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Join podcasting siblings Jamie and Bambi as they return to the Jim Crow South to examine the underlying causes of the Camp Logan Mutiny. First we get a picture of where America is at in 1917 and take an uncomfortable look at the laws and social standards of former slave states. Next we learn about the all-black Buffalo Soldiers and their history of brave and honorable service despite the lies told by racist politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt. But when the United States joins World War I the Buffalo Soldiers are called to guard the construction of a training camp for new draftees—Camp Logan in Houston, a bayou town fully embracing white supremacy enforced by a brutal police force. What could possibly go wrong?

In this episode we hope you'll consider donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in their fight for racial justice through litigation, advocacy and public education. We also express support and solidarity with the Atlanta Forest Defenders and encourage you to learn more and help stop Cop City.

After the last couple of weeks we had, I think it's only fair to let the listeners know you

literally abandoned your car next to a graveyard in order to be here to record today.

I did.

I did.

I could have died.

That is dedication.

I literally leave the recording studio and go rescue my sister next to an old church

building.

Yep.

In a graveyard.

Where all the dead people live.

Yeah.

I just locked it up and said, see you later, although my husband is dealing with it.

Yes, your husband's dealing with stuff while we're here dealing with what I'm about to

tell you about.

Yeah.

I understand that my husband and I, we made kind of like an agreement of what responsibilities

belong to who.

Clear division of labor.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, like he never does the laundry.

He has done laundry like twice in a dozen years.

This is not something that he deals with and I don't deal with cars.

I do the inside of the house.

He does the outside of the house.

I deal with all the laundry.

He deals with the vehicles and I think that's a pretty good gig because the vehicles don't

need all that much, all that often where the laundry is never ending.

You know, even though technically this isn't work, he took off from his actual job to go

deal with my car.

Oh, I am sad now.

Almost as sad as you're going to be when I tell you this horrific story.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So, cause we had our Halloween fun B&B.

We talked about some haunted houses and lying assholes.

We did.

And I just told you a fun story.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a good time.

We did a bonus episode by the way about Alice Roosevelt who, spoiler alert, will make a

tiny, tiny little appearance in this episode.

Which is weird.

We didn't plan that.

Yeah, no, both of us deliberately kept our topics from each other and it turns out we

had a crossover episode anyway, so that's cool.

We even had a crossover quote.

That is how close our-

And that's all I know about this episode is there's a quote.

And when you realize, when you find out what this episode is about, you're really going

to be confused.

So, so yeah, a few weeks back, something hit my newsfeed.

You know, sometimes you hear about a news item and you're like, what?

And you look into it and then you find yourself down like a rabbit hole.

And in my case, I reading multiple books, watching documentaries, doing all this research,

looking at court transcripts, and doing other things that only a maniac would do.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's, that's how I found Alice.

So yeah, so-

She was scrolling across my feed one day.

I have to justify all of that by recording a podcast, otherwise it literally was just

because I had a manic episode.

Kind of how I felt a few years back when I first learned about the truth about the massacre

in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, you remember that, that reaction you had like, how the fuck did

we not know about this?

No, I had, it, it was visceral.

It was really upsetting.

Yeah.

I was like, I knew, I'd heard in, you know, just through history that I took, yeah, that

there was like a race riot in Tulsa, but then you learn how, how that was, or, you know,

learning the truth about where Lake Lanier comes from here in Georgia, which I'll actually

mention a little bit later in this episode.

Lake Lanier is super haunted.

A lot of people drowned there.

I mean, statistically more than usual, and there are reasons, but we're not talking about

any of that today.

My question for you is-

No haunted lakes?

No.

Boo.

Have you ever heard of an event called the Houston Riot of 1917, which is sometimes also

known as the Camp Logan Mutiny?

No.

I don't blame you, because I also had never heard of this at all, and in fact, from what

I gather, it's something that really only kind of like, Houstonians who actually are

like familiar with like really early 20th century history, or especially history of

racism and civil rights and stuff like that, that's, they know about this, but this has

been mostly kind of brushed aside and forgotten, and then I'm like, okay.

So there's a little appetizer for where this story is going.

So I'm going to show you the front page of a newspaper.

This is going to be the Houston Press, issue August 24th, 1917.

So you can just look at it, I mean, the text is going to be too small to read, but just

like read a few headlines, like from the top, and a few down for our listeners.

Tell me what you see.

Okay, 16 dead, 22 injured from riot.

Senate now to try Jim on charges.

City under martial law.

Many Negroes rounded up more than 100 still at large.

Oh, no, there's at large Negroes, yeah, Illinois National Guard, police and civilians searching

for them.

Leader is killed, Negro troops to be moved from Houston.

Yeah, that's a nice little appetizer for what we're talking about today.

Martial law declared by governor near midnight.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's fun.

Sounds intense, huh?

As a true crime fan, Bambi, you might be interested to know that our story today involves the

murder trial with the largest number of defendants in the history of the United States.

Okay.

Also includes the most soldiers ever simultaneously executed by the United States Army.

Okay.

And we've never heard of it.

Yeah, which that's already a problem.

That's already a red flag.

That's already a problem.

And again, just because, um, yeah, they rounded up the Negroes and then executed them for

being.

Well, you're about to find out what that's all about.

So yeah, we're going back to the Jim Crow South complete with racist, violent cops.

This is a very complicated story, like a much of American history.

Yeah.

All right, everybody.

Welcome to Chainsaw History, the podcast in which I use American history to continue the

fine older brother tradition of ruining my sister's day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I went and drove you here specifically so I could just bum you the fuck out.

And we are the siblings.

I'm Jamie Chambers and this is my sister Bambi.

Hello.

Uh, remember that this is a disclaimer that we are a comedy podcast.

I'm not a historian, but I did see a history of the world, part one by Mo Brooks, not part

two.

I heard it wasn't great.

Be sure to check out chainsawhistory.com to find out how you can support the show.

Check out our back catalog, see our bonus content, which includes special episodes like

the Alice Roosevelt story that my sister literally just told me.

Yeah.

Fun stuff.

We also have a series called the value of where Bambi reads children's biographies from

the 1980s to me.

There were these propaganda pieces.

They're a weird and awful and glorious.

Hey, I think some of them were for also from the seventies and the nineties.

Yeah, this is true.

And of course we have, um, my little brainchild, no time for love, Dr. Jones, where we chronologically

work our way through the life of Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr. all the way up until that

last movie where he time traveled.

Which was weird.

It was weird, but we're not talking about today.

We're talking about horrible, um, horrible racism and violence and all of the above.

So yeah, we are going to give a warning up top because we're going to be talking about

racial bigotry, extreme violence and state executions.

Now that's through part two of this story where we can't even get to everything today.

We're going to be opening this up to you, but if you don't want to hear that kind of

content, I mean, it's going to be sprinkled throughout.

So this is probably not the episode for you.

I mean, technically, if you don't like being bummed the fuck out almost, why are you listening

to us?

I mean, we try it.

We crack jokes when we can to make, you know, the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine

go down.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of medicine today.

Also worth mentioning, there's no getting around the fact that Bambi and I are incredibly

white and we're also, we're also civilians.

So this is a story to not only, uh, are we, you know, white as wonder bread, but we never

directly serve.

So we, uh, we haven't had to deal with institutional racism and we only know what it's like to

serve in the military from our friends and family who did, but we'll give you our perspective.

And I encourage listeners who are interested to check out other voices who talk about this

story.

Um, some of which I'll quote and you'll see, you know, detailed links in the show notes

that'll take you to places, uh, with even more informed opinions.

Yeah, because I could not be more white or not a soldier.

Yeah, no.

My mom was in the military and she's very specifically told me when I was a small child

that you could never be in the military.

You don't follow orders very well.

And I was like, yeah, I'm cool.

Thank you.

Meanwhile, dad always said, it's a shame that your health wouldn't let you join the military.

So give you some discipline.

This is the man who jumped ship and took a six week vacation in Europe.

He's so much fun.

I miss him.

Indeed.

So there is a lot of material I pulled this episode from, but we'll note the two main

sources here.

The first is a book called the mutiny of rage, the 1917 camp Logan riot and Buffalo soldiers

in Houston by Jamie Salazar fellow Jamie and Jeffrey corn, which came out actually

just a few years ago in 2020 kind of weirdly came out right as the George Floyd riots were

breaking out and considering George Floyd was born in Houston, it kind of this weird

little eerie little grace note on that.

The second is called mutiny on the bayou, the camp Logan story, which was a documentary

by K H O U a CBS affiliate in Houston, um, that hit the airwaves in 2006, I'll link to

these and other sources in the show notes that you can again find over at chainsawhistory.com.

So this is one of those little hidden history.

Yeah.

This is sort of like the Tulsa thing in terms of like, wow, how do we not know this once

again, largest murder trial in the United States.

Well, I mean, anyone who listens to Rachel Maddow, like finding little nuggets of history

is kind of her shtick and she's very good at it.

And it's like, how do we not know all this?

And I've decided that it's just because there was so much fucking shit, you can't know all

of it.

And especially the stuff that we just kind of whitewash over.

Here's the thing.

I mean, like when going through this story, I found at least a dozen things that could

easily turn into their own episodes.

And I'll do it later.

I'll do a bullet list that will literally make you think the same thing, but let's go

ahead and get into it.

Are you ready?

No.

So here's how I stumbled on this ugly little corner of American history.

It was a piece of news, like I said, that flashed across my screen.

I could have easily missed the whole thing, but something about it grabbed my attention.

So this was published on November 13th of this year, 2023, in a little newspaper called

the New York Times.

Tiny newspaper.

No one's ever heard of it.

Quote, on December 11th, 1917, Thomas C. Hawkins and 12 other black soldiers who had been convicted

of mutiny and other crimes during a riot in Houston earlier that year were hanged.

It was the single largest mass execution of American soldiers by the army.

On Monday, more than a century later, the army said it had formally overturned their

convictions and those of 97 other black soldiers who were found guilty of crimes associated

with the riot.

The army acknowledged that the 110 soldiers, 19 of whom were executed, had been convicted

in military trials that were tainted by racial discrimination.

Unquote.

Wow.

So, you know, over 100 years later, literally just weeks ago, they finally overturned this

conviction that has to do with the story I'm about to tell you.

That's crazy.

And and not to say this isn't this is a story where black people kill some white people.

In fact, I'm going to tell you the story.

Speaking of some of the records this this incident set, this is the only race riot in

American history where more white people died than black.

So once again, this is a complicated story.

So after a century, the work of families, activists and the NAACP convinced the army

and the United States government to own up to another shameful patch of our history.

So I've already hit you with spoilers all around.

Like, you already know there's a riot.

People died.

Black soldiers were tried and executed.

And that's the thing.

Like, I could have not led with how we how I got here.

But this story is so crazy that it doesn't doesn't matter.

In fact, it's kind of good context to let you know that at least at the end of this,

there's this weird, tiny sort of you can't really call it justice, but at least some

measure given for the families and the reputations of everyone involved and also a little bit

of acknowledgement.

Well, it's like 100 years later.

Yeah, better late than never.

But once again, like I listened to the some of the presentations of like this one lady

who's a historian out in Houston, who's tirelessly worked to see what her like she wanted the

story of her great uncle told and him to be allowed to be buried in a real grave and we'll

get to that, you know, yikes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you already know where this is going.

But goddamn, the story that gets us here is something else.

It's very American and very southern.

And in fact, this whole episode we're doing today is literally going to be mostly the

background information and lead up.

We're not even going to get to the right until next time, we're going to tell you, this is

all just kind of like, how do we get here?

And who are these people involved?

So let's get a picture of what life was like, back in the year 1917, with the average worker

made in a year could get you an 85 inch flat screen TV today was $687 was the average annual

wage of an American.

You could buy a Coca Cola for a nickel back when it still had the cocaine when it was

cool when it was cool.

A screaming baby boy named John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born.

And Buffalo Bill Cody died.

More people had a live in servant than indoor plumbing.

And even less homes had a telephone.

Most folks still writing letters or sending telegrams for quick messages at this point,

quarter of the US population couldn't read or write.

Victor records published the first commercial jazz recording ever played by the original

Dixieland Jazz Band.

But this is America.

And while you might be picturing something that looks like Main Street USA Disneyland,

underneath the wholesome image is a shitload of racism.

I never really pictured that but okay.

It's like, I'm sorry, what year are we in again?

1917.

1917.

Yeah.

And that's the thing.

Even when I first just if you just Google America 1917, you will see these pictures

that kind of remind you the white, the white painted storefronts and the cobblestone streets

and good old mainstream USA.

This is right before Prohibition and the Great Depression.

So yeah, this is this is a time when America was still quote good.

This is this is when we're good 1917 is the year we entered World War One and the year

before millions died of the Spanish flu.

So yeah, it's a it's a hell of a time.

But so you know, slavery had been abolished with the 13th amendment.

And right after that happened, the priority of all white politicians was to, you know,

get the country back together.

And so these people who were previously big on abolition kind of gave up on civil rights

for black people at that point.

To make nice of the south, even the people with their hearts in the right place mostly

turned a blind eye to some pretty awful shit.

Because this is the era of Jim Crow laws.

Yeah, scholars generally accept that the term Jim Crow comes from a blackface character

in a minstrel show for the 19th century named Jump Jim Crow.

You know, this was a character, you know, blackface.

Yeah, guy, pretty much every awful racial stereotype bundled into one like a racist

Voltron.

Yeah.

So and then so this character became like the, the catch all for all the laws enforcing

white supremacy.

And you know, we were we shit on the south a lot and we will continue to do so because

we live here.

Yeah, this is us these these are our people.

But to give a little for all my southerners to get upset about that.

It's worth noting that the first known reference to a Jim Crow car comes from Massachusetts.

And in fact, the practice of segregation began on northern railroads and spread in former

union states before migrating to the south because previously, like during slavery, there

was no segregation.

In fact, black people lived very intimately among white people and segregation was imported

from the north.

But we embraced it like a warm blanket like nobody's business.

So in 1896, the absolutely terrible United States Supreme Court made the doctrine separate

but equal the law of the land and a decision called Plessy versus Ferguson in a seven to

one decision.

But also to be fair to our fellow southerners, let's give a quick shout out to the one voice

of dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan, who wrote, quote, Constitution is colorblind,

unquote.

John was a former slave owner and proof that hearts and minds can change.

So we went from literally defending slavery to being the one guy who's like this Jim Crow

shit.

This segregation is bullshit.

And he was the only voice including this was a northern state dominated Supreme Court to

that all voted against this Kentucky boy.

So once again, complicated.

You can't just say, oh, well, the North good on race, South bad, but everyone bad.

You couldn't say that anyway.

It's like this.

But this is a time period that historically people sucked.

But I can tell you, like having lived in the Midwest and travel to the Northeast, there's

a lot of desire to wash their hands of that just because they weren't slave states.

So let's just understand that this is bad everywhere.

But we're going to talk about how specifically bad it was in the south and Houston.

Texas isn't the real south anyway.

Well, we're going to get into that when it comes to Houston.

So while seating on trains and trolley cars were the origin of Jim Crow laws, they encompass

pretty much anything that restricted the rights, privileges, opportunities and lifestyles of

black Americans.

So like voting was restricted to the point where only a small percentage of non-whites

were registered in southern states.

Facilities of all kinds had to legally be separated.

So like drinking fountains and waiting rooms had crappier versions that with a sign that

said for colored hanging over them.

Oh my goodness.

Just because they were like, oh, you have to tell me how many bubbles are in this bar

of soap.

It's like, that's impossible.

So yeah, they had quizzes and things.

It was complete nonsense.

When there were poll taxes and you had to, you know, recite the Declaration of Independence.

And again, if we're in 1917, that's still around in the 50s.

Oh, absolutely.

So interracial relationships, not to mention marriage were prohibited by law.

Vagrancy laws let the state arrest black men for the crime of being unemployed.

And funny enough, you know, that same constitutional amendment that abolished slavery, you know,

explicitly forbids forced labor, but approves it as a punishment for a crime that you could

just round up black men, throw them in there.

And then because of convict leasing, the state could literally rent out, you know, what would

you call a forced labor that you can then prop it up of?

Oh, slavery.

Yeah.

Slavery.

This is, this was their, and we still have it.

Yeah, this is still going on.

Yeah.

It's just, it was so much more explicit back then.

It was just, it was out in the open and everybody knew it because, you know, a lot to a lot

of white people, this was simply putting black people...

See, now we have to disguise it as drug charges.

And now you're just literally, well, they don't have a job.

Which is crazy.

Yeah.

Especially if you can't.

Especially if you do have a job because you're on a chain gang, motherfucker.

I mean, that's, and then a lot of white people literally think, well, this is just simply

putting the black people back in their proper place.

Fucked up.

But rather than listen to me describe it, here are three ladies who actually lived through

it.

From the documentary Mutiny on the Bayou, the Camp Logan story produced by the Houston

station KHOU, this is Thelma Scott Bryant, Hazel Young, and Henrietta Wells, who all

lived in Houston where our story takes place and actually were witnesses to some of the

events.

The white man expected you to stay in your place, they say, and we knew how to stay in

our place rather than, you know, cause a lot of trouble.

That was just the way it had to be at that time.

You got out your place, well, then they put you back in it.

No matter how intelligent you were, if you were black, you didn't get any kind of recognition

because white people resented, smart niggas, as I say.

In fact, it went out of the way to show you, you didn't have any, they didn't respect you.

I thought I was supposed to sit on the back of the bus.

That was a part of growing up in the South.

You knew your place and your place was in the back of the bus.

I resented the segregation on the street cars because when I came back from college, I resented

it more.

I had to get up and give the workers, the street workers and the construction workers

my seats and they were dirty people.

I thought they needed a bath, they didn't smell good.

But I had to get up and give them my seat and I didn't like the fact that I couldn't

try on clothes, I couldn't try on shoes, I couldn't try on hats.

I might buy something and take it home and it didn't look right.

But I couldn't return it, I had to keep it.

There were so many things like that that were demeaning.

Yeah that's total bullshit.

Agreed.

It wasn't great.

I never even thought about the whole not being able to...

Yeah, you can't try on clothes because your filthy black body would, you know, you can't

have a white person touch something that had touched a black person.

That's just so goddamn ridiculous but okay.

Exactly.

Let's just go.

Yep and to be said up top, this is Houston.

And for those who haven't been through Texas, Houston is way closer to the Gulf of Mexico

and Louisiana than it is to say Dallas.

It is a bayou town that is culturally part of the south far more than it is the southwest.

We can imagine Houston as like this historical pressure cooker with deep racism and shitty

Jim Crow laws as our very first ingredients.

And you already know from those headlines that this pot is going to get overloaded and

explode.

Fun.

And other pressure cookers had already exploded because when one group of people continually

oppresses another, there is going to be tension, there is going to be incidents, there is going

to be violence.

That's just what happens.

Yeah, you mean sort of like what's going on right now?

So there have been plenty of racial violence and living memory to keep black people angry

and their white neighbors afraid.

Here is just like a few bullet point highlights, stuff that would have been on the minds of

both black and white Americans.

So in 1866, a group of ex-Confederates and racist cops crashed a meeting of black civil

rights activists in New Orleans, killing like 50 people.

Fun.

The same year in Memphis, a completely different angry mob and their cop buddies, a rampage

through black homes, churches, and schools for three days, killing almost four dozen

people.

Why?

Now we're going to skip ahead to-

Just why?

There's always some triggering incident.

Yeah.

And you know, like, like I could get into each, like each one of these is a story that

could be another one of these episodes.

Skipping ahead to Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, they actually elected some African

Americans to local office, leading to gangs of white supremacists to launch a successful

coup.

They overthrew the government and forced black residents to run for their lives.

Lovely.

But let's not leave our town out.

In 1906, Atlanta newspapers spread reports of quote, black brutes, preying on white women.

You know, the same justification that was used to establish the Ku Klux Klan, which

is in fact, a lot of this violence is always like, oh, the, you know, a white woman has

been violated, you know, by a black man.

Let's kill them all.

Yeah.

That kicked off a full week of intense racial violence in Atlanta that led to the brutalization

of hundreds of black residents and thousands of people fled their homes.

Not a single white writer was prosecuted.

Of course not.

Two years later in Springfield, Illinois, a woman named Mabel falsely accused a black

man of rape and the local sheriff relocated the accused for his own protection, which

pissed off the mob of some 5,000 racist dickheads.

They went on a rampage that burned down buildings and homes, beating any black people they ran

across, including women and children, and left 10% of the population homeless.

The police did nothing.

No one was charged and the NAACP declared it a pogrom.

And of course, while lesser known back here in Georgia, there was a thriving community

of black farmers and skilled laborers in Oscarville.

But in 1912, a 19 year old white girl was found dead in the woods near the town and

the assumption was she had been raped and killed by a black man, kicking off mob violence.

When everyone rushed to the church for shelter, the mob firebombed it.

Many people died during the escape and the entire town was cleared out.

And of course, in the 1950s, they built Buford Dam and created Lake Lanier, where the ruins

of Oscarville still sit right underneath, including full 60 foot tall trees that are

still just there underwater, just pointed straight up.

You can, swimmers can literally get caught in the tops of them sometimes.

That's fucked.

I mean, indeed.

And spoiler alert, I have every intention of doing a lot of research and doing the full

story of Oscarville, Georgia one day.

Haunted Lake Lanier.

Yeah.

That's just like stuff that had happened in the years prior.

So that was going to take us all the way up to 1912, five years before our story here

in 1917.

So everyone was aware of the potential for bad situations to erupt.

The only difference was that some people, and this includes white and black people alike,

were afraid of violence breaking out and others were just waiting for an excuse.

So let's get to the next ingredient.

So it begins with another question.

You ever heard the term Buffalo Soldier?

Yes.

But I have no idea what it means.

You just, you've heard it.

I have heard it and it's ringing a bell.

Well, it might ring a bell with the next question.

How do you feel about Bob Marley?

Now I like Bob Marley, you know, shot the sheriff, didn't shoot the deputy.

This is true.

Well, the song Buffalo Soldier was recorded in 1978, but wasn't released until after his

death.

So this song came out in 1983.

Marley sings about the all-black United States Cavalry and Infantry regiments that were once

part of the army.

And the beautiful genius even sang a lyric that might as well be the motto of our podcast.

Quote, if you know your history, then you would know where you're coming from.

Then you wouldn't have to ask me who the heck do you think I am?

Unquote.

But it's so much better the way he sings it.

In fact, we're going to ride out this episode at the end on a few bars of Buffalo Soldier,

little Bob Marley.

So let's toke up in respect to our fallen comrade and learn a little bit about the Buffalo

Soldiers.

Here's a cool part of this story.

Oh, I'm glad there's a cool part of this story.

Do you actually want me to toke up?

I think we have to.

Okay.

All right.

I think it's required.

Just so everyone knows, this is sad legal weed.

Yeah.

Even if we would normally lie about that part of the thing or be vague, this time it really

is completely and 100% legal.

Yeah, it's a combination of Delta 8 and Delta 10.

But it's better than Delta Nothing.

So this isn't one of Bob Marley's more fun songs.

No, that was definitely one of Bob Marley's political songs.

Basically in the song, Marley is kind of taking back this image of these black troops and

turning them into kind of an image of resistance, talking about how, yeah, they weren't in America

by choice.

They took the job of being a soldier because it was the best thing offered to them, and

he's making them a symbol for black power.

Cool song.

You might be familiar with the statistic that by the end of the Civil War, roughly one out

of every 10 men serving in the Union Army was black.

And that's not even counting the guys in the Navy, not nearly as many.

And that began the long tradition of proud black military service in our country.

And while all those troops were discharged at the conclusion of the Civil War, in 1866

Congress passed the Army Organization Act, which authorized the creation of black cavalry

regiments and infantry companies, all led by white commissioned officers, naturally.

But you know, at least gave that opportunity to serve to these soldiers.

And while these were considered peacetime regiments, that phrase means about as much

as you'd expect, because this is America.

When are we ever truly at peace?

It's not really ever been a thing.

We can't stand it.

So understand that all the conflict I'm about to describe is all during peacetime.

We don't have war until 1917, when Congress officially declares war.

Young black men enlisted for opportunity, paying work, and a path to respect in larger

society.

And naturally, our government put them to good use, fighting our non-white enemies.

Some Mutiny of Rage, by my fellow Jamie.

Quote, from 1866 to the 1890s, Buffalo soldiers served in the Southwest and Great Plains regions.

They participated in most of the military campaigns in these areas and earned a reputation

for excellence.

19 enlisted men and officers from these regiments earned the Medal of Honor during the Indian

Wars.

In New Mexico, Buffalo soldiers gave chase to Chiefs Victorio and Nana in their Apache

Warriors and Victorios War.

The 9th Cavalry spent the last months of 1890 guarding the Pine Ridge Reservations during

the Wounded Knee Massacre.

They removed Sooners from native lands before Oklahoma statehood.

In 1918, Buffalo soldiers fought in the last engagement of the Indian Wars, the small battle

of Bear Valley in Arizona against Yaqui natives.

In total, Buffalo soldiers disproportionately composed up to a fifth of all infantry and

cavalry personnel.

To their detriment, they also served various undesirable, morale-sapping roles, from building

roads, guarding posts, to escorting U.S. mail.

Unquote.

Okie dokie, then.

So it was in the Indian Wars that gave the black soldiers the nickname that they carried

with pride ever since.

So like literally from this time all the way up through World War II, these regiments and

companies, they had this actual symbol of a buffalo.

So they literally, this was not like a derogatory thing, they wore this with pride.

And they got it somewhere during the Indian Wars.

The book Nine Years Among the Indians.

So we tricked the African Americans into fighting the indigenous Americans for us.

And Mexicans.

Don't forget Mexicans.

The book Nine Years Among Indians, 1870 through 1879, tells a story a bit like our fifth great-grandfather

David Boyd.

People can go check out our very second episode ever to hear that story, but in this case,

it's a memoir of a guy named Herman Layman, who was taken captive as a child, adopted

into an Apache tribe, and raised as a warrior, and then later on had a really tough time

like reintegrating into white society.

So yeah, a little familiar to that other story, but this is much later.

Here's what Herman has to say about the buffalo soldiers that he encountered when he was living

as an Apache.

Quote, among the soldiers were some Negroes, the first most of the Indians had ever seen.

The Indians thought these Negroes came from under the water, from the fact that our shadows

always appear black in water.

We called them Buffalo Soldiers because they had curly, kinky hair and heads like bison.

Our arrows would not penetrate their skulls.

I remember hearing our chief instruct his warriors one time that in fighting the Buffalo

Soldier never to shoot him in the head because the skull was too hard and it would turn arrows,

mash the bullets, break spears and dull lances, but to shoot them through the heart and kill

them easy.

Unquote.

So that's a weird, complicated quote, but you know.

Don't think that's how that works, but okay.

Whatever.

But I guess they were afraid, which no, no, that's the thing.

These, these black soldiers got, got respect and so that's why, um, you know, regardless

of the exact origin of the term, they're like, yeah, we're the Buffalo Soldiers motherfucker.

We'll kick your ass.

Yeah.

It's like, I love how we're, somehow we're still the bad guys and it's like, we're not

doing shit.

So they're fighting, you know, they're fighting.

We made them fight for me.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we send these black troops in and they're, they're, they're fighting for Western expansion

so we can have our manifest destiny.

They're fighting Mexicans in the border wars, uh, good job, America and, and, you know,

but earning a reputation for, for discipline for bravery.

But you know, moving along in history, uh, remember the main, you remember the main,

the USS main was the battleship that exploded in the Harbor of Havana in early 1898.

And suddenly we were at war with Spain because we were convinced that was Spanish saboteurs

who were just, who blew up our, uh, our nice little battleship and historical forensic

analysis.

Most experts now agree it almost certainly was an accident caused by the fact that they

just stored their explosives and ammunition right next to their boiler, like fucking morons.

And that there were already recommendations that have been coming through saying we need

to, as a policy matter, not do that anymore.

However, we love excuses, but we never waste, you know, a good opportunity to go to war.

And so we did.

Uh, so we sent troops to Cuba and all over the world, which is how we ended up with Puerto

Rico, Guam, and for a while, the Philippines.

But we're going to stick to Cuba for the moment.

Uh, the United States sent 17,000 troops and out of them, 3000 were Buffalo soldiers.

And this is the part where we, where we get a crossover because this is where Teddy Roosevelt

comes in.

We get ourselves a Roosevelt up in here right now.

So much has been made of Theodore Roosevelt leading the cavalry with no horses, by the

way, even though the Rough Riders were technically cavalry on a deadly charge up San Juan Hill,

Teddy sure made a big fucking deal about it.

Oh, he did.

As he wrote a book and, uh, about the whole thing and campaign on it to become the governor

of New York and eventually president.

It is always important to remember that Roosevelt was an egomaniac who had to be the center

of attention and exaggerated pretty much everything.

Despite the fact that he did pretty impressive shit, you know, in general.

Yeah.

So he's like this weirdly frustrating guy, but yes, fun though.

He's a good time.

So just like, so this is the idea that he is such an egomaniac.

You cannot trust his accounts of anything because he will always exaggerate Southern

grad guys or because also he was a politician would warp things to suit his, his own purposes.

His daughter, Alice, you might've heard of her.

I have heard of her.

Alice once had this to say about her dad, quote, my father wanted to be the corpse at

every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening unquote,

which is just a fucking cutting way to say this narcissist could not even stand it.

Like the day of his daughter's wedding could not stand and not be the center of attention.

No, I mean, it was funny enough.

She was, it was actually worse at Eleanor's wedding because Teddy gave her away and yeah,

made it all about him.

It was so all about him.

Always the Teddy Roosevelt show.

One humorous said Roosevelt's book was so exaggerated.

He should have called it alone in Cuba, but in the middle of Teddy's bullshit is the story

of some 2000 black soldiers at the battle of San Juan Heights.

After reaching the top of kettle Hill, Roosevelt was still eager for glory because of the Teddy

Roosevelt show.

So he called everybody gave this like inspiring speech and called for a charge and he flew

off like a hero with like five dudes with it.

And then he's like, Oh shit, turned around, ran back to get a bigger group to make the

charge.

And because everybody had gotten so mixed up, the rough riders were joined by both black

and white regular.

So it was just this whole mix of everybody rushing up the Hill in the intense heat, getting

shot at the whole way because that's how Teddy Roosevelt likes it.

Just the, just the comical thing.

He's just charges off practically by himself getting shot at.

It's like, Oh fuck, I need more.

We need some more guys.

So a four of the black soldiers would become medal of honor recipients for rescuing comrades

under fire that day.

And while the skill and bravery of the black soldiers back in the frontier was mostly ignored

in the conflict of Cuba, saw that change a little bit from Buffalo soldiers at San Juan

Hill over at history.army.mil quote, but Cuba was different.

All eyes that were not on TR seemed to focus on the Buffalo soldiers for the first time

they stood at the front and center on the national stage.

A number of mainstream that is white periodicals recounted their exploits as nurses in yellow

fever hospital at Simone, as well as on the battlefield and reviewed their history.

Mostly favorably books by black authors recounted the regiment service in Cuba and in previous

wars reminded those who cared to pay attention that the war with Spain did not represent

the first instance in which black soldiers answered the nation's call to arms in an age

of increasing racism that was hardening and institutionalized segregation throughout the

South and affecting the lives of black Americans everywhere.

The Buffalo soldiers were race heroes, black newspapers and magazines tracked their movements

and reported their activities, poetry, drama, and songs all celebrated their service and

valor as Rayford Logan, Dean of a generation of black historians later wrote quote within

the quote, Negroes had little at the turn of the century to help sustain our faith in

ourselves except the pride that we took in the ninth and 10th cavalry and the 24th and

25th infantry.

Many Negro homes had prints of the famous charge of the colored troops of San Juan Hill.

They were our Ralph Bunch, Marian Anderson, Joe Lewis, and Jackie Robinson unquote.

Teddy Roosevelt, however, was a racist asshole.

Now at the time he had promised he would never forget the ties forged in battle with the

Buffalo soldiers.

He'd said great things about them immediately after the battle.

He was even quoted as saying, he was quoted as saying at the time, quote, no one could

tell whether it was the rough writers or the men of the ninth who came forward with greater

courage to offer their lives and the service to their country, unquote, but he immediately

forgot all about that when campaigning to white voters up in New York, making up stories

of black troops attempting to run away, who had to be threatened at gunpoint in order

to get back to battle ones that were disputed by other people who were, you know, there.

Oh, Teddy.

And then Teddy gave us this lovely doozy, quote, Negro troops were shirkers in their

duties and would only go as far as they were led by white officers, unquote.

So fuck you, Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, although I'll, I'll stick up for Alice there

because she actually like wasn't a bigot or a racist.

And even in later life, she was considered a token homosexual just because they, the,

she was like, I don't give a shit if you're gay to the point where they were like, we're

going to make you one of us.

You might as well be gay.

She's so cool.

She was like this cool lady in the seventies.

So nice.

But um, she was being driven around driving Miss Daisy style and her chauffeur gets into

an accident.

And the guy, he was like, watch where you're going, you black bastard.

And so Alice sticks her head out the window and she goes, she's driving me, you white

son of a bitch.

Nice.

So that's fun.

So let's be clear.

Uh, those, that stuff about, um, black cowardice and needing, needing white officers to give

them discipline, nothing more to back that statement up than Roosevelt's stupid mustache.

That's just a quick introduction to the Buffalo soldiers.

After a few years of dicking around Congress declared war on Germany in April of 1917 early

in the year.

And the, the British intercepted the telegram that revealed a proposed military alliance

between Germany and Mexico with the promise that the Krauts would assist in recovering

a huge part of Mexico on behalf of the government.

If you know, they, the, you know, we have a little, oh, we don't like that.

We don't like that.

That's some tit for tat that you don't fucking fuck with.

And then you, you add that with German U-boat antics, uh, you know, that sometimes sank

our merchant ships and made trade a problem.

You're fucking with America in two ways that you do not fuck with America.

So World War One happened.

So yeah.

So April 6th, uh, you know, president Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war to

end all wars and to make the world safe for democracy.

I'm so glad that we were able to end wars after that one.

That's so great.

So at the time, uh, we had a standing army of less than 300,000 men, which you might

realize is a little insufficient for a World War One, but, uh, don't you worry.

The selective service act of 1917 fixed that shit by drafting an additional 2.8 million.

Yeah.

Well, the draft welcome to the draft, my friends.

And as you might guess, there is a lot involved in calling up that many teenage boys to catch

trench foot and die choking on mustard gas.

16 auxiliary training camps had to go up around the country and quick and like any

self-respecting American town, Houston wanted some of that sweet, sweet federal money lobbying

hard for $2 million.

The city got a contract for a 7,600 acre training center for the national guard that could hold

up to 30,000 men at a time.

Camp Logan fun.

And this of course is where the Buffalo soldiers enter the mix.

The 24th infantry was split up to guard the new training camps going up from mutiny of

rage quote, the third battalion consisting of 654 enlisted men within I K L and M companies

were ordered to Houston for a short guard duty tour during the construction of camp

Logan.

The training camp was located approximately three miles from the center of town and one

mile West of the city's limits.

Many of the Buffalo soldiers were combat veterans and they were salty for action.

They expected to be sent off to fight in France shortly as they were ordered to pack

up and bring their winter kits with them.

As the camp was erected, they would police the premises and oversee a steady stream of

Texas and Illinois national guardsmen, including black units from the ladder to man the barracks

in the span of a few months, a camp half the size of Manhattan Island was built in a city

whose population only approach a hundred thousand unquote.

Okay.

So out of nowhere, they're having to build a training camp for all these people in and

bring in these black soldiers, many of whom are combat vets to guard the place while this

is going on.

That sounds like a good idea.

So we've got our pressure cooker of a Southern town already simmering with like deep cultural

racism and enforceable laws on the books.

Now let's add over 600 proud black soldiers and turn up the heat.

What could go wrong and we're not done yet.

And now some people on both the right and wrong side of history kind of had reservations

about this idea.

Well, just because it was stupid.

It was really stupid.

Um, you know, race riots once again were a very recent memory.

Well obviously not a memory.

Uh, so, so even the more progressive voices caution that sending black troops into a Jim

Crow town was like a very bad idea, but as you can guess, the most public voices or the

bigots such as James Vardaman, a Mississippi state Senator who is quoted as saying, quote,

whites are opposed to putting arrogant strutting representatives of the black soldiery in every

community.

Unquote, can't have these uppity Negroes, you know?

So where are we supposed to put them though?

Yeah.

And of course one of the part of the local concern in Houston was they already have a

black population that's playing by the rules.

Is this going to disrupt things if they start seeing, you know, black soldiers in a uniform

carrying guns, having more privileges, you know, getting more respect that could fuck

up, you know, the, the, the social order, you want to say status quo could be, uh, yeah,

but sadly you don't want to disrupt the status quo, but, but even racism is beneath the decision

to make this assignment here in the first place, because the United States made the

decision that they did not want to send black soldiers overseas.

So for sort of like weird, like badly racist, uh, reasons of what, what would happen if

they were entrenched, entrenched warfare, especially in those closed quarters.

And you have to remember too, one thing I didn't, I kind of jumped immediately over,

but you know, some of these Buffalo soldiers went over to the Philippines in the Spanish

American war and one of them switched sides and it became like a leader of Filipino insurgents

and was like a kind of a famous terrorist.

So that didn't help in the minds of all of this kind of brewing in the background.

That's very funny.

Yeah.

Since they didn't want to send them overseas, they had to find work for them state side.

And, uh, you know, pretty much everyone expected problems with this posting.

I mean, there were rumors of white mobs forming from the moment these troops arrived in town,

but the shitty Houston chamber of commerce, uh, wanted to let the war department know

that the city would be glad to receive the soldiers as good patriotic Americans, even

though only months before they'd objected and resented, but then they were worried about

losing the contract.

So they like, no, no, no.

They changed their tune because the only thing that more important than racism is dollar

dollar bills.

Well, the only color they really care about is green.

So listeners might have noticed a running theme when I was talking about the race riots

earlier, or maybe you've just like paid attention ever in your lives because you'll find them

in all these stories for the last hundred years.

I of course speak of racist cops.

Cops are the worst.

In Houston, the city police were about a hundred men who barely made more than the national

average for like an unskilled labor.

Well that's what they make now, which is a problem.

From mutiny of rage, quote, police who were quick on the draw and also poorly paid made

for a toxic combination.

At the time, the force was only a hundred men strong with only a handful of blacks.

One police chief admitted to utilizing bloodhounds much in the manner of antebellum plantation

owners to quote, to exert a moral effect, especially upon the me Negro race, unquote.

So yeah, let note here when he said quick on the draw, that isn't talking about like

the speed in which you can whip your gun out of your holster.

It's about how willing and eager someone is to threaten someone with a gun pistol whip

or shoot at them.

So just literally being willing to, you know, pull your weapon out all the time.

And the Houston cops had a reputation for being incredibly quick on the draw.

They love pistol whipping and sometimes even just like shooting at the feet of black people

were out of their place or drinking from the wrong, you know, well or whatever.

Yeah.

So, uh, super bad.

I don't even know what to say.

So from mutiny on the bayou, the documentary professor Robert Haynes had this to say, quote,

the police were pretty tough in that area.

They love to chase the prostitutes, crap shooters, and they had a tendency to shoot at blacks

to scare them and show their virility, unquote.

One local black minister was quoted as saying, quote, law abiding citizens feared the police

and getting over the city at night more than they feared the highwaymen unquote.

So literally they would rather take their chances with no cops around than to just to

get hassled, um, shook down, you know, arrested for no reason or beaten up, shot at whatever.

So any blacks that were found on the streets at night were easy pickings.

And because they had shut the, the, the black women had been run out of the brothels, any

sex workers were out on the streets, which made them easily victimized by the cops.

Just all, all nasty, bad stuff.

So as our story begins, we have a chief of Houston police who wanted to change all of

this.

His name was Clarence Brock, and he actually wanted to professionalize the police department

and reform it and cut through this good old boy culture.

He was, you know, relatively progressive for 1917, but he was a veteran of running the

parks and rec service, not exactly an inspiring leader type.

He was more of this, like, you know, pencil pushing administrator guy.

Who's good at organizing, not necessarily good at leading men.

Yeah, I guess you need to be both.

So the problem is these cops didn't respect him and didn't necessarily like do what he

said.

And they certainly didn't want to stop beating people up, stealing shit and shaking folks

down for bribes.

I mean, why stop living the good life when your job doesn't pay much?

The fact that you can be a corrupt bully and, and get some on the side is sort of the

point.

Yeah.

I mean, that's sort of the problem is, yeah, they're not paid well, so they have to supplement

their income by doing shady fucking bullshit.

Yeah.

There is a chicken and egg problem that we're not going to solve here today, but no, it's,

I'm so glad that we fixed it though.

You know, back in the olden days of your good news is there hasn't been any police racism

or brutality since all been smooth sailing since like 1917 oh good.

The government and business owners were eager for all that money that Camp Logan would bring,

but the disruption of it all upset many of the local residents who were already convinced

that sinful activities such as dice cards, drinking and dancing were sure to rise, which

you know, vices, yep.

And the Houston police stood ready to enforce the laws, most especially the ones that wouldn't

allow a black soldier to drink from the same water as a white civilian.

The August 20th, 1917 issue of the Houston post read quote 3000 Negro troops remember

Brownsville unquote.

So this is referring to the Texas town of Brownsville in 1906 I skipped this cause it

really wasn't a race riot, but it was this incident that happened.

And this is specific to the Buffalo soldiers.

Shots were fired that killed a bartender and wounded a local police Lieutenant locals claim

that the bullets were fired from Fort Brown, which just happened to house black infantrymen

from the 25th infantry regiment.

But there was no evidence that could directly tie anyone to the shootings.

And since no one could be charged, the mayor of the town went all the way to the president

of the United States.

That's right.

Our boy, Theodore Roosevelt.

Oh good.

What did Teddy do?

On one hand, you had enlisted troops of the United States army.

Some of the very men that Teddy fought alongside down in Cuba and the other side you had an

angry racist white mob.

Oh Teddy, what did you do?

Under the orders of the president, 167 soldiers were discharged with zero evidence, no trial

and not a single opportunity to speak in their own defense.

So once again, fuck you, Teddy Roosevelt.

Really I'm not surprised, but I am a little ashamed of you, Theodore.

It's pretty sad that it was Richard Nixon of all people who reversed this injustice

in 1972.

So he reversed their dishonorable discharge and then honorably discharged them in retro

so that they could have full honors and benefits and you know, military decorations on their

graves and et cetera.

Yeah.

So everyone in Houston remembered Brownsville.

So basically it's like, we're going to do all this shady shit to you.

We'll wait a hundred years and then we'll fix it.

So literally the paper says, remember Brownsville and all the white people are like, remember

when those black soldiers murdered our favorite bartender and that and shot that cop and

then the black soldiers are thinking, remember that time that a bunch of people got fucked

over for bullshit reasons.

So everybody remembers Brownsville going into this, how you remembered it just depended

on the color of your skin.

And that's where we're going to actually have to leave things today.

Next episode, our pressure cooker explodes in a night of violence that like I said, is

the only time in American history for a race riot when more white people die than blacks

because some people get angry with the shit that happens next.

Thanks to racist cops and just this place of this powder keg or pressure cooker, whatever

you want to call it.

There's a really bad idea of putting these soldiers at this exact time and place.

This is a terrible idea.

So we will get back to it until everything that happened and even talk a little bit about

the work of activists and family members who worked to at least clear the names of

the men involved.

So like I said, we haven't even gotten to the shit yet.

This is just the background, but you need this in order to really appreciate what happens

next.

Yeah, you need the ingredients so you can really fucking sit in this bullshit stew.

But that's it for now.

So thank you everybody for listening and thank you to our friend Kevin and Raven sound studios

for hosting us and making us sound good.

Thank you, Kevin.

Once again, if you want to hear more of this stuff, you should go to chainsawhistory.com.

That's where you can hear all of our previous episodes, including all of those bonus episodes.

We talked about one shots like Bambi's Alice Roosevelt coverage, the value of series of

children's books, no time for love, Dr. Jones, where we talk about the life of Indiana Jones

in the context of history.

You can also find a back catalog bonus articles and lots of stuff soon.

You can also even subscribe to our show and actually help us pay for our hosting fees.

Yeah, well, no time for Jones.

Dr. Love sounds like that's porn.

Don't look that up.

When it comes to the charity I want to support this week, the NAACP worked with families

and activists for literally over a hundred years to overturn the injustice under the

American soldiers in today's story.

So I recommend our listeners consider a donation to the NAACP legal defense and educational

fund.

They fight for racial justice through litigation, advocacy and public education.

You can learn more and support them at www.NAACPLDF.org.

I'm still supporting StopCopCity.org.

Which also is super appropriate for this story.

Yes, it is.

Stop the cops.

And yeah, because they don't need militarized training facilities for urban warfare.

Yeah.

Where we cut down a huge chunk of the only green area in the metro Atlanta area, displacing

all kinds of people and doing against the wishes of the people who actually live there.

You can go to StopCopCity.org and you can also check out the Atlanta Solidarity Network

if you would like to support bail efforts for people who get arrested for bullshit reasons

defending the Atlanta forest.

Yeah, and I think there's going to be another week of action coming up after the holidays

like in February, I think.

And keeping up with stuff going on that.

So check that out if you're interested.

It certainly applies to this story here because fuck racist cops.

Yeah.

Fuck the cops.

And we are out.

See you everybody.

Bye.

{Bob Marley}

{Bob Marley}

{Bob Marley}

{Bob Marley}

{Bob Marley}

{Bob Marley}