Texas Rangers Massacre 15 Innocent People Near The Border In 1918

 

Jan. 28, 1918, in the early morning hours armed men entered the homes of the farmers in small border town of Porvenir and took 15 men aged 14 to 72 out to the edge of town and shot them to death, riddling their bodies with bullets and then rode away.

These were Texas Rangers, and they had a taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury and execution of these men because there were rumors they had been part of bandit raid on the Brite Ranch a few miles to the south. Both Porvenir and the ranch were on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River which acts as the border between the two countries. While the killings and raid were in Texas, the victims of the massacre had family and friends on the Mexico side and that is where the other residents of Porvenir ran when leaving the town behind.

Over the next few days, they came back and collected their dead, buried them and gathered anything they owned that was left behind on the night of the raid. They also began talking and spreading the story of what happened.

The Rangers tried to cover up the massacre with reports that the men killed ere bandits hiding in the brush and they had been fired on from the dark. They also described the residents of Porvenir as “thieves, informers, spies, and murderers.” They tried to connect the dead to the former border raider Poncho Villa, who had moved to a hacienda in the southern part of the Chihuahua state and who was trying to negotiate a peace settlement and amnesty with Mexican interim President Adolfo de la Huerta. There was no evidence of Villa’s involvement in the Brite Ranch raid or any other recent border incursions.

The Mexican government initiated an investigation of their own into the incident in early February. The Mexican government made an official protest of the incident to the United States Department. The Eighth U.S. Cavalry Regiment also started an investigation as they rode with the rangers that night but had not been involved in the search of the town or the shooting. However they retuned to the town a few days later and burned it to the ground.

The school master of the tiny village Harry Warren wrote an account of the massacre, summarized the events in great detail, one of his students had went to him in the early morning for assistance. It was Warren who recorded the names of the victims.

Congressional Representative José T. Canales of Brownsville demanded a legislative investigation into the conduct of the Ranger forces and called for a reorganization of the force. All of these investigations also showed there was no evidence implicating the Porvenir villagers in the cattle raids.

Face with mounting pressure and conclusive evidence. The villagers were innocent Texas Governor William Pettus Hobby disbanded Company B of the Texas Rangers, firing 5 rangers and transferring another 5. The commander of the company Captain Monroe Fox reacted badly to this writing letters justifying what his men had done and restating that only bandits had been killed in Porvenir. Fox accused the governor of giving in to pressure from the Mexican government and accused Hobby of playing politics to secure the Mexican vote in future elections.

Relations between Mexico and the United States were in a period of flux and Secretary of State Robert Lansing was working hard to open relations and trade to a larger degree so he was in full support Hobby’s actions.

Fox resigned his commission with the Rangers in June after the Governor attempted to transfer him to a desk job in Austin. The legislature followed Hobby’s lead and more reforms, including a reduction of the Ranger force to four companies, and higher wages to attract and retain good men. Fox’s career with the Rangers was not over, but he never again saw Ranger duty along the border again either.

No criminal charges were ever filed against the Rangers involved in the Porvenir massacre but there were civil lawsuits in the following years. In June 1926, eight years after the event, Mexican attorneys filed twelve separate claims against the United States regarding the Porvenir massacre. Which resulted in treaty where victims of state violence filed claims through the U.S.–Mexico General Claims Commission. The Mexican and U.S. governments bilaterally created the commission to settle many claims of both Mexican and U.S. nationals arising between July 4, 1868, and the start of the commission.

Survivors and their descendants kept the story alive in their families until 2009 when they started working towards getting a memorial, which was placed by the state on the 100th anniversary in 2018.

 

Sources:

https://www.texasranger.org/texas-ranger-museum/history/biographies-20th-century-texas-rangers/captain-fox-porvenir-massacre/

https://www.porvenirmassacre.org/

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/porvenir-massacre

 

Forgotten History: The Jacksonville Mutiny and Executions

December 1, 1865, The Civil War had ended but even for Negro volunteers in the Union Army racism was an everyday reality. This was never more evident than the morning of October 29, 1865, an African-­American private in the Union army named Jacob Plowden stepped out of his tent at Camp Shaw in Jacksonville, Florida, to witness a horrific sight. On the parade ground, two white officers had tied a shirtless Black soldier by his thumbs to a scaffold. The man was dangling in agony, the toes of his feet barely touching the ground as his thumbs were pulled away from their sockets.

Plowden lost his temper. An ex-slave from Tennessee who had become a farmer in Pennsylvania before enlisting in the Union army in 1863, he was appalled to see black soldiers treated with the sort of brutality inflicted on slaves in the South. He roused his fellow soldiers in the 3rd Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops, shouting that he’d rather die than see any more men tortured.

Several dozen black soldiers advanced across the field toward the prisoner and the white officers, Lieutenant George Graybill and Lieutenant John L. Brower, the regiment’s commander. The army had been extreme with punishment to black soldiers, this was a reminder of a Freeman’s overall place in post-war society, particularly in Florida. When the black soldiers got within five yards, Brower drew his revolver and fired several shots at them, wounding one man in the chest and arm.

The soldiers ran back to their tents, quickly reemerged with their weapons, and began shooting at the white officers and others who came to their assistance. Brower was wounded in the thumb and collapsed in pain, one of many injuries suffered by participants on both sides in the melee. After brief but furious fighting, order was restored in the camp, and Plowden and others were arrested for what came to be known as the Jacksonville Mutiny.

The soldier that was being disciplined with the thumb screws was accused of stealing from the camp stores which was the reason for such rough treatment that these other men tried to interfere with what was deemed proper discipline by their superiors which led to the death sentences. Also, the camp was in Florida which was still considered in a state of rebellion as each state was signing the surrender papers and Florida had not yet. So discipline was considered extremely important. The speedy trials resulted in death sentences for six men

·       David Craig

·       Joseph Green

·       James Allen

·       Jacob Plowden

·       Joseph Nathaniel

·       Thomas Howard

The men were executed by firing squad, and as another insulting discipline, Black soldiers from the company were ordered to perform the execution.

The non-executed mutineers who received prison terms (up to 15 years) had their sentences commuted following a review in 1866. The rest of the regiment mustered out as scheduled at the end of October, two days after the Jacksonville Mutiny.

Sources https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4536&context=fhq 

A Double Lynching In Texas

November 12, 1935 

Two adolescent boys, 15-year-old Ernest Collins and 16-year-old Benny Mitchell were taken by a white mob of approximately 700 to a giant crossroads oak in Colorado County, Texas, and lynched. 

In October 1935, a young white woman’s body was found in a creek near her family’s farm in Columbus, Texas. When local officials concluded she had been murdered, suspicion soon focused on Ernest Collins and Benny Mitchell: two Black teens who had been seen picking pecans near the same creek. Law enforcement took the boys into custody but word soon got around that the two had confessed. Although the boys had been held in jail in Houston on the day of their trial they were being brought back when the sheriff's car was stopped by several cars of white men, the sheriff for his safety and his deputies turned the boys over to the mob. 

The next day, the white community proudly boasted and praised the lynchings. The county attorney said the lynchings were justice, an extension of the community's will.

The tree is still there and known as the Hanging Tree. No one was ever charged