The Houston 110: Marched After a Beating, Hanged Without Appeal, Cleared After 106 Years

They were Buffalo Soldiers — the 3rd Battalion of the 24th Infantry, sent to Jim Crow Houston to guard the construction of a camp that would train white soldiers for France. When Houston police beat two of their own in the street on August 23, 1917, 156 of them took rifles and marched. The Army's answer was the largest murder trial and the largest court-martial in American history: 118 men tried, 110 convicted, 19 hanged — the first 13 in secrecy, without appeal, on a scaffold built overnight. This page is the documented record of what happened in Houston in 1917, what the Army did afterward, and the 106 years it took the Army to take it all back.

The service and the promise

The 24th Infantry Regiment was one of the Army’s original Black regular regiments, raised after the Civil War and known, with the other Black regiments, as the Buffalo Soldiers. Its record ran through Cuba, the Philippines, and the Mexican border. In the summer of 1917, with the United States newly in the First World War, the regiment’s 3rd Battalion — 654 Black soldiers, by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration’s count, under white commissioned officers — was ordered from Columbus, New Mexico, to Houston, Texas. Its assignment was guard duty: protecting the construction of Camp Logan, a training camp being built on the western edge of the city, on ground that is now Memorial Park.

Houston in 1917 was a Jim Crow city, and it did not suspend Jim Crow for men in uniform. The battalion arrived at the end of July and met, in the Army’s own 2023 words, “months of racial provocations”: segregated streetcars and drinking facilities, racist slurs from white workmen at the construction site, and repeated clashes with the all-white Houston Police Department, in several of which, historians record, police assaulted soldiers and left lasting injuries. The Texas Historical Commission’s account, carried in the Army’s later coverage, records the segregation, the restrictions, and the slurs as the standing conditions of the battalion’s seven weeks in the city. The Houston Chamber of Commerce had assured the Army that racial trouble would not be a problem. It was wrong, and the battalion’s men paid for the assurance.

The promise made to men like these is the same one made to every soldier: wear the uniform, obey the orders, and the institution stands behind you — in the field, and in the courtroom, if it ever comes to that. What follows is what that promise was worth in Houston: to the two soldiers beaten in the street on August 23, to the men who marched that night, and to the 110 the Army convicted for it.

What happened — August 23, 1917

The day’s events are established across the Texas State Historical Association’s handbook account, the Texas Historical Commission’s record, and the accounts the Army itself relied on in 2023:

• Around noon on August 23, 1917, two Houston police officers, Lee Sparks and Rufus Daniels, broke up a gathering in the San Felipe district, the city’s historic Black neighborhood, firing warning shots. Sparks, pursuing men who fled, burst into the home of a Black woman, Sara Travers. He did not find the men he was chasing. He dragged Travers outside — by the accounts, in her undergarments, not allowed even to put on shoes — and arrested her.
• Private Alonzo Edwards, a soldier of the battalion who came upon the arrest, offered to take custody of Travers himself. Sparks pistol-whipped him repeatedly and arrested him.
• Later that afternoon, Corporal Charles Baltimore — one of the battalion’s military policemen, and by the accounts a respected soldier — approached the same officers to ask after Edwards’s condition. Sparks struck Baltimore with his pistol, fired three shots at him as he fled into a nearby house, and, with Daniels, dragged him from under a bed, beat him again, and arrested him.
• Word reached Camp Logan that Baltimore had been killed. He had not been — he was released and returned to camp, bloodied — but the rumor ran ahead of the fact, joined by a second rumor, carried in the Army’s own 2023 account: that a white mob was descending on the camp to attack the Black troops.

That night, defying orders to remain in camp, 156 soldiers of the battalion seized rifles and ammunition and marched in column toward the city, led by Sergeant Vida Henry. The shooting that followed lasted roughly two hours on a hot, rainy night. The soldiers killed policemen and civilians; they also, mistaking an open car carrying a man in an olive-drab uniform for a mounted policeman, killed Captain Joseph W. Mattes of the Illinois National Guard — a fellow soldier, a killing the histories record as the moment the march’s leaders understood what they had crossed into. All of the wounds the soldiers themselves received that night, the record notes, came from accidental fire by their own comrades. Henry led the remnant back toward camp, shook hands with his men outside the San Felipe district, and told them he meant to kill himself. His body was found the next day.

On the death toll, this page follows the Army’s own accounting and says plainly where the record divides. The Army’s November 13, 2023 release states that the violence left 19 people dead; the National Cemetery Administration’s breakdown of that figure is 15 white and four Black dead. The detailed historical reconstruction is narrower about the night itself: 17 dead when the firing ceased — four police officers, nine civilians, and two soldiers — with a soldier and a police officer dying afterward of their wounds, and another soldier dying of wounds sustained during his capture the next day. The counts differ because the counters drew the line at different hours; the fact underneath them does not divide: policemen, civilians, and soldiers died in Houston’s streets that night because two of the city’s policemen had beaten two soldiers in the street that afternoon.

Houston was placed under martial law the next morning. The battalion was disarmed and shipped back to New Mexico by rail. No white civilian was ever brought to trial for that night. The two white officers of the battalion who faced courts-martial were released. Officer Lee Sparks — whose beatings of Edwards and Baltimore lit the fuse — was tried in a civilian court for aggravated assault against Baltimore and acquitted, the historical record notes, after less than a minute of deliberation.

What the institution did afterward

The Army tried the Black soldiers in three courts-martial at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, beginning November 1, 1917 — proceedings the Army and historians describe alike as the largest murder trial in United States history and the largest court-martial in American history. The first trial alone put 63 defendants before the court, heard almost 200 witnesses over 22 days, and filled more than 2,000 pages of transcript. For a defense, all of the defendants were represented by a single officer, Major Harry S. Grier — a West Point law instructor who was not a lawyer and had no trial experience, given days, not months, to prepare. Some testimony against the defendants came from fellow soldiers granted immunity or promised leniency, and historians have noted that on a dark, rainy night, many of the condemned were never conclusively identified as having taken part at all.

118 soldiers were tried. 110 were convicted of mutiny, murder, and assault. Nineteen were executed. Sixty-three were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The first trial convicted 58 men and sentenced 13 to death. Those 13 — among them Corporal Baltimore himself, the military policeman whose beating had started the day — asked for a firing squad, the soldier’s execution. The request was denied. On the night of December 10, Army engineers built a scaffold by bonfire light at Camp Travis, beside Salado Creek, near Fort Sam Houston. At 7:17 a.m. on December 11, 1917, one minute before sunrise, the 13 were hanged simultaneously — the largest mass execution of American soldiers by the U.S. Army. The scaffold was dismantled before the city woke; the men were buried beside the creek in graves marked only with numbers, 1 through 13, their surnames written on paper sealed in soda bottles buried with them. The sentences had been approved personally by the department commander, General John Wilson Ruckman, and carried out in secrecy and with no review by the War Department or the President, and no appeal. The NAACP, which investigated the Houston violence within weeks — Martha Gruening’s report ran in The Crisis in November 1917 — called it what it was, and the outrage was immediate and national. The Army’s response tells its own story: it at once changed its regulations to prohibit any future execution without review by the War Department and the President, a protection that became the first appellate review process in the 1920 Articles of War. The 13 men hanged in December were hanged under a system the Army itself abolished because of how it had used it on them.

The two later courts-martial convicted 52 more men and produced sixteen more death sentences. President Woodrow Wilson commuted ten — while stating, on his own review, that he found no legal errors that had prejudiced the accused. The remaining six were hanged at the same Camp Travis ground in September 1918, bringing the executed to 19. The imprisoned men went to Fort Leavenworth. Paroles began in 1924; President Coolidge reduced the last sentences in 1927; the final prisoners were not released until 1938, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — men who had given up to twenty-one years, on convictions the Army would one day set aside in full. In 1937, the remains of 17 of the executed were reburied at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, their graves marked with headstones bearing only a name and a year of death — the standard of that era for soldiers executed under sentence, and a fraction of what an honorably buried veteran receives. The other two executed men, Corporal Larnon Brown and Private Joseph Smith, had been reclaimed by their families and lie elsewhere.

For a century after that, the convictions stood — while the case was carried, as it had been from the first weeks, by people outside the institution: by the NAACP, whose Houston branch counts the case among the first it ever investigated; by historians, above all Robert V. Haynes, whose A Night of Violence (1976) rebuilt the record; and by the families, who never accepted the word the Army had left on their men.

Where it stands now

The correction, when it came, came the way this site has learned corrections come: because specific people filed specific paper and would not withdraw it. In October 2020 and December 2021, the South Texas College of Law Houston petitioned the Army for review of the courts-martial — petitions built with the NAACP and brought on behalf of descendants of three of the executed men, Cpl. Jesse Moore, Pfc. Thomas Hawkins, and Sgt. William Nesbit. Retired general officers then petitioned for clemency for all 110. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth directed the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to review every case individually and report on the appropriateness of each conviction.

The Board’s finding was unanimous and total. In the Army’s words, board members “found that significant deficiencies permeated the cases,” acknowledged that “the proceedings were fundamentally unfair,” and unanimously recommended that every conviction be set aside and each man’s service characterized as honorable. On November 13, 2023, Wormuth approved the recommendation in full: all 110 convictions set aside, the records corrected to honorable discharges. “After a thorough review, the Board has found that these Soldiers were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials,” Wormuth said. “By setting aside their convictions and granting honorable discharges, the Army is acknowledging past mistakes and setting the record straight.” The announcement was made at a ceremony at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston. Historian John Haymond, who co-authored the South Texas petition, stated the scope of it: “This is not only the largest murder trial in American history, this is also the largest court-martial in American history, and no case this large or this serious with this many death penalties has ever been completely overturned by the Army on review.”

The families were in the room. “It can’t bring them back, but it gives them peace,” said Angela Holder, great-niece of Corporal Jesse Moore, one of the 13 hanged on December 11, 1917. “Their souls are at peace.” Jason Holt, a descendant of Private First Class Thomas Hawkins, executed in the first group, said of the Army officials who carried the decision: “To say that they did something to set aside convictions, to say they did something that was controversial — it’s not an easy job. I salute your courage.”

On February 22, 2024, at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration dedicated new headstones for the 17 executed men buried there — full headstones, carrying name, rank, regiment, home state, and date of death, replacing the name-and-year stones of 1937, with an updated interpretive sign telling their story. Descendants received certificates bearing their men’s corrected, honorable records. “These headstones now look like every other honorable veteran buried here,” VA Deputy Secretary Tanya Bradsher said. “They will be recognized and forever called veterans.” The Army’s representative, Yvette Bourcicot, said the words institutions in this section so rarely say on the record: “We do ask for forgiveness for the injustice that was perpetrated on these Soldiers.”

The ground where it began is kept as well: Camp Logan is now Houston’s Memorial Park, where a historical marker stands on the camp’s site, and the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston keeps the battalion’s story. None of the 110 men lived to see any of it. Every one of them carried the conviction for the rest of his life — the 19 on a scaffold and in numbered graves, the rest through prison years and homecomings under a mutineer’s name. The correction took 106 years, petitions by a law school and a civil-rights organization, a clemency appeal by retired generals, and a unanimous board. It is, in the end, complete on the question it addressed — and this page records both halves of that sentence.

The ledger

The accounting, in three lines — what the record shows has been done, what it shows has not, and what is still being sought.

What has been done

• November 13, 2023: Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, on the unanimous recommendation of the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, set aside all 110 courts-martial convictions and directed that each man’s record be corrected, to the extent possible, to characterize his service as honorable — the proceedings found fundamentally unfair and the men wrongly treated because of their race.
• February 22, 2024: the VA National Cemetery Administration dedicated new, full-honor headstones for the 17 executed men buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, with an updated interpretive sign, and presented descendants with certificates of their men’s corrected honorable service.
• The systemic correction the case forced in its own time: after the unreviewed December 1917 executions, the Army immediately barred executions without War Department and presidential review — the seed of the appellate review process written into the 1920 Articles of War.

What has not been done

• None of the 110 lived to see it. The 19 executed men, and the men who served up to twenty-one years at Leavenworth before the last releases in 1938, carried the convictions to their graves; the correction arrived 106 years after the march and 85 years after the last prisoner came home.
• The correction itself carries no compensation. It restores rights, privileges, and records; it does not repay the executed men’s lives, the imprisoned men’s years, or the families’ generations under the convictions — none of which can be repaid.
• No proceeding has ever accounted for the other side of August 23, 1917: no white civilian was tried for that night, the battalion’s white officers were released, and Officer Sparks was acquitted in under a minute. That ledger was never opened.

What is being sought

• Nothing further on the convictions — the fight the families, the NAACP, and the South Texas College of Law carried is complete: every conviction set aside, every record honorable. In Angela Holder’s words, “their souls are at peace.”
• What remains open is administrative, and it runs through the families: the Army’s 2023 announcement states that relatives of the 110 may be entitled to benefits and that the VA “is prepared to assist any family members upon receipt of the corrected records.” Family members establish eligibility individually, through the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, with documentation proving their relationship to one of the 110 — the residual channel this case, like so many in this section, leaves in the families’ hands.

The record, on video

Houston was investigated by the NAACP within weeks and argued over for a century — so this page lets the record speak in its own medium. Three films: the historian’s full account of the night and the trials, the ground where it happened, and the documentary Houston television made of it.

Sources

• U.S. Army Public Affairs, “Army sets aside convictions of 110 Black Soldiers convicted in 1917 Houston Riots,” November 13, 2023 — Secretary Wormuth’s approval, the ABCMR’s unanimous finding that the proceedings were fundamentally unfair, the 19 dead and 19 executed, the secrecy of the first executions and the immediate regulatory change, the South Texas College of Law petitions of October 2020 and December 2021, the retired general officers’ clemency petitions, and the VA benefits channel for family members: https://www.army.mil/article/271614/army_sets_aside_convictions_of_110_black_soldiers_convicted_in_1917_houston_riots
• U.S. Army (Shannon Collins), “Army honors World War I Buffalo Soldiers with new headstones,” March 21, 2024 — the February 22, 2024 VA National Cemetery Administration ceremony at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, the 17 reburied men, Corporal Larnon Brown and Private Joseph Smith buried elsewhere, the name-and-year headstones replaced, and the Bradsher, Quinn, Bourcicot, and Holt statements: https://www.army.mil/article/274093?a
• Associated Press, via Military Times, “Army clears convictions of Black soldiers charged in 1917 riot,” November 14, 2023 — the Texas Historical Commission account of August 23 (Edwards and Baltimore beaten and arrested), the first trial’s nearly 200 witnesses over 22 days, the denied firing squad, and the South Texas petitions brought for descendants of Jesse Moore, Thomas Hawkins, and William Nesbit: https://www.MilitaryTimes.com/news/your-army/2023/11/14/army-clears-convictions-of-black-soldiers-charged-in-1917-riot/
• South Texas College of Law Houston, “Camp Logan” (updated June 2024) — the 156 who marched, Angela Holder on her great-uncle Cpl. Jesse Moore, Professor Geoffrey Corn on the century of implications, and the NAACP Houston Branch statement: https://www.stcl.edu/camp-logan/
• VA National Cemetery Administration, “Houston Riot – 1917” remembrance page — the battalion’s 654 soldiers, the estimated 150 who marched, approximately 20 dead in its broader count, and the 17 executed men interred at Fort Sam Houston: https://www.cem.va.gov/VLM/Remembrance/Houston-Riot-1917.asp
• Memorial Park Conservancy, “Remembering and Honoring the Soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment” — the first trial’s 63 defendants, 58 convictions, and 13 executions on December 11, 1917 with no outside review; the further 52 convictions and six executions in 1918; and the first appellate review process in the 1920 Articles of War: https://www.memorialparkconservancy.org/event/park-conversations-remembering-and-honoring-the-soldiers-of-the-3rd-battalion-24th-infantry-regiment/
• NAACP, “Camp Logan Mutiny” resolution — the November 1, 1917 court-martial of 63 soldiers, the single appointed defense officer with two weeks to prepare, the names of the 13 hanged on December 11, 1917 without review or appeal, Wilson’s commutation of 10 of 16 later death sentences, and the absence of any trial of white civilians: https://naacp.org/resources/camp-logan-mutiny
• Prairie View A&M University, Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture, “The 1917 Houston Riots / Camp Logan Mutiny” — the December 11 hangings at Camp Travis, the numbered graves, the September 1918 executions, the 118 indicted and 110 convicted, and Martha Gruening’s November 1917 report in The Crisis: https://www.pvamu.edu/tiphc/research-projects/the-1917-houston-riotscamp-logan-mutiny/
• Robert V. Haynes, “Houston Riot of 1917,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association — the standard scholarly account: Sparks and Daniels, Sara Travers, Edwards and Baltimore, the 17 dead when the firing ceased and the later deaths from wounds, and Sparks’s acquittal: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-riot-of-1917

Further record

• Robert V. Haynes, A Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Louisiana State University Press, 1976) — the definitive history of the riot and the trials.
• Jaime Salazar and Geoffrey S. Corn, Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riot and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston (2021) — the modern legal-historical account, by the South Texas College of Law professor who helped carry the petitions.
• CBS News, “Sunday Morning: U.S. Army corrects miscarriage of justice in Jim Crow-era Texas,” February 25, 2024 — David Martin with the families of the executed men and Army officials, following the headstone dedication: https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/lZnuOIGOUUcdy2PrB3vADXhl7UkggAVN/

Part of Betrayed, Not Forgotten — this site's accounting for the service members and veterans their own institutions failed. Videos are embedded from their publishers; nothing here is re-hosted.