Hurricane Harvey put Houston back in the headlines, but a hundred years ago the city made news for a very different reason. Black soldiers at Fort Logan had gone on a rampage, prompting the largest murder trial in U.S. history. Now, a Virginia man is trying to clear their names.
In the summer of 1917, a regiment of respected black soldiers made their way south to Houston where they were assigned to guard a military base under construction. They were greeted by insults from local residents and racist regulations.
“They didn’t like Jim Crow," says Fred Borch, a military historian and archivist for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps at the University of Virginia. "They didn’t like having to sit in the back of the street cars, but I think that the real impetus is some run-ins with the Houston police, all of who were white, and the soldiers felt didn’t treat them with sufficient respect.”
Now, Borch has made it his mission to tell people what happened when those unhappy men heard a rumor.
“A soldier who was very highly thought of in the unit had gone in to talk to the police about another soldier who was beaten, and he’s beaten. Now the rumor goes out that he’s been killed, and it wasn’t true, but this was the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Borch says.
The soldiers grabbed their rifles and headed into Houston – vowing to kill as many policemen as they could. Instead, they killed 15 white civilians – some of them innocent bystanders.
The army then put 63 of them on trial, providing them with a single person to defend them – a man who had studied law at West Point but was not a lawyer. Borch says that made a fair trial impossible.
“Even if you’re the best trial lawyer in the world, you can’t possibly represent 63 men, all of whom have different levels of culpability, and they just didn’t get a fair trial,” he concludes.
The prosecution might have found it difficult to make their case, but Borch says they got some soldiers to testify against others.
“The riots occurred on a very rainy, dark night in Houston. I think it’s pretty clear that very few Houstonians could identify perpetrators. So how does the prosecutor put together his case? He goes to some of those he knows participated in the riot and says, “’Hey, you testify for the government, and in return we will not prosecute you for your involvement in the riots.’”
A few men were acquitted. Most were convicted, and 13 were sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
“They asked to be shot by firing squad, because even today it’s considered to be a more honorable death to be shot, rather than hanged, but the jury refused.”
Borch says those who were jailed eventually won their freedom.
“A vigorous campaign carried on by the NAACP resulted in parole for almost everyone.”
And the army, shamed by what had happened, established a means for military men and women to appeal convictions. But the families of those who were convicted asked the justice department to clear the names of their kin. Unfortunately, Borch says, the federal bureaucracy refused – perhaps fearing many more requests.
“There are hundreds if not thousands of possibilities there, and I think the Justice Department’s view, quite reasonably, is, ‘We’ve got to focus on those who are still alive.’”
So Borch has suggested they turn to the only person who could pardon their ancestors – the president of the United States. In the meantime, he’s telling the story of the Houston riot, hoping to set the historic record straight.