Hidden Houston History 2: Race, Riots and Good Ol’ Texas Racism

By Alex Wukman

I’ve been thinking of writing a book on the fight for racial equality in Houston. To do the subject justice it would take at least 2-and-a-half years of research to produce book of no less than 700 pages. It’ll feature things like the Camp Logan Mutiny in 1918. This is one of the more interesting events in local history, what happened was that a black soldier stationed at an emergency training facility just east of what would become Memorial Park stopped two white cops after they used excessive force in arresting a black woman.

The cops pistol whipped the soldier and took him in as well, a second black soldier tried to stop the cops and he was arrested too. When word got back to the rest of the garrison at Camp Logan the soldiers deliberated for a while, some reports say they debated for a few minutes while others say they debated until almost midnight. In the end approximately 100 troops stormed the armory, armed themselves with rifles and marched on the police station to try and get their comrades back.

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