Houston Riot (1917)
| Houston riot of 1917 | |||
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Court Martial of 64 members of the 24th Infantry. Trial started November 1, 1917, Fort Sam Houston
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| Location | Houston, Texas | ||
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The Houston riot of 1917, or Camp Logan riot, was a mutiny by 156 African American soldiers of the Third Battalion of the all-black Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment. It occupied most of one night, and resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and sixteen civilians. The rioting soldiers were tried at three courts-martial. A total of nineteen would be executed, and forty-one were given life sentences.
Shortly after the United States declared war on the German Empire in the spring of 1917, the War Department rushed to construct two new military installations in Harris County, Texas — Camp Logan and Ellington Field. On July 27, 1917, the Army ordered the Third Battalion of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry Regiment to Houston to guard the Camp Logan construction site. The regiment traveled to Houston by train from their camp at Columbus, New Mexico, accompanied by seven commissioned officers.
Almost from the arrival of the Twenty-fourth Infantry in Houston, the presence of black soldiers in the segregated Texas city caused conflict. The Jim Crow laws had not been enforced when the Twenty-fourth was deployed in Columbus, New Mexico, but in Houston the soldiers encountered segregated street cars and white workers at Camp Logan who demanded separate tanks of drinking water. Soldiers from the Twenty-fourth were involved in a number of "clashes" with city police, several of which resulted in the soldiers receiving minor injuries.
Around noon August 23, 1917, Lee Sparks and Rufus Daniels, two Houston police officers, broke up a craps game on a street corner in Houston's predominantly-black San Felipe district by firing warning shots. Sparks, searching for the fleeing suspects, entered the house of local resident Sara Travers. He did not find the suspect but, after exchanging words with Travers, struck her and dragged her outside in her nightgown.
As Sparks and Daniels called in the arrest from an area patrol box, they were approached by Private Alonzo Edwards. Edwards offered to take custody of Travers, but was pistol-whipped repeatedly by Sparks and then arrested. Later that afternoon, Corporal Charles Baltimore approached Sparks and Daniels in the same neighborhood to inquire about the status of Edwards. Sparks struck Baltimore with his pistol and fired three shots at him as he fled into a nearby home. Sparks and Daniels pursued Baltimore, eventually finding him under a bed. They pulled him out, beat him, and placed him under arrest.
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Wikipedia