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People visit national cemeteries to enjoy the pristine grounds or to visit a loved one. As they walk by, they often don't realize how much history there is behind the headstones around them.
At Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, there are 17 headstones in a row. They are unusual markers in what they don't show. While neighboring headstones list the service members' names, dates of birth and death, branch of service, military rank, and significant military awards, these 17 reflect only their names and dates of death, with no rank or military affiliation indicated.
There is a story behind these 17 headstones. It is a story of racial tensions that boiled over into one of the most notorious mutinies in American military history, and it is a story of how this incident forever changed military justice.
The 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment was a unit of Buffalo Soldiers—Black enlisted men commanded by white officers. After the U.S. joined World War I, the army expanded dramatically in size to accommodate the training of new draftees. Camps were constructed across the southern tier of the United States throughout the summer and fall of 1917.
In July, the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion were sent to guard the construction of one such camp, Camp Logan, in Houston, Texas. Texas was firmly part of the Jim Crow South in 1917, and the white residents of Houston did not welcome the sight of Black men in army uniforms carrying weapons.
For their part, the soldiers of the 3rd Battalion grizzled at the racist taunts and insults hurled at them by the local populace. Verbal abuse was often augmented by physical harassment from the members of Houston's notoriously racist police force.
Events came to a head on the night of August 23, 1917. Earlier that afternoon, a respected non-commissioned officer from the 3rd Battalion was beaten, shot at, and detained by Houston police while outside Camp Logan. Rumors spread among the troops like wildfire. Though the soldier was released by the police, some of his comrades believed he had been killed. Others believed a white mob was descending upon Camp Logan to attack the troops.
One hundred or more of the soldiers took up arms and marched upon the town. There was indiscriminate shooting as well as deliberate targeting of civilians and military alike. Amid the chaos, 19 persons died—15 white and 4 Black.
Although army officials later concluded that consistent racist hostility contributed to the violence, the soldiers ultimately left camp against direct orders and were charged with mutiny and various other crimes per the Articles of War. The 3rd Battalion was disarmed and shipped to San Antonio, where 118 of them were court-martialed at Fort Sam Houston over the course of three trials in late 1917 and early 1918.
It was the largest mass court-martial in army history. All three trials were flawed by serious irregularities, which included a rushed schedule and only a single officer appointed to defend all the defendants. That officer was not an attorney.
Only seven were acquitted. Ninety-one soldiers were sentenced to prison, and 19 executed. Many criticized the first set of executions as the equivalent of a federal lynching, and the public outcry led to the army implementing an immediate change to the Articles of War in January 1918.
The change prohibited future executions without War Department review, and all military death sentences in the continental United States would require presidential review. Of the 16 soldiers sentenced to death in the second and third courts-martial, President Wilson approved the execution of six and commuted the sentences of ten.
All nineteen were hanged and then buried at Solato Creek in unmarked graves near Fort Sam Houston, where they had been tried and imprisoned. Two of those executed had their bodies claimed by their families. The remainder were ultimately reburied in the fort's post cemetery in 1932.
As a result of their trial and sentencing, the soldiers' headstones reflect only their names and dates of death. The National Cemetery Administration is committed to telling the story of the Houston mutineers and the 17 soldiers who rest there in a single row, with only their names and dates of death to mark them.