Dozens of Black soldiers were sentenced to life or hanged after the 1917 ‘Houston Riot.’ The Army has now overturned their convictions.
The Houston melee was a violent brawl that saw Black soldiers march into the city after receiving word that a white police officer had pistol-whipped and killed a Black corporal.
As the U.S. Army attempts to acknowledge and remedy its past wrongs, it has reversed the convictions of 110 Black soldiers found guilty of mutiny, assault and murder in the largest trial in military history.
According to Military.com, Army officials announced Monday at the Buffalo Soldier Museum in Houston that historians discovered many “irregularities” in the way charges were leveled against the Black soldiers of the Third Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, who were involved in the 1917 “Houston Riot.”
In response, the Army has vacated the men’s convictions, and the service members’ records will reflect honorable discharges.
“The Army has worked very hard throughout its history to acknowledge mistakes and to correct them to become a better institution,” said Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo on Monday. “It’s that ongoing process of learning and growth that brings us here today.”
The 1917 “Houston Riot” was a violent brawl sparked by racial hatred in Jim Crow Texas that saw troops from the Third Battalion march from Camp Logan into the city after police pistol-whipped and shot at Cpl. Charles Baltimore. At the time, the rumor mill reported that Baltimore, who is Black, had been killed, and a white mob was on its way.
Nineteen people were killed, including four African-American troops.
The Black soldiers stood trial months later, represented by a single officer who was not yet an attorney, Camarillo said. After nearly a month, a court needed only two days to hand down the first of 58 convictions, culminating in the execution of 13 troops. Within a year, there were 52 additional convictions and six more executions.
The names of all 110 people convicted were read aloud during the ceremony Monday. Some of their descendants were in attendance, and they may also be entitled to Department of Veterans Affairs benefits not available to their tried relatives.
Attorney Jason Holt, a descendent of Pfc. Thomas Hawkins, read the names of the first 13 service members hanged. He referenced a significant blow to the “master-slave relationship” and said they celebrated the overturning and dismissal of their ancestors’ convictions.
“From the families of those executed to all of you, nothing — nothing — can replace what we lost. The worth of their lives is not found on a sheet of paper,” said Holt. “Taking their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, and so on cannot be replaced — that is lost forever in an ultimate abyss of what if.”
The Third Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, was a historic unit formed after the Civil War in 1866. Soldiers of the division fought in Cuba, Mexico and the Philippines, “and with their own hands, helped to build the American West,” shared Camarillo.
The Texas State Historical Association maintains that after the United States entered World War I, troops from the Third Battalion were sent to Camp Logan to guard a construction site along the Houston Ship Channel.
There, they faced racism and discrimination associated with the Jim Crow South, the Civil War-era legislated segregation of public facilities that remained widespread after the war.
Retired military officer and law professor Dru Brenner-Beck and historian John Haymond co-authored the petition proposed to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.
“The soldiers came to town with patriotism in their hearts, ready to serve their country faithfully,” said Brig. Gen. Ronald Sullivan, chief U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals chief judge, Military.com reported. “But [they] were met with racist provocations and physical violence.”
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