You see how up to date I am! A chapter in the new book if ONE BAD COP, about Cousin Lee Sparks who loved to pistolwhip black women and men

 

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Before the sun came up Dec. 11, 1917, 13 Buffalo Soldiers were marched to the gallows in a military camp near Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. It had been four months since a rampage in Houston left 15 White people and four Black people dead.

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 This is from the Washington Post of 13 November 2023. The little racist cop who start it all is the subject of my chapter in AN OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS. It is all finished. Does anyone want to publish it while it is hot news?

 

 

The soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black member regiment, had been convicted of murder and mutiny during the largest court-martial murder trial the country had ever seen.

The 13 soldiers proclaimed their innocence until they ascended the gallows. They had requested to be shot by a firing squad, considered a more honorable way to die in the military. But an all-White jury sentenced them to death by hanging.

One by one that morning, nooses were hung over the gallows, chairs were kicked out from beneath the soldiers, and they dropped to their deaths. The hangings were so swift that not one of the soldiers had been given a chance to appeal for clemency. They were buried in graves with markers indicating only numbers 1 through 13. Later, six more soldiers were executed.

It was the largest mass execution carried out in the history of the U.S. Army.

On Monday, 106 years later, the Army formally announced it had overturned convictions of 110 soldiers convicted in the Houston riots. Officials also announced the Army would correct the military records of 95 Buffalo Soldiers who were not restored to duty to show “honorable discharge.” The Army also announced that it would partner with Veterans Affairs to deliver survivor benefits to the soldiers’ descendants.