that he was destined to hold for seven years. In
professional baseball the Negro was proscribed, though occasionally
a member of the race played on teams of the second group. Of
semi-professional teams the American Giants and the Leland Giants of
Chicago, and the Lincoln Giants of New York, were popular favorites,
and frequently numbered on their rolls players of the first order of
ability. In intercollegiate baseball W.C. Matthews of Harvard was
outstanding for several years about 1904. In intercollegiate football
Lewis at Harvard in the earlier nineties and Bullock at Dartmouth a
decade later were unusually prominent, while Marshall of Minnesota in
1905 became an All-American end. Pollard of Brown, a half-back, in 1916,
and Robeson of Rutgers, an end, in 1918, also won All-American honors.
About the turn of the century Major Taylor was a champion bicycle rider,
and John B. Taylor of Pennsylvania was an intercollegiate champion in
track athletics. Similarly fifteen years later Binga Dismond of Howard
and Chicago, Sol Butler of Dubuque, and Howard P. Drew of Southern
California were destined to win national and even international honors
in track work. Drew broke numerous records as a runner and Butler was
the winner in the broad jump at the Inter-Allied Games in the Pershing
Stadium in Paris. In 1920 E. Gourdin of Harvard came prominently forward
as one of the best track athletes that institution had ever had.

In the face, then, of the Negro's unquestionable physical ability and
prowess the supreme criticism that he was called on to face within the
period was all the more hard to bear. In all nations and in all ages
courage under fire as a soldier has been regarded as the sterling test
of manhood, and by this standard we have seen that in war the Negro had
more than vindicated himself. His very honor as a soldier was now to be
attacked.

In August, 1906, Companies B, C, and D of the Twenty-fifth Regiment,
United States Infantry, were stationed at Fort Brown, Brownsville,
Texas, where they were forced to exercise very great self-restraint in
the face of daily insults from the citizens. On the night of the 13th
occurred a riot in which one citizen of the town was killed, another
wounded, and the chief of police injured. The people of the town
accused the soldiers of causing the riot and demanded their removal.
Brigadier-General E.A. Garlington, Inspector General, was sent to find
the guilty men, and, failing in his miss