Camp Logan soldiers deserve notable place in Houston history
It’s time to fully reckon with these 110 Black soldiers wrongly convicted in 1917
A white-gloved Army sergeant rang a bell after the name of each man honored in a historic ceremony that even the most dogged activist in the crowd thought she’d never live to see. There were so many names — more than 100 — that each ring of the bell throbbed into the next one, seeming to connect the tragic fates and newly redeemed legacies of American soldiers in the all-Black 3rd Battalion, U.S. 24th Infantry Regiment.
Their wrongful convictions in a deadly 1917 riot have haunted Houston’s history, even as we’ve tried to forget.
Angela Holder wouldn’t let us. Dabbing tears under her blazing red hat, she stood Monday morning among a crowd of more than 150 people, including other descendants of the victims, dignitaries and the under secretary of the Army, as her government acknowledged one of the most grievous injustices in American history: wrongful convictions of mutiny, murder and assault, that led to the rash hangings of 19 Black soldiers, including her great-uncle Cpl. Jesse Moore.
The grand ceremony at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum on Caroline Street was a far cry from the August day six years earlier when Holder and a handful of others gathered in a grassy corner of Memorial Park with a few Houston officials to rededicate a small plaque — four paragraphs with just one dedicated to the “mutiny and riot” — and unveil the headstones for three soldiers killed during the fighting.
Holder was just a girl in Louisiana, listening to her great-aunt talk about Moore, when she vowed to find out the truth. She did, and with the help of a team of volunteer academics, she got the U.S. military to not just overturn the convictions but to grant soldiers honorary discharges, which could bring financial benefits to descendants.
“For all those responsible, thank you for helping a 6-year-old Baton Rouge child keep her promise to her aunt to find her brother and bring peace to his soul,” said Holder during her remarks. “Our tears are more joyous than sad,” added the Houston Community College history professor.
In all, 110 soldiers stationed at Camp Logan were convicted for their alleged roles in a two-hour race riot on Aug. 23, 1917, that resulted in the deaths of 16 whites, including five police officers, and four Black soldiers. The biggest murder trial and court martial in the nation’s history was a sham.
Witnesses couldn’t identify shooters in the chaotic fighting that took place at night, in the rain. Sixty-three of the accused soldiers, all of whom pleaded guilty, were represented by one man who wasn’t even a lawyer. The keepers of history, in their haste to condemn the “mutineers” and move on, often refused to reckon with what largely motivated the out-oftown soldiers’ armed march toward the city: self-defense after escalating racist verbal and physical attacks from white Houston police and residents.
We applaud the Army’s atonement but condemn the century-long delay in freeing these soldiers — and their families — from the shame of the convictions. The truth was always obvious to some.
“I recognized a long time ago … how wrong it was,” said Sandra Hajtman, whose great grandfather, Ira Raney, was one of the white policemen killed that night. At the ceremony, she reflected on how her experience differed: “I grew up knowing my great grandfather was considered a hero.” But she knew some of the Black families that Holder had reached out to in her research didn’t want to reopen that painful chapter.
“They no longer have to feel that way, I hope,” she said. “They should be proud.”
The soldiers and their families deserve more than just apologies and honors: they deserve to have their stories told. The facts of the 1917 riot and aftermath don’t just indict the military but Houston’s history of racism and intolerance. Many like to pretend it didn’t happen here. Some focus instead on orderly incidences of desegregation in the civil rights era.
It’s time we fully reckon with the fates of 110 Black soldiers who lost their liberty and some, their lives, for daring to stand up to racism after donning their uniforms and serving Uncle Sam in a city more loyal to Jim Crow than fairness under the law. Mutiny wasn’t their crime. Being Black was.
Their service, and their suffering, deserves more than an incomplete mention on a plaque. It deserves a prominent monument and an equally prominent place in our memory.