge of the shooting. They were discharged without a court martial because of what Roosevelt termed a "conspiracy of silence."
On September 28, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a Harvard sophomore was rioting with classmates on the Boston Common. When police arrived to break it up and one officer gave chase to Roosevelt, his room-mate, Shaun Kelley, knocked down that officer, breaking his nose and opening a wound on his scalp.
Roosevelt was arrested, brought in front of a grand jury, and asked the name of the man who knocked down the police officer. He declined to share any information. The officer who questioned him said he thought Roosevelt's father, the President, would have advised him to give the name. Roosevelt, Jr. answered, "I don't think he would."
The contrast between the two affairs, both unfolding over the same fall, is too extraordinary to ignore.
Source for Roosevelt, Jr's arrest and questioning: NY Times, October 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1906
Source for Brownsville Affair: Affray at Brownsville, Texas; US Army; 1907
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