Two events in 1906 precipitated Booker T. Washington’s decline: the Brownsville Affair and the Atlanta race riot. Around midnight on August 13 marauders shot up saloons in Brownsville, Texas, killing a bartender and wounding a policeman. White residents accused three companies of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry, a black regiment stationed at Fort Brown and depicted in this poster. Federal investigators concluded that the soldiers’ refusal to admit guilt was evidence of “a conspiracy of silence.” The Twenty-Fifth Infantry had supported Theodore Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill and distinguished themselves in other battles during the Spanish American War, but President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged the companies without a court martial despite Washington’s plea.  Washington’s refusal to criticize Roosevelt publicly angered African Americans and many whites, including Mary Church Terrell, Oswald Garrison Villard, and other NAACP founders who had supported Washington.