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68 7 The Bloodiest Day B y early 1917, HPD consisted of 159 men headed by two veteran police officers, Superintendent Ben S. Davison and Deputy Superintendent J. E. Dunman. The rest of the force was composed of sixteen detectives, twenty mounted officers, six motorcycle cops and several others on special assignment. Except for one black detective and one black officer, the force was completely white.1 According to several police veterans, “For years Houstonians had displayed only modest respect for the police department and had shown little faith in its ability to preserve law and order.”2 It had in fact been only six years since two policemen settled a dispute with a duel on Main Street, leading one observer to note, “It wasn’t safe to get in range of the police.” Few Houstonians could have imagined that the hot and rainy dog day of August 23, 1917, would turn into the bloodiest day in the history of the HPD. On that day five Houston police officers lost their lives in what became known as the “Camp Logan Riot.” But it was much more than that. This was not the only race-related conflict in America’s military history—incidents took place at virtually every camp in the south where black troops were stationed during the early 20th century. But, this was by far the worst event of its kind and remains to this day a record holder of sorts; its aftermath resulted in what is still the largest mutiny and the largest domestic court martial in U.S. Army history. It remains the only race riot in which more whites perished than blacks. In all, sixteen whites were killed, including the five Houston police officers, and close to thirty others suffered violent wounds such as the loss of limbs. No black civilians were killed, and only four troopers of the 24th Infantry died. Of these, two were accidentally shot by other soldiers who may have mistaken them for police officers. A white citizen shot a third soldier who later died in a hospital. The fourth black was Sergeant Vida Henry, the well-respected soldier with an honorable record up until he undertook the leadership of the violent attack on Houston. Henry took his own life. The Bloodiest Day 69 In seeking locales for the training of its growing number of troops as the United States was entering World War I, the War Department chose the Bayou City as the site for Ellington Field, south of downtown, for the training of army flyers, and Camp Logan, to the northwest and outside the city limits, for National Guard training (now the site of Memorial Park). City fathers and local leaders of industry were taken aback when they learned that Camp Logan would house the segregated all-black 24th Infantry Division of the 3rd Battalion, better known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” The division had a rich history and had distinguished itself in earlier conflicts. Its soldiers were treated with respect at earlier duty stations and were unaccustomed to the Jim Crow laws so prevalent in the South. Civic leaders, concerned about a potential racial conflict in Houston once they arrived, discreetly but unsuccessfully appealed to Washington, D.C. to reconsider sending African American soldiers to Houston. The 24th was tasked with guarding and protecting the construction of a “tent camp” that could house up to 44,899 men. But, when these soldiers arrived in time for construction to begin on July 24, 1917, they couldn’t even find room and board near their charge and were quartered in nearby neighborhoods. The genesis of the riot developed along the streetcar line on Washington Street (later Avenue), where the conductors and train operators seriously separated black passengers from their white counterparts. The black soldiers were routinely taunted with derogatory language by local residents as well as white workers in the new camp, creating an exceptionally hostile environment. The white Army officers in charge of the division were probably aware of HPD’s reputation for Jim Crow law enforcement in streetcars, movie houses, lunch counters, schools and restrooms and should have expected trouble on the streetcars and in white-owned businesses downtown. What’s more, it was common knowledge that Texas was second only to Georgia in the number of racial lynchings in 1916. Houston’s police officers enforced laws at their own discretion. Local blacks coped with discrimination by assuming what various scholars called “dissembling”, described by historian Ronald L. F. Davis...

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