Category: History

Mingo Sanders and Teddy Roosevelt’s Dishonorable Discharge

While recently enjoying Ken Burns’s excellent documentary episodes The Roosevelts (2014), one of the stories about Theodore Roosevelt made me want to find out more. The narrator mentioned President Teddy Roosevelt’s handling of a black regiment in Brownsville, Texas.

Roosevelt gave a dishonorable discharge to a black sergeant who had once shared his food rations with Roosevelt in Cuba. I became curious to find out more about this unnamed man who was treated so poorly.  And with a little research I soon found his name was Mingo Sanders.

Sanders’ Early Service

Teddy Roosevelt Soldier Discharge Mingo Sanders, who had been born in March 1858 in Marion, S.C., enlisted in the Army on May 16, 1881. In 1888, he went to Missoula, Montana (there are conflicting stories whether or not he was married yet, in which case he brought his wife Luella).  There, he served with Company B of the 25th Infantry.

In 1897, the 39-year-old Sergeant Sanders played an important role in helping Lt. James A. Moss test the military use of bicycles on a trip between Missoula and St. Louis. Sanders was older than the other men and was partially blind from an explosion during his long military service. But he earned the admiration of his men on the difficult 41-day journey.

Sanders Encounters Theodore Roosevelt in Cuba

Not long after the trip, the Spanish-American War broke out and the 25th Infantry’s commission in Missoula ended.  Many of the men, including Sanders, were sent to Cuba.

Sanders and his colleagues would play a brave and important role in the capture of San Juan Hill, the battle that made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Despite all the credit given to Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, black soldiers made up about 25% of the U.S. forces in Cuba and played an important role in the battles.

It was in Cuba where Sanders first crossed paths with Roosevelt. On one occasion, Roosevelt went to Sanders and asked Sanders to give some of his unit’s hardtack rations to the Rough Riders.

Sanders continued to have a distinguished career. Eight years after his efforts in Cuba, he rescued five white prisoners during a conflict between the United States and the First Philippine Republic. For his work, he received a medal of honor.

The Dishonorable Discharge

Mingo Sanders Harpers Weekly

Unfortunately for Sanders, his life would cross paths with Roosevelt’s responsibilities once again. In 1906, Sanders had served in the military for 26 years and was near retirement. That year, the 25th Infantry was stationed in Brownsville, Texas, where the town was not welcoming of the black soldiers. After some arguments in the town, on Aug. 13, 1906, someone or some people fired shots, killing a white bartender and wounding a police officer.

Some of the townspeople blamed the black soldiers.  But their white officers insisted the men were all at the barracks at Fort Brown at the time of the shooting.

At this time Theodore Roosevelt was president.  Amid rising racial tensions in the Brownsville area, he sent officers to conduct an inquiry. Through interviews with the men of the 25th Infantry, they found no witnesses.

Without any type of trial, President Roosevelt ordered the men to be given dishonorable discharges.  Among the men was Mingo Sanders, the man who had once shared his food with Roosevelt. President Roosevelt waited until after Congressional elections in November 1906 to order the discharge, so that black voters would not abandon the party.

After the Discharge

But that was not the end of the story for Sanders or for Roosevelt.  Helped by the work of African-American activist Mary Church Terrell, the military eventually allowed Sgt. Sanders (along with Pvt. Elmer Brown, also of the Twenty-fifth US Infantry) to reenlist into the military on December 12, 1906. (Thanks to commenter T. Fazzini below for information on the reenlistment and link to archives of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley).

In a later election, some used the Brownsville decision against Roosevelt. Subsequently, President Taft had even appointed Sanders to a federal position as sort of an anti-Roosevelt reminder. Taft, who had been Roosevelt’s Secretary of War in 1906 and had executed the original discharge, in 1909 ordered Sanders be employed as a messenger in the Interior Department. Sanders continued in that job until Taft left the Presidency in 1913.

Sanders had settled in Washington, D.C. with his wife, eventually dying on August 23, 1929.  He was buried at Arlington Cemetery, where his wife Luella was also buried in 1942.

In 1972, Congress would reopen the case of the Brownsville shooting.  It absolved Mingo Sanders and his fellow soldiers of the shooting. President Richard M. Nixon signed a bill giving the men honorable discharges.

The following video from Montana PBS recounts the story of Sanders’s Montana unit that tested out the use of bicycles for soldiers.  It also tells about Roosevelt’s order discharging Sanders and the other men. Check out The Bicycle Corps: America’s Black Army On Wheels (2000).

Screenshot via YouTube. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Pres. Kennedy Advises U.S. to Start Digging

    On October 6, 1961, in a letter to the members of the Committee on Civil Defense of the Governors’ Conference, President John F. Kennedy addressed fears of a thermo-nuclear war.  He called for a “national understanding” of the need for government and private bomb shelters. “In simple terms,” he urged, “this goal is to reach for fallout protection for every American as rapidly as possible.”

    Bert the Turtle In the letter, President Kennedy recounted that the federal government was moving forward to make fallout shelter space available.  But he also urged states and individuals to act. He noted, “The people of this country will be urged, by me, by the Governors and by other leaders to do what is within their means.”

    Additionally, Kennedy predicted, “Protection against this threat is within reach of an informed America willing to face the facts and act.” A year later in October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis made fallout shelters seem even more necessary.

    Atomic and Nuclear War Fears

    Anyone who grew up between the late 1940s through the next several decades will remember these fears of atomic or nuclear war that peaked at various times.  While such fears have changed over time, one may look back on those times through popular culture.

    My seventh grade teacher gave our class a major assignment where we each had to design a fallout shelter.  Each of our shelters had to be planned to protect and house our class indefinitely in the wake of a nuclear war. It was an interesting assignment, and I remember carefully calculating food supplies and the size of the shelter. I suspect today there would be complaints if a teacher gave the assignment to students due to the accompanying nightmares.

    The fears of annihilation by the new powerful bombs did not begin and end with President Kennedy. The 1959 movie On the Beach with Gregory Peck was a story about survivors of World War III. In 1964, Henry Fonda played a president contemplating the possibility of nuclear war in Fail Safe.  The same year director Stanley Kubrick addressed the insanity of nuclear bombs in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Decades later, the 1983 TV mini-series The Day After terrified a new generation.

    Ladybug Ladybug

    Many years ago, I was flipping around the TV channels very late at night and ran across a black and white movie about schoolchildren walking home from school after an alarm warning of a nuclear attack. The film, Ladybug Ladybug (1963), warned about the dark side of our fears. Watching the haunting movie at such a late hour led to me not getting much sleep that night, and the movie has stayed with me.

    For full effect, watch Ladybug Ladybug late at night and contemplate the time period where they did not have the Internet or cell phones. The movie was directed by Frank Perry and starred Jane Connell and William Daniels.

    Unfortunately, the whole movie is no longer available on YouTube.  But here is a scene from Ladybug Ladybug.

    Duck and Cover

    One of the most famous “films” about these world-ending fears was the short film made by the U.S. Government’s civil defense branch in 1951 and first shown in 1952 during the Korean War. “Duck and Cover” was aimed at kids, and it begins with an animated Bert the Turtle.

    Schoolchildren for many years would learn from Bert the Turtle how to protect themselves by ducking and covering themselves. The advice is ridiculous for someone near the bomb’s target area.  But supposedly the suggestion is not so ridiculous for those further away seeking to protect themselves.

    Still, like my teacher’s bomb shelter exercise, in retrospect it seems an odd thing to be teaching children.  Check it out.

    Modern Fears

    Fortunately, through the hard work of many decent leaders, kids today do not have the same immediate fear of a nuclear war with another country. Unfortunately, human ignorance and brutality have not gone away and have survived in other forms.  Today, we cannot even pretend that fallout shelters will protect us from the threats and fears of modern society.

    Thus, we can no longer pretend that we are protected by a president’s idea of digging in the ground or a cartoon turtle’s suggestion to “duck and cover.” But at least we are still around.

    What do you remember about the Cold War? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The Tragic Civil Rights Hero Clyde Kennard

    On September 25, 1960, Clyde Kennard was arrested in Mississippi and charged with stealing $25 worth of chicken feed. An all-white jury then convicted the black man of the crime.  And he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, otherwise known as “Parchman Farm.”

    Kennard eventually would be released from prison after he was diagnosed with cancer and was near death, and he died on July 4, 1963. What makes the story especially tragic, though, is that Kennard had been framed with the theft only because he had tried to go to a white college.

    Kennard Sought an Education
    Kennard Civil Rights
    Kennard with his sister after being paroled in 1963

    Clyde Kennard had been born in 1927 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  After serving for seven years in the military, he completed three years of college at the University of Chicago.

    After three years into his political science major, though, his father died.  So, Kennard returned home to Mississippi to help his mother run the family farm.

    Back in Mississippi, Kennard wanted to complete his degree but he needed to go to a school near to the farm so he could help his mother. The only nearby college was the the all-white, Mississippi Southern College.  And state officials did not want a black man challenging the status quo.  Officials realized they might lose any challenge due to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

    Applications to Mississippi Southern College

    Kennard first applied to Mississippi Southern College in 1955.  But he was rejected on technical grounds because he did not have letters of support from prior graduates.

    Kennard applied to the school again in 1958.  This second time he withdrew his application after civil rights leaders persuaded him to withdraw.  They had concluded it was not the right time to try to integrate the school.

    Then, Kennard tried again to apply to the school in September 1959. The school president again rejected him on a technicality.

    Kennard’s Arrests and Prosecution

    After this attempt to get admitted to Mississippi Southern College, as Kennard was leaving a meeting at the school, he was arrested.  The alleged charges were speeding and possessing alcohol, even though Kennard did not drink.

    Kennard did not give up.  He wrote letters to a newspaper, stating that he would go to federal court if necessary to get in the school. Then, in September 1960 he was framed for a chicken-feed theft and sent to prison.  At the prison, he endured horrible treatment and had to work in the fields picking cotton.

    Cancer Diagnosis and Death

    When Kennard was diagnosed with cancer, state officials first refused to release him from prison. But pressure from civil rights leaders like Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. led state officials to fear having a martyr die in their prison system.

    So in February 1963, officials released the very sick Kennard.  He died several months later on July 4, 1963.

    Kennard’s Innocence

    Decades later, a reporter would get the “witness” to the chicken-feed theft to recant the story.  The “witness” explained that the charges had to do with Kennard’s attempts to go to school.

    Newly discovered documents support Kennard’s innocence too.  And in 2006 the Circuit Court of Forrest County, Mississippi exonerated Kennard. Thus, it became clear what everyone knew at the time: Kennard had committed no crime. He was just a man who wanted to go to school.

    “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”

    The tragic story of Clyde Kennard reminds me of one of the great African-American spirituals, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” Like many spirituals, the song connects the struggles of American slaves to the plight of the Jewish people in ancient Egypt.  “Jacob’s Ladder” uses the Biblical image of the ladder climbing to heaven that Jacob dreamed about.

    One of my favorite versions of the song is by Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded the wonderful a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973 before retiring from the group in 2004. You may recognize this version of “Jacob’s Ladder” from Ken Burns’s series The Civil War.

    Clyde Kennard knew it is a long ladder that he helped climb. In response to the song’s question, “Children do you want your freedom?,” Kennard responded with a resounding “yes.” And for that and for his sacrifice, we should remember him.

    In one of the final newspaper letters Kennard wrote before he was sentenced to prison, he explained, “If there is one quality of Americans which would set them apart from almost any other peoples, it is the history of their struggle for liberty and justice under the law.”

    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Soldiers of the cross.

    Photo via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Where Woody Guthrie Wrote “This Land Is Your Land”

    Where Guthrie wrote This Land

    Reading My Name is New York: Ramblin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town by Nora Guthrie and the Woody Guthrie Archives, I was surprised to discover that I often walk past where Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land.” The picture above shows the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan where he wrote the song, although the building where he lived is no longer there.

    On February 22, 1940, Guthrie moved into Hanover House at 101 W. 43rd Street when he was 27 years old. The boarding house where he stayed for about a month sat above a pawn shop. The day after he moved in, Guthrie began writing down the words to the song that would eventually become “This Land is Your Land.”

    Even then, the New York City street corner was busy, and the “New York Island” must have brought inspiration. But Guthrie also had been developing the song since he had hitchhiked to New York across the country from Los Angeles.

    In a previous post, Chimesfreedom explained the background of the song and how it was originally called “God Blessed America” before Guthrie edited the song. It would be about a decade from Guthrie’s time in the cheap boarding house until “This Land is Your Land” became popular. It’s popularity was boosted by a 1950 songbook used by school teachers and after Pete Seeger began performing it every where he went.

    In the video below, Seeger performs the song with others in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the “We Are One” Presidential Inaugural Concert on January 19, 2009.

    Guthrie wrote other songs at Hanover House, including another one of my favorites, “Jesus Christ.” Using the music from the folk ballad “Jesse James,” Guthrie imagined Christ as a rebel who spoke on behalf of the poor. And, looking out from the boarding house, he included a line about where he wrote the song as he imagined how Jesus Christ would be treated were he to return today.

    This song was written in New York City
    Of rich man, preacher, and slave
    If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
    They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

    In the video below, you may hear U2’s version of Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ.”

    Speaking of Woody Guthrie in New York, a recent three-CD audio book set compiles stories about Guthrie in New York along with songs Guthrie wrote about New York City, My Name Is New York (2014). The title track from the set, “My Name Is New York,” was never released in Guthrie’s lifetime.

    Guthrie’s daughter Nora Guthrie recently explained that after she found the tape of the song “My Name Is New York” and heard the lyrics, she knew she had to release it. Below, you may hear the song.

    Regarding the corner where Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” Bob Egan has some photos of the above street corner around the time that Guthrie lived there on PopSpots.

    Guthrie only spent a short time living on this corner in Manhattan before he would go on to live in other places in the city. But the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue will always be able to claim a connection to some great American songs, including what may be the country’s best.

    Photo by Chimesfreedom. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    4 Little Girls on a “Birmingham Sunday”

    4 Little Girls On September 15, 1963, racists exploded a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, injuring several people and killing four little girls aged 11-14: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. The incident is largely seen as a turning point that helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement.

    In Spike Lee’s excellent documentary about the incident, 4 Little Girls (1997), many of the people who knew or were related to the girls give moving stories about the events surrounding the bombing.

    It would be decades before some of those involved in the bombing would be brought to justice.  The movie interviews former Alabama Attorney General William Baxley, who reopened an investigation into the bombing in the early 1970s, resulting in the conviction one of the men involved in the bombing in 1977.

    Baxley had long been interested in pursuing justice in the case even before he was attorney general. In the movie, he explains how he used to listen to Joan Baez’s song “Birmingham Sunday” every day.

    “Birmingham Sunday,” which was written by Richard Fariña, appeared on Baez’s album, Joan Baez/5 (1964).  It was released in the year after the bombing.

    The way the song helped inspire Baxley through the years to help bring some justice to the tragedy helps show the power of song. Spike Lee’s movie 4 Little Girls also shows the power of film.


    Photo of church window at 16th Street Baptist Church, donated by the people of Wales after the bombing, via public domain.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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