504                       A. M. E. REVIEW.

for an artist to represent in line or color the amusement President Taft has
had out of it, or the brave charge, turned into consternation, of Congressman
Garner on the Negro Ninth Cavalry. This is not the Garner who lives with
apes in Africa, but another Garner who fusses with Africans in Texas. His
is the district where the Brownsville trouble occurred with certain other
Negro soldiers.
  Among the soldiers sent to Texas to patrol and guard the Texas boundary
was this fine regiment of Negro cavalry. They were quartered at San
Antonio. Congressman Garner brought to the President terrible stories of
resistance of the Negro soldiers to the Jim Crow separation in the street cars,
of conductors beaten and the danger of riot, and begged the President to
remove them. But San Antonio is not in Congressman Garner's district,
it is in Congressman Sladen's district. The President smiled, consented,
and gave orders to send the regiment on patrol duty, scattered along a
dozen towns near the border. But this is Mr. Garner's district. He had
not thought of that. A company would be quartered at Brownsville, yes,
at Brownsville.  The telegraph carried the news to Mr. Garner's district,
and he got the returns quick. He was flooded with telegrams asking why he
had got the Negro cavalrymen sent to their towns, and requiring him to have
the order countermanded. Meanwhile, strange to say, the business men in
San Antonio wired to Congressman Slayden that they did not want the
soldiers removed; they were well behaved, under good discipline, and might
stay--and this with Brownsville not forgotten. So Mr. Slayden met-
aphorically tweaked some inches of Mr. Garner's ears; and either Congress-
man was eager to get to the President first, one to beg Mr. Taft not to send
the Negroes to his district, and the other to beg him to let the Negroes stay in
his; and he, Slayden, the man who had blamed the President for sending the
soldiers to Texas. With a twinkle of fine humor the President agreed with
both, and the soldiers stay in San Antonio where they were wanted, and will
not go to visit Congressman Garner's constituents where they were not
wanted. The burlesque is over, and the President is still smiling his ex-
pansive smile; the soldiers are laughing, Congressman Slayden is content,
and Congressman Garner is wondering how he happened to make a monkey
of himself.
  Now that the farce is ended, and the players have retired, let us say a more
serious word. San Antonio is not to be another Brownsville. We trust the
race journals will not get excited over the readiness of the President on the
first complaint to move the soldiers away. He did right, and he did it in a
most happy way. He ordered them sent into the complainant's very
territory, even to Brownsville. Whether Negro soldiers in the old affair
shot up Brownsville we do not know, nor do we care much; they had the
provocation. And these black soldiers at San Antonio had provocation.
They were told that they, soldiers, and good soldiers, of the United States,
wearing its uniform, were not fit to sit in the same seats in a public convey-
ance as other people, and they were thrust into a place by themselves, and




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 1

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  01
Date:  07/1911