Camp Logan Riot

August 25, 2017 9:24 AM

A historical marker in Texas was vandalized earlier this week, less than 24 hours after a re-dedication ceremony for the newly restored sign in Houston's Memorial Park. The historical marker commemorates Camp Logan, a training camp established in the park in the months after America's entry into WWI. During the summer of 1917, the Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, an African-American unit in the United States Army, were stationed at the camp. One hundred years ago this week, racial tensions between the African-American doughboys and the white residents and police of the city exploded into the Houston, or Camp Logan, riot of 1917.

This detailed account of the riot is "more inside" because A) it's a Facebook post and B) there is some offensive racial language. Which I guess you might expect when you're quoting primary sources from 100 years ago but it's not pleasant in any context.

posted by GalaxieFiveHundred (7 comments total)

Man, those historical accounts! Patrolman Sparks, who was "under investigation for shooting two black boys who were throwing rocks at a tin can on a fence"...my mind can't even wrap around that, even with the police brutality we see now. That's just deliberate murder, not even a "I was afraid for my life" equivocation.
posted by corb at 9:52 AM on August 25, 2017 [8 favorites]

Why is it that, anytime I see "race riot," further investigation shows that it was virtually always an unprovoked attack by (mobs of) White people against their Black neighbors?

Sigh. Never mind.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:59 AM on August 25, 2017 [12 favorites]

The Houston Chronicle had a good historical article too. I grew up in Houston and never once heard this story, no doubt in part because I grew up in privileged white society. It's so ugly, what a terrible legacy slavery and racism has created.
posted by Nelson at 10:13 AM on August 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

Why is it that, anytime I see "race riot," further investigation shows that it was virtually always an unprovoked attack by (mobs of) White people against their Black neighbors?

Wikipedia list of American race riots. You can do the math yourself. (It checks out.)
posted by klanawa at 10:39 AM on August 25, 2017 [6 favorites]

The Houston Chronicle had a good historical article too. I grew up in Houston and never once heard this story, no doubt in part because I grew up in privileged white society. It's so ugly, what a terrible legacy slavery and racism has created.

I wish that I could make out more of the text from this image of the front page of the August 24, 1917 edition of the Chronicle. The column headlined Murderous Riot Replaces Negro Watermelon Party must be a real doozy.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 10:52 AM on August 25, 2017

There's an excerpt from the watermelon party article in this critique from 2001, should you want a flavor of what a white newspaper would say about black soldiers attacking the city. (Hint: it's not pleasant.)

I continue to look for a good history of Reconstruction and the creation of the Jim Crow era. Something that conveys what life was really like in the South. My best hope is Foner's history but it's Reconstruction-only and very long.
posted by Nelson at 12:00 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nelson, you could do worse than Black Reconstruction, by WEB Du Bois ... then Gender and Jim Crow by Glenda Gilmore for "what life was really like". It's heartbreaking.
posted by allthinky at 12:23 PM on August 25, 2017 [5 favorites]