WEAVER, John D(owning) 1912-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 4, 1912, in Washington, DC; died December 4, 2002, in Las Vegas, NV. Journalist and author. Weaver was a respected author of historical books, especially on the subject of Los Angeles and the 1906 Black Dreyfus Affair. A graduate of William and Mary College where he earned an A.B. in 1932, he went on to receive his master's degree from George Washington University in 1933. Before World War II he worked for the National Recovery Administration and was a reporter and writer for the Kansas City Star. After serving in the Signal Corps during the war, Weaver returned home to work as a freelance writer, authoring such books as Another Such Victory (1948) and the young adult book Tad Lincoln: Mischief-Maker in the White House (1963). He became interested in the case involving black soldiers who were accused of killing one white man and wounding another near Fort Brown after learning about it from his father, who had been U.S. House of Representative official reporter at the time of the incident. The "Black Dreyfus" case had been ushered quickly through the courts, and all 167 men in the unit had been accused of covering it up, even though there was evidence that rifle shells had been planted at the scene in order to frame them. President Roosevelt ordered the soldiers dishonorably discharged; this decision was upheld by the U.S. Senate. Through his diligent research, Weaver showed that the men were innocent, and the U.S. Army cleared their records of all charges in 1972; he also followed up the story with his 1997 book, The Senator and the Sharecropper's Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville Soldiers. In addition to this respected work of history, Weaver was appreciated for his historical writings on the Los Angeles area, including Los Angeles: The Enormous Village (1980).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

Ward, Martha E., and others, editors, Authors of Books for Young People, third edition, Scarecrow Press (Metuchen, NJ), 1990.

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2002, p. B22.

New York Times, December 23, 2002, p. A25.

Washington Post, December 9, 2002, p. B7.