Dorsie Willis

Dorsie William Willis (February 11, 1886 – August 25, 1977) was a United States Army soldier who was wrongly issued a dishonorable discharge in the Brownsville affair of 1906. Raised in Oklahoma, he served in the Army beginning in 1905 and was present when residents of Brownsville, Texas staged a series of shootings in their town that were falsely blamed on soldiers at nearby Fort Brown. Willis regained national attention in the 1970s when the 167 soldiers were pardoned, receiving an honorable discharge and a military pension. Willis was buried with full military honors at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Early life Dorsie William Willis was born in Meridian, Mississippi on February 11, 1886, the oldest child of sharecroppers Casey and Dochie Willis. The family left Mississippi for the Oklahoma Territory in 1889, settling in Guthrie. Willis left Oklahoma after dropping out of the sixth grade, and began working in Kansas City in 1902.

Willis purchased a house on Minnehaha Avenue in the Longfellow community of Minneapolis in 1937, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was an active member of local social organizations and the Minneapolis NAACP chapter, and frequently traveled to visit family outside Minneapolis. Willis registered for the draft in 1942 at the age of 56, although he was not called up. Willis was awarded a lump sum pension of $25,000 in 1973 after the advocacy of Senator Hubert Humphrey and Representative Augustus Hawkins.