A new historical exhibit coming to Memorial Park will commemorate the anniversary of the 1917 Houston Mutiny and Riots, a World War I-era event that took place prior to the park's establishment when it was still used as a training camp for soldiers.
The area that houses Memorial Park today was once the site of Camp Logan, where more than 70,000 soldiers were trained, according to an Aug. 15 news release from the Memorial Park Conservancy.
In July 1917, soldiers of the 3d Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment—one of the four “Buffalo Soldier” regiments in the U.S. Army—were ordered to guard the construction of Camp Logan. During this time, the soldiers endured virulent racist abuse under the city’s Jim Crow laws, which sparked violence Aug. 23, 1917, according to the release, which cites information obtained from the South Texas College of Law Houston Special Library Collection.
Nineteen people died during the event, and the U.S. Army would later charge 118 soldiers with “mutiny” and murder in three general courts-martial. Another 13 soldiers would be executed after trial with no outside review and within hours of their sentence being approved, which sparked outrage across the U.S.
