U.S. Army Overturns the Convictions of 110 Black Soldiers in the 1917 Camp Logan Rebellion to Redress the Unfair Trials that Resulted in the Execution of 19

On November 13, 2023, offi­cials announced that the U.S. Army had over­turned the con­vic­tions of 110 Black sol­diers of the 3^rd Battalion, 24^th Infantry Regiment, who were charged with mutiny in con­nec­tion with the racial vio­lence that occurred dur­ing the 1917 Camp Logan rebel­lion. Nineteen Black sol­diers were hanged fol­low­ing the court-mar­tial rul­ing on December 11, 1917, which was the largest exe­cu­tion of mil­i­tary sol­diers in his­to­ry. In her state­ment, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth stat­ed, “…these sol­diers were wrong­ly treat­ed because of their race and were not giv­en fair trials.” 

During the Jim Crow era, the Black sol­diers of the 24^th Infantry Regiment were con­tin­u­ous­ly harassed by racist police and white locals while sta­tioned at Camp Logan, a mil­i­tary train­ing camp in Houston. On August 23, 1917, Corporal Charles Baltimore was beat­en and shot by police after inter­fer­ing in the arrest of a Black woman. In response to this inci­dent, Black sol­diers marched in protest– into Houston, which result­ed in a vio­lent con­fronta­tion with a white mob. 

In a recent arti­cle in the Defender, jour­nal­ist Aswad Walker report­ed that Gabe Camarillo, the 35^th Under Secretary for the Army, acknowl­edged the wrongs of the racial­ly biased rul­ing by grant­i­ng hon­or­able dis­charges to the Black sol­diers dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny held at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum. Camarillo also estab­lished a plan to pro­vide ben­e­fits to the sur­vivors’ fam­i­lies through a part­ner­ship with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Attorney Jason Holt, a descen­dant of Pfc. Thomas Hawkins stat­ed, ​“Today, a mor­tal blow has been dealt to the injus­tice of the mas­ter-slave rela­tion­ship, such that 106 years lat­er, the col­or of their skin was not a bar­ri­er to the fair dis­pen­sa­tion of mil­i­tary jurispru­dence, and we all here rejoice that their con­vic­tions were over­turned and set aside.”