Presidential Pardon for Camp Logan rioters? Black Lives Matter 1917

emilynghiem

Constitutionalist / Universalist
Jan 21, 2010
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National Freedmen's Town District
This week, families of historic black military officers hanged in 1917 for the Camp Logan riots in Houston are now calling on President Trump for post-humous pardons from lack of fair trials.

Families of soldiers hanged in Camp Logan Riot renew call for pardon on 100th anniversary

The men executed within 2-3 days of these decisions had no time to appeal or address the whole context, and only some of the men were able to receive lesser sentences instead of death.
This speaks to what Trump tried to say. Though specific parties are legally responsible for the actual murder and killing resulting, the whole escalation and sides involved share in responsibility.
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READING FURTHER:
Black men shooting white cops: Houston, 1917

Wow. The deadliest race riot in Houston's history, where 13 Black military officers were executed for the killing rampage that ensued, started with an incident that sounds very much today's BLM. Just change the year to 100 years later, and it sounds like today:

[on August 23, 1917], two Houston police officers chased a group of teenagers through a black neighborhood after seeing them shooting dice in the street. Two officers burst into the home of a black woman, Sara Travers, demanding to search her home. As she resisted, Officer Lee Sparks began to rant about "God damn n------ bitches," and hauled Travers into the street for talking back to him. She was half-clothed; he was ranting and threatening, and — depending on which account you believe — may have slapped her.

A crowd gathered around Sparks and his partner. Private Alonzo Williams, a black infantrymen in town for the day on a pass, stepped forward and told the officers to stop abusing Travers. Furious, Sparks drew his revolver and began to beat Williams over the head with it, then hauled the bloodied soldier off to jail. Later that day, hearing stories about the abuse and arrest of a soldier, a noncommissioned officer from the same regiment found the officers and demanded an explanation. Again, Sparks beat Corporal Charles Baltimore over the head with the butt of his revolver, then fired at Baltimore as he tried to escape the beating.


The black soldiers who left Camp Logan on the night of August 23, 1917, weren't responding to a general sense that police violence was out of control, and they weren't looking for any white policemen. Enraged by the sense that they had been degraded for months without the army's intervention, disgusted by their own officers, and infuriated by a particularly disgraceful attack on a respected NCO, they went looking for Lee Sparks and his partner. Finding the latter, Officer Rufus Daniels, they killed him.


As other officers responded, the gunfight turned general, and other men on both sides died. But the Houston riot was a clear, particular, and direct response to an immediate situation, and followed months of provocation and ignored complaints. It was horrible and understandable, a product of very personal viciousness.
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see also:
The 1917 Houston riot. And the era of Black Lives Matter.

100 years later, scars from the Camp Logan riots remain in Houston

 
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Thanks Luddly Neddite
My favorite Quote from Dr. King applies to "all sides":

Quote of the Week: Martin Luther King Jr.

"Men often hate each other because they fear each other;
they fear each other because they don't know each other;
they don't know each other because they can not communicate;
they can not communicate because they are separated."


Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958

"Perfect Love casts out fear"
Kingdom James Bible, multiple authors

www.centerhealingracism.org
 

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