Professor wants to vindicate great-uncle hanged after 1917 riot
“When I think about him standing on that trap door, and his body weight snapping his neck, it’s hard. It’s hard,” Angela Holder was telling me earlier this week at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum on Caroline Street. As we talked, she blinked away tears.
A history professor at Houston Community College’s central campus, Holder was telling me about her great-uncle, a young Buffalo Soldier from Louisiana named Jesse Moore, who was hanged for his alleged role in the 1917 Camp Logan Riot. Sunday marks the 98th anniversary of the incident, also known as the Camp Logan Mutiny. Whatever it’s called, it’s one of the darkest events in Houston history.
Holder, who’s put together a booklet about the incident (available at the museum), is hoping to clear her uncle’s name. She also continues to do research. “I want to bring these men out,” she said, “the lives they had. Or could have had.”
What actually happened on the evening of Aug. 23 remains in dispute nearly a century later, but here are the basics: When the U.S. entered the Great War, the Army set in motion a plan to build 32 training facilities, including Camp Logan, a sprawling 7,600-acre National Guard training center that’s now Memorial Park, and Ellington Field, an aviation training site. Camp Logan construction began on July 24, 1917, and the next day the first Army unit arrived, 654 men of the all-black 3rd Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, with its white commanding officers. The battalion had been dispatched from Columbus, N.M., where Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing had led them in cross-border forays against the Mexican bandido/revolutionary Pancho Villa. They would guard the camp during construction.
Houston officials had promised the Army, “in the spirit of patriotism,” there would be no racial
trouble, but Police Chief Clarence Brock couldn’t get his men to cooperate. They began harassing and arresting soldiers for minor infractions, and tensions began to rise. Many of the soldiers were from the South, so they were familiar with segregation and discrimination, but after serving their country, their patience had worn thin. They began ignoring “Whites Only” signs and disobeying Houston’s Jim Crow laws, especially when it came to the irksome requirement that they take the back seats on the trolleys they rode up and down Washington Avenue.
The Houston Chamber of Commerce had planned a “watermelon party” for the evening of Aug. 23 to officially welcome the soldiers. There was no party.
How riot was sparked
That morning, mounted patrolman Lee Sparks and his partner, Rufus Daniels — both known for their brutal treatment of blacks throughout the city — tried to arrest a young man they accused of shooting craps. When they thought they saw him dash inside a house, they followed and arrested a thinly clad African-American woman for allegedly hiding the dice player. Back outside, a black soldier walked up and asked Sparks what was going on and whether he could retrieve some clothes for the woman. Sparks, a so-called “Negro baiter,” began pistol-whipping the soldier. “I beat that n----until his heart got right,” the cop said. “He was a good n----- when I got through with him.”
Sparks also pistolwhipped Cpl. Charles Baltimore, a military policeman from the 3rd Battalion who had inquired about the first soldier’s arrest. Baltimore fled, Sparks shot at him on a crowded street, beat him again and hauled him off to jail. Although Baltimore was freed hours later, word spread throughout the camp that he had been jailed and possibly murdered. A group of soldiers resolved to march on the jail, kill every policeman they encountered and free their friend and fellow soldier, if he was still alive.
As the sun set on that hot, rainy evening more than a hundred armed men set off toward town. They crossed Buffalo Bayou at Shepherd’s Dam Bridge, then turned east on San Felipe, on their way to the police station. For two hours the soldiers engaged police and armed civilians, the soldiers killed 15 people, including four policemen. Twelve more people were seriously injured. Four soldiers were killed, two of them accidentally shot by their comrades. It was the only time in U.S. history that more whites than blacks were killed in a race riot.
The soldiers never made it to the station. Some drifted away as they got closer to town; others headed back to camp. A veteran first sergeant, Vida Henry, was apparently the leader and later was found dead of a selfinflicted gunshot wound. Gov. James Ferguson declared martial law the next day. The battalion was quickly dispatched by train back to New Mexico, where 118 were arrested and charged with murder and mutiny.
Life, death sentences
On Nov. 1, 1917, the Army convened the first of three courts-martial at Fort Sam Houston. It was the largest murder trial and largest court-martial in U.S. history. A single attorney with no trial experience was assigned to defend 63 soldiers, all of whom entered not-guilty pleas. None of the white Houstonians who testified could identify any of the 63 as having taken part in the incident.
On Nov. 28, the court sentenced 13 of the men to death, despite the lack of identification. Of the remaining defendants, 41 were sentenced to life in prison at hard labor, four were given lesser time for testifying against their comrades and five were acquitted. At sunrise on the morning of Dec. 11, the condemned men, including 27-year-old Jesse Moore and Cpl. Baltimore, were taken to hastily constructed wooden gallows near Salado Creek and hanged. Six more were hanged after a later trial. All died without an appeal or review of their case.
Holder and retired Army Capt. Paul J. Matthews, director of the Buffalo Soldiers Museum, are beginning the process of requesting an official pardon for the men who were executed, in large part because they — and most legal scholars — believe the men were railroaded. “I’m not minimizing the deaths that took place,” Holder says. “It was tragic on both sides.”
She was 6 years old when she first heard about her great-uncle, from Jesse Moore’s sister. When Holder saw the elderly woman’s sadness as she told the story, she resolved to find out all she could about the young man. She discovered years later that her great-uncle was a little guy, 5-feet-5-inches tall, who had enlisted at 16 and had served with distinction in the Philippines and New Mexico. In a letter to his mother, Moore said he was in camp and had not participated in the riot. His mother didn’t know her son was dead until a box arrived at her Louisiana home containing his coat, Bible, a dollar and a final letter to her. “When you read this letter, I’ll be in glory,” the young man wrote.
Holder considered having the remains disinterred and returned to Louisiana, but once she found his grave at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, once she saw that he was buried with his 3rd Battalion buddies, she decided to let him lie in peace. His Army pals, she suspects, were his true family.