"[1] He defended lynching Black men accused of rape and called for opponents of this type of mob violence to be castrated.

[1][4] That year, he ran away from home and took odd jobs in several cities, including working as a painter's helper, a bellboy at a hotel,[3] manager of an opera company, a pitcher in semiprofessional baseball, and a fireman and brakeman on a locomotive.

[1] After only a short time, however, he decided to attempt to write his own paper, and invested a significant chunk of his personal savings into the Iconoclast.

[1][4] That paper quickly failed, and Brann went back to working for other Texas newspapers, the San Antonio Express and the Houston Post.

[1][4] With this new platform to communicate his views, Brann quickly became known for his stinging, often hateful attacks on various groups that drew his ire, including Baptists, Episcopalians, the British, blacks, and Baylor University.

[6] 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.

[6] He alleged that male faculty members were having sexual relations with female students and any father sending his daughter to Baylor would be risking her rape.

"[6][4] 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.

[1][4] On April 1, 1898, Brann was walking alone on Waco's Fourth Street when he was shot in the back by Tom Davis, a Baylor supporter whose daughter was a student at the university.