Editing Brownsville, Texas (section)

===20th century===

Texas, like other Southern states, passed a new constitution and [[Jim Crow]] laws that established racial segregation and disenfranchised African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, generally by raising barriers to voter registration. While Hispanic residents were considered white under the terms of the United States annexation of Texas, legislatures found ways to suppress their participation in politics.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hlavac |first1=Steven |title=Scholar probes lynching of Mexicans in early 20th-century Texas |url=https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2017/11/29/scholar-probes-lynching-mexicans-early-20th-century-texas |website=[[University of Colorado]] |access-date=January 4, 2019 |date=November 29, 2017 |archive-date=January 5, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190105043305/https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2017/11/29/scholar-probes-lynching-mexicans-early-20th-century-texas |url-status=live}}</ref>

====1906 Brownsville affair and Black soldiers====
On August 13 and 14, 1906, Brownsville was the site of the [[Brownsville affair]]. Racial tensions were increasing between white townsfolk and black infantrymen who were stationed at Fort Brown. On the night of August 13, one white bartender was killed, and a white police officer was wounded by rifle shots in the street.<ref name="Christian">{{cite web|last = Christian|first = Garna L.|date = June 12, 2010|title = Brownsville Raid of 1906|publisher = Texas State Historical Association|work = The Handbook of Texas Online|url = https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/pkb06|access-date = July 22, 2012|archive-date = August 29, 2012|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120829212131/http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/pkb06|url-status = live}}</ref> Townsfolk, including the mayor, accused the infantrymen of the murders. Without affording them a chance to defend themselves in a hearing, President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] dishonorably discharged the entire 167-member regiment due to their alleged "[[Conspiracy of silence (expression)|conspiracy of silence]]".<ref name="Christian"/> Investigations in the 1970s revealed that the soldiers were not responsible for the attacks, and the [[Richard Nixon|Nixon Administration]] reversed all dishonorable discharges.<ref name="Christian"/> Fort Brown was decommissioned after the end of [[World War II]] in 1945. In 1948, the city and college acquired the land.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Cavalry Building, which served as barracks at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas, until World War I |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2014630473/ |website=www.loc.gov |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=January 5, 2019 |archive-date=January 5, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190105043417/https://www.loc.gov/item/2014630473/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

====Public Health====
In the spring of 1991, a cluster of [[anencephaly]] cases in the area made national headlines,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Xiao |first=Emily |date=July 2023 |title=Lessons from Brownsville's anencephaly cluster |url=https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)01318-1 |journal=The Lancet |volume=402 |issue=10395 |pages=17–19 |doi=10.1016/s0140-6736(23)01318-1 |pmid=37393913 |s2cid=259290246 |issn=0140-6736}}</ref> prompting a public health investigation. A high anencephaly rate, of 19.7 per 10,000 live births, was found. Additionally, it was discovered that other [[neural tube defect]]s, including [[spina bifida]] and [[encephalocele]], had been an ongoing, undetected issue in pregnant Mexican-American women for years in the area.<ref name="mmwr">{{Cite journal |last=Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) |date=January 14, 2000 |title=Neural tube defect surveillance and folic acid intervention--Texas-Mexico border, 1993-1998 |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10993565 |journal=MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=1–4 |issn=0149-2195 |pmid=10993565}}</ref> Subsequently, multiple [[risk factor]]s were found, such as [[folate deficiency]], and that increasing dietary folate intake had a protective effect.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Suarez |first1=Lucina |last2=Felkner |first2=Marilyn |last3=Brender |first3=Jean D. |last4=Canfield |first4=Mark |last5=Zhu |first5=Huiping |last6=Hendricks |first6=Katherine A. |date=November 2012 |title=Neural tube defects on the Texas-Mexico border: What we've learned in the 20 years since the Brownsville cluster |journal=Birth Defects Research Part A: Clinical and Molecular Teratology |volume=94 |issue=11 |pages=882–892 |doi=10.1002/bdra.23070|pmid=22945287 |doi-access=free}}</ref>