The 24th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black unit formed after the Civil War, served with distinction at home and abroad in the decades that followed. When World War I broke out in April 1917, the War Department ordered two military installations built at Harris County, TX. The Army sent the 24th Infantry’s 3rd Battalion to protect the construction work despite the area’s reputation for racial discrimination. These troops guarding Camp Logan outside Houston were embroiled in the Houston Riot of 1917, one of the largest race riots in U.S. history to that point and one where only Black soldiers were condemned in a lapse of procedure and a miscarriage of justice. Of the nineteen African American soldiers executed for their role, seventeen are interred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, TX.
The Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry, composed of 654 Black soldiers, arrived at Camp Logan on the outskirts of Houston in July 1917. The segregated military echoed life in the South under “Jim Crow.” The soldiers endured daily racial slurs and taunting by local citizens.
On August 23, 1917, city police arrested a Black soldier for interfering in the arrest of a Black civilian woman. Charles Baltimore, a Black corporal stationed at the camp, inquired about the infantryman’s arrest, escalating the situation. Police assaulted, shot at, and detained Baltimore. Baltimore was soon returned to camp, but reports of his death brought unrest to the ranks.