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William Cowper Brann (January 4, 1855 – April 1, 1898) was an American journalist known as Brann the Iconoclast.
Born in Humboldt, Illinois, Brann was a colorful, highly opinionated journalist who was known for the articulate savagery of his writing. At the time of his death, Brann owned and edited the Iconoclast newspaper in Waco, Texas.
He was especially noted for his writings attacking Baptists, Episcopalians, the British, and blacks. "I have nothing against the Baptists. I just believe they were not held under long enough" (Conger, 1964, Baptism by Immersion). He devoted many paragraphs to his hatred of the wealthy eastern social elites, such as the Vanderbilts, and deplored their marriages to titled Europeans. He characterized such marriages as diluting the elites' already-debased American stock with worthless foreign blood. He was equally critical of the New York social scene: "Mrs. Bradley-Martin's sartorial kings and pseudo-queens have strutted their brief hour on the stage, disappearing at daybreak like foul night-birds or an unclean dream—have come and gone like the rank eructation of some crapulous Sodom . . . a breath blown from the festering lips of half-forgotten harlots . . . ." (Brann, 1897).
One of his targets was Baylor University, the prominent Baptist institution in Waco. Brann revealed that Baylor officials had been importing South American children recruited by missionaries and making house-servants out of them. He also stated that a male family member of Baylor President, Judge Burleson had impregnated a student from Brazil (ibid, Conger). male faculty members were having sexual relations with female students, and a father sending his daughter to Baylor was risking her rape. In Brann's view Baylor was, as he published, "A factory for the manufacture of ministers and magdalenes" (ibid, Conger) Brann was shot in the back by Tom Davis a Baylor supporter who particularly resented the reference to magdalenes because his daughter was a student at the University. Brann wheeled, drew his pistol, fired multiple shots at Davis who fell mortally wounded in the doorway of a the Jake French Cigar Store. Brann was shot through the left lung with the bullet exiting his chest. He was forced to walk to the city jail but later escorted home by friends ( Waco Daily Telephone, 1898.)
Brann died on the morning after he was shot. On Brann's monument, in script, is the word TRUTH, and beneath it is a profile of Brann, with a bullet hole in it. In the early 1890s, Brann, who by the way had only three years of formal education, owned and published an Austin, Texas newspaper, the Austin Iconoclast, which he sold to William Henry Porter, who is more well known as O. Henry, and then repurchased it from Porter, to operate it out of Waco, Texas until the time of his assassination. Articles published in his paper in which he hoped to expose the 'sins' of the Baylor university families brought about his untimely demise.
See also
- Jerry Flemmons. Oh Dammit!: A Lexicon and Lecture from William Cowper Brann, the Iconoclast (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1998) Note: Includes complete script of Flemmons' one-man stageplay of the same name]
- Charles Carver. Brann the Iconoclast (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957).
- The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast... (New York: The Brann Publishers, Inc., 1919).
- Frank Luther Mott. A history of American magazines, 1741-1930 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press ca.1958-1968). Page 442+ Note: This book is available online from the History E-Book Project]
External links
- "William Cowper Brann" in the Handbook of Texas Online
- "The Iconoclast's Icon" by Dave Shiflett, October 1, 2004
- Works by William Cowper Brann at Project Gutenberg
- William Cowper Brann Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
References
W.C. Brann Brann's Iconoclast Vol 7, Number 2 Waco, Texas March 1897
Conger, Roger M. A Pictorial History of Waco, Waco, Texas, Texian Press 1964
Waco Daily Telephone Newspaper Extra Waco Texas, April 1, 1898
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 5 September 2008, at 23:09.
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