Houston Mutiny: Black Soldiers Retaliate Against Police Brutality; 19 Hanged

On August 23, 1917, approximately 150 Black soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment marched on Houston after enduring months of systematic abuse — Jim Crow streetcars, brutal beatings of soldiers by city police, and the arrest and beating of a soldier who tried to stop police from beating a Black woman. In the night march, 16 civilians and 4 soldiers were killed. The Army held the largest court-martial in US history: 110 soldiers were tried, 19 were hanged, and 63 received life sentences. The 19 hangings, carried out on December 11, 1917 without the sentences being reviewed by the president as regulations required, constituted the largest mass military execution in US history.