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Brownfield's
Riot
That Never Wasby
Mike Cox |
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In
the summer of 1908 an article with a Fort
Worth dateline published in a Sunday edition of the New York Herald caught
the eye of President Theodore Roosevelt as he sat in his home at Oyster Bay, NY.
The four-paragraph dispatch, which dealt with an incident reported as
having occurred in then five-year-old South Plains town of Brownfield,
struck the president as bully news, something he wanted to share with his friend
Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. The following Tuesday, noting his “immense delight” with
the piece, Roosevelt included the full text of the article in a letter to the
senator:
“Fort Worth, Texas,
Saturday [Aug. 15, 1908]. Word reached here today from Brownfield, in Terry County,
western Texas, that residents there on Thursday erected a life-sized statute of
President Roosevelt after a street fight in which 50 shots were fired. One person
was killed and nine others were wounded. The statue represents Mr. Roosevelt in
hunting costume and stands on the town square.”
After noting that Brownfield
lay 100 miles from the nearest railroad and had a population of 1,500 who were
mostly ranchers, cowboys or farmers, the article explained the issue behind the
battle over the statue:
“The erection of the statue was vigorously opposed
by Democrats and some Republicans, but it had already been ordered from Denver
by a citizen’s committee which refused to turn from its plans. The unveiling was
opposed because…Roosevelt was still President and because the Democrats wanted
a [William Jennings] Bryan statue on the opposite side of the square and the town
could not afford both statues.”
The Herald story went on to report that
the anti-Roosevelt-statue crowd had at first stolen the statue and buried it.
But the pro-Roosevelt folks had recovered the piece, cleaned it up and placed
it on the courthouse
square.
During the dedication ceremonies, “a band of cowboys made a rush
and met a determined crowd. Revolvers, fists and clubs were freely used but the
statue was not disturbed.”
Finally, after 10 people had been shot, cooler
heads prevailed. At a mass meeting following the riot, “a compromise was effected
whereby it was agreed that should Bryan be elected, his statue should be placed
near that of Roosevelt.”
Concluding his letter to the honorable senator
from New York, Roosevelt said he had never heard of the statue before reading
the story about it in the Herald. Indeed, he added, he had never even heard of
Brownfield.
But
measuring up to his tough guy, living-life-to-the-hilt image, the president said,
“I think there is something delightful beyond words in the idea of this sudden
erection of a statue of me in hunting costume, at the cost of a riot in which
one man was killed and nine wounded, and the final compromise by which it was
agreed upon to put up another statue of Bryan in case he was elected.”
Writing
that he wondered what the statue looked like, Roosevelt concluded: “Who, with
a sense of humor and a real zest for life [clearly describing himself], would
not be glad to be prominent in American politics at the outset of the Twentieth
Century?”
Nearly two decades later, writer R.J. Pendleton decided to visit
Brownfield to see the
statue that had caused a riot and claimed a life. His camera ready, Pendleton
drove around the square looking for a bronze Teddy Roosevelt. But, as he wrote,
“No masterpiece of the sculptor’s art was anywhere to be seen.” Thinking the statue
might have been moved, Pendleton drove the town’s other major streets. Still,
no Teddy.
Beginning to think that Bryan’s supporters might have prevailed
and succeeded in stealing or destroying the monument, Pendleton went to the office
of the Brownfield News to see if the local editor knew what had become of the
trouble-causing statue.
When Pendleton asked about the statue, the editor
broke into a smile bigger than Roosevelt’s favorite grin.
“There’s nothing
to it,” the editor said. “Some reporter with a vivid imagination must have made
up the yarn and then looked around for a good place in which to locate it and
picked on Brownfield.”
The editor told Pendleton that Sen. Lodge had never really bought into
the statue story, though the nation’s 26th president apparently believed every
word of it.
As Pendleton concluded, whoever dreamed up the tale must have
had “too much regard for the truth to drag it out on every paltry occasion.”
©
Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" December
1, 2010 column
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