Camp Logan marker hit by vandals after rededication
Third historical monument to be damaged
Vandals marred the newly restored Camp Logan historical marker with a smear of rusty-red paint, mere hours after its rededication in Memorial Park.
The attack came after the Texas Historical Commission marker was unveiled Wednesday by local officials, preservationists and historians as Mayor Sylvester Turner called for “tolerance and understanding.”
It is the third historical monument in a week to be damaged by paint, and follows the arrest Saturday of a Houston man found with explosives at the statue of Confederate officer Richard “Dick” Dowling in Hermann Park.
Debra Blacklock-Sloan, a researcher and member of the Harris County Historical Commission, said she learned of the desecra-
tion at the Camp Logan site around 3 p.m. Thursday and rushed to the park to document the damage.
“I’ve never seen anything like this — this was less than 24 hours,” said Blacklock-Sloan, who chairs the marker dedication effort for the historical commission. “Mayor Turner gave a speech about how we could do better and the whole bit, and now this happens.”
The Memorial Park Conservancy is sending a team to survey the damage, she said. Houston police were also notified Thursday of the incident.
The marker commemorates the World War I training camp of black troops stationed in Houston as well as the associated 1917 racial riot and aftermath that became one of Houston’s darkest episodes.
The centennial commemoration events organized by the Houstonbased Buffalo Soldiers National Museum coincided with the state historical marker’s repair, funded through a collaboration with Harris County.
The marker’s recent facelift repaired damage caused by injury and aging, leaving a scar along the back of the metal sign. The red paint is sprayed across the front.
Harris County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle — who attended the rededication on Wednesday — lamented Thursday the state of mind of the person or persons who damaged the marker.
“Desecrating a historical marker is a cowardly act,” Cagle said. “To destroy the sacred monuments of a society is an offense and a tragedy because it takes away our ability to see what went before and our ability to come together and to improve.”
The protests and vandalism come amid national turmoil over Confederate monuments that has escalated since a rally turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman was killed and dozens injured in a clash Aug. 12 between white supremacists and counter-demonstrators.
In Houston, two historical monuments were targeted in the week after the Charlottesville protests.
A bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in Sunnyside was found smeared with white paint on the morning of Aug. 17.
A seven-foot-tall statue of Christopher Columbus in Bell Park in the Montrose area was found splattered with red paint that night.
And late Saturday, after a local rally drew hundreds of protesters and counter-protesters to a Confederate monument in Sam Houston Park, a Houston man was charged in federal court after his arrest at the Dowling statue.
The rededication Wednesday was part of a weeklong series of events marking the 100 years since the Camp Logan Riot, as the mutiny came to be known.
In 1917, black soldiers from the Army’s Thirdw Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment left against orders from the training camp at what is now Memorial Park.
The military men exacted revenge for humiliating and sometimes physically abusive treatment by local white citizens and police officers.
In the end, 16 people died — including five police officers — and 22 others were believed to have been wounded, although historical accounts vary.
The riot was followed by murder trials resulting in 19 men hanged and 53 handed life sentences.