Blind Injustice

By T.E. Kalem

THE BROWNSVILLE RAID

by CHARLES FULLER

The Negro Ensemble Company has always displayed a remarkable ardor and virtuosity in performance. The caliber of the plays has sometimes lagged behind. In The Brownsville Raid, the company has a grand theme to work with--a harsh miscarriage of justice.

This documentary-styled drama is based on the dishonorable discharge of 167 black infantrymen in 1906 on the orders of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Their assumed crime was a ten-minute shooting spree in Brownsville, Texas during which one person was killed. Extensive research by Author John D Weaver for his 1970 book, The Brownsville Raid, indicated that the shootings had probably been staged by local white vigilantes who resented the stationing of black troops near the town. Nevertheless, 167 blacks were stripped of their ranks and cashiered without a trial.

Playwright Charles Fuller has paid his debt to Weaver handsomely by fleshing out the narrative with vivid character portraits and pungent humor. The strongest portrayal, by Douglas Turner Ward, is that of Sergeant Major Mingo Saunders. A 25-year veteran, Saunders has a passion for the regular army in the same way that a priest or an artist is called to his vocation. Ward sensitively conveys the intimate, though difficult burden of an NCO, who must understand the hurts and fears of his men, yet main tain a spit-and-polish discipline to steel each soldier for the fierce ordeal of combat. To see Saunders and his men cruelly debased after years of loyal service to their country is what gives this play an added poignance.

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