William Cowper Brann

William Cowper Brann (January 4, 1855 – April 2, 1898) was an American journalist also known as Brann the Iconoclast. During his life, he gained a reputation as a "brilliant though vitriolic editorialist." He defended lynching Black men accused of rape and called for opponents of this type of mob violence to be castrated.

Early life The son of Presbyterian minister Noble J. Brann, he was born in Humboldt, Illinois.

A job in a print shop turned Brann's interest toward journalism, and he became a cub reporter. He devoted many paragraphs to his hatred of the wealthy eastern social elites, such as the Vanderbilt family, and deplored their marriages to titled Europeans. He characterized such marriages as diluting the elites' already-debased American stock with worthless foreign blood.

Baylor University, the prominent Baptist institution in Waco, drew constant criticism from Brann. He set off a scandal with allegations that Baylor President Rufus Burleson's son-in-law's brother Steen Morris, who lived with the Burleson family, had impregnated a student from Brazil. Brann's constant attacks on the university enraged many of its supporters, and on October 2, 1897, he was kidnapped by Baylor students, who demanded that he retract his statements. Both Davis and Brann died the next day.

Works

The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast. New York: Brann Publishers, 1919. Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6 | Vol. 7 | Vol. 8 | Vol. 9 | Vol. 10 | Vol. 11 | Vol. 12