The ugly history of Camp Logan: Century-old mutiny at Houston military site was rooted in racism, buried for years

Via 4 Branch

Around 2 a.m. on a sticky August night in 1917, a 35-year old Army sergeant named Vida Henry sat exhausted and bleeding by the Southern Pacific railroad tracks just west of downtown Houston. As he watched his men slowly melt into the darkness, the first steps of a long trudge toward a dubious future, there was only one task remaining.

For the previous five hours, Henry had led the soldiers of I  Company on a march through town with a single objective – retribution. Now it was done. Houston stood awash in blood and fear, with more than two dozen bodies in the streets, the morgue and local hospitals.

None of this was imaginable a month earlier when the Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry rolled into the city. But Henry watched it build day by day, the anger that finally boiled over on a rainy Thursday afternoon. His African-American soldiers absorbed the abusive treatment by white citizens, especially &the police, until the moment they decided not to. He saw the fury in their eyes as they raised their rifles.