Texas Originals

Caro Crawford Brown

May 25, 1908–August 5, 2001

In 1947, Caro Brown and her family were living in the South Texas town of Alice when she took a job as a proofreader with the local newspaper, the Daily Echo.

Brown soon became the paper’s courthouse reporter. In 1952, she began covering the increasing violence in neighboring Duval County, where corrupt political boss George Parr struggled to maintain his control over local elections.

Over a two-year period, Brown attended countless court proceedings, studied public documents, and met secretly with informants—all to document the vast extent of Parr’s political machine.

The Associated Press picked up Brown’s stories, bringing national attention to the case.

In 1955, Brown received the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting on a deadline, becoming the first female journalist in Texas to win that award. As the Pulitzer committee put it, Brown "dug into the facts behind the dramatic daily events . . . and obtained her stories in spite of the bitterest political opposition."

Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd confirmed that Brown’s reporting "helped to bring forty years of corruption and terrorism to an end."

Shortly after winning the Pulitzer, Brown left journalism. Her daughter once remarked, "There are those who write their whole life and don't accomplish what she did in five years."

Following her death in 2001, Brown was inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame.

For More about Caro Crawford Brown

Brown’s award-winning reporting centered on the events surrounding George Parr’s political machine in Duval County. Parr’s corrupt methods of fraud, graft, and violence initially came under national scrutiny after he decided Lyndon Baines Johnson’s victory against Coke R. Stevenson in the 1948 Senate race. In the aftermath of the Second World War, peaking in the 1950s, Parr faced increased opposition from the Freedom Party, made up largely of Mexican American veterans who returned from the War dissatisfied with the racial discrimination and paternalism in South Texas. In an attempt to silence his critics and hold on to power, Parr employed grisly methods that included the murder of Freedom Party members and the son of the attorney investigating their deaths. Despite Governor Allan Shivers and Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd launching a campaign to destroy Parr’s political machine, Parr himself was never indicted.

The defining moment of Brown’s coverage of the George Parr trial came in January 1954, when she intervened in a fight between Parr and Texas Ranger Captain Alfred Allee. Brown described the scene in her article "Hot Words Precede Courthouse Fracas" in the January 18, 1954 edition of the Alice Daily Echo:

I've learned never to leave the scene just because things are dull. That's when the lid usually pops off in South Texas.

That's why I stuck around today as Sheriff Archer Parr of Duval County; his uncle, George Parr, the South Texas politico, Ranger Capt. Alfred Allee, and Ranger Joe Bridge started what was apparently an amiable conversation in the courthouse hall.

I was about six feet away when Ranger Bridge slapped Archer Parr, setting off a chain of action that left spectators shaken long after it was over.

As I watched I could tell that the talk between the Sheriff and Bridge was becoming heated and I shushed the man who was talking to me. "Something's fixing to happen," I warned.

And it did. Faster than we could keep up with it, Bridge struck the younger Parr, knocking the latter's glasses to the floor. George Parr jumped forward at that, and immediately Allee grabbed him, at the same time disarming the Sheriff, who had reached for his gun.

Parr's left ear received an open tear when it was twisted by the Ranger Captain, who also hit Parr with his fist before sticking his gun in his ribs. At that point I stepped into the middle, begging "Cap, please don't, please don't."

The scene highlights how central and conspicuous Brown’s role was as she reported on the slow unraveling of the Parr empire. Microfilm copies of Brown’s writing about the Parr trial in the Alice Daily Echo can be found at Texas A&M University–Kingsville and at the University of Texas at Austin.

In 1977, the journalism historian Robert W. Jones interviewed Brown in Corpus Christi. Much of the interview is excerpted in an article that he and Louis K. Falk published in American Journalism, which is accessible online to the public via the Internet Archive. When asked about her unwavering commitment to the Parr story over multiple years, Brown explained simply, "It has got to be total involvement. You don’t write casually. I don’t care how much you know or how well you do, I think in reporting, you are either a reporter or you are not."

Brown’s career was marked by sexism and jealousy, even at her own newspaper. Despite working tirelessly to document the extent of Parr’s operations, Brown never received a legitimate promotion at the Daily Echo and always earned less than her male counterparts. The Associated Press even had to pressure Brown’s editor to nominate her for the Pulitzer. "I am getting acclaim from all over the U.S. [for my Pulitzer Prize] and here [at the Daily Echo] I am getting resentment from my own staff, and I don’t understand it," Brown admitted in an interview. She left the Daily Echo shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize as a result of the disrespect shown her by her colleagues.

Selected Bibliography

Abram, Lynwood. "Deaths: Brown, Small-Town Reporter, Pulitzer Prize Winner, 93." Houston Chronicle, August 7, 2001.

Anders, Evan. Boss Rule in South Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.

"Caro Crawford Brown – Reporter, 93." New York Times. August 9, 2001.

"Caro Brown, Alice Daily Echo: Hall of Fame Class of 2016." Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame. Texas Newspaper Foundation. Accessed March 13, 2018.

"Caro Crawford Brown." Texas Women’s Hall of Fame Honorees. Texas Woman’s University. Accessed March 13, 2018. 

Carrozza, Anthony R. Dukes of Duval County: The Parr Family and Texas Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.

Gerland, Jonathan. "Honoring Journalist Caro Brown During Women’s History Month." Diboll Free Press, March 4, 1999: 5A.

Hyatt, Emily E. "Caro Crawford Brown." Stephen F. Austin State University Center for Regional Heritage Research. Accessed March 13, 2018. 

Jones, Robert, and Louis K. Falk. "Caro Brown and the Duke of Duval: The Story of the First Woman to Win the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting." American Journalism 14, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 40-53. 

Martin, Wilbur. "Parr Claims Ranger Intended to Kill Him." The Orange Leader. January 20, 1954.

"Mrs. Caro Brown of Alice (TX) Daily Echo." The Pulitzer Prizes. Accessed August 1, 2017.

Walker, Donald R. "Attacking the Texas Tammany: Caro Brown vs. George B. Parr of Duval County." Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record (November 1998): 21–33.

Listen to the audio

Portrait of Caro Crawford Brown. Courtesy of Donald R. Walker.

Caro Crawford Brown at her desk.