Camp Logan

The trouble began on the afternoon of August 23, 1917, when Houston police struck Cpl. Charles Baltimore, a military policeman asking about a soldier's arrest, and fired at him. A rumor that he had been killed reached camp. Sgt. Vida Henry led more than 100 armed soldiers toward the Fourth Ward; in two hours they killed fifteen White people, four of them policemen, and four Black soldiers also died. Henry shot himself. Courts-martial at Fort Sam Houston found 110 men guilty: nineteen were hanged and sixty-three given life sentences. No White civilians were tried.

What the plaque says

Camp Logan Soon after the United States' entry into World War I in 1917, the U. S. Army established 34 training camps to prepare troops for warfare. Named for Gen. John A. Logan, Mexican War and Civil War veteran and U. S. Senator from Illinois, Camp Logan was established at this site on July 18, 1917. Encompassing 7,600 acres of land, it consisted of a main camp, auxiliary remount depot, rifle range, artillery range, and drill grounds. During construction, members of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry (black troops commanded by white officers) were assigned to the camp as guards and were stationed about a mile to the east. The black soldiers' August 23, 1917, armed revolt in response to Houston's Jim Crow laws and police harassment resulted in the camp's most publicized incident, the "Houston Mutiny and Riot of 1917." Troops receiving training at Camp Logan included the 33rd Division, composed of the Illinois National Guard, part of the 93rd Division, and other Regular Army units. Following training, they went on to serve in battle in France in 1918. Camp Logan closed on March 20, 1919. Part of the land later became Memorial Park, named in tribute to the soldiers who fought in Europe. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 2.8 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.9 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 3.4 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 3.8 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Bayou Bend — 0.9 mi
• St. Thomas High School — 1.3 mi
• Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church — 2.0 mi
• Edwin Fairfax Gray — 2.4 mi