Thursday, April 22, 2021

ONE BAD COP and the "Largest Murder Trial in the History of the United States"

 

 

 

Copyright 2021 by Hershel Parker

A DRAFT--But posting it because it is so timely

How One Bad Cop Caused the  Largest Murder Trial in the History of the United States.”

Lee Sparks--The Mounted Policeman Who Destroyed the Buffalo Soldiers

Hershel Parker

 

“Largest Murder Trial in the History of the United States. Scene during Court Martial of 64 members of the 24th Infantry United States of America on trial for mutiny and murder of 17 people at Houston, Tex. Aug 23, 1917. Trial held in Gift Chapel Fort Sam Houston. Trial started --- Nov 1, 1917, Brig Genl . George K. Hunter presiding. Colonel J.A. Hull, Judge Advocate, Maj. D. V. Sulphin Asst.  Council for Defense, Major Harry H. Grier.  Prisoners guarded by 19th Infantry Company C, Capt. Carl J. Adler.” [I have slightly reordered and corrected the caption. The photograph, then under copyright, is in the public domain, and justly famous.]

 

            Like the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, the Houston Riot of 1917 at Camp Logan has been minimized or even ignored. Here I offer only dry facts, as given in the first years after the riot. On 23 August, 17 people were killed. On 29 August, one hundred fifty of the Black soldiers were brought to El Paso and put in the military prison at Fort Bliss. Thirty-four were already charged with murder. Thirteen negroes, convicted by court-martial, were hanged.  In December 1917 thirty-nine soldiers were sent to prison at Leavenworth.  On 19 June 1920 the San Antonio Light recorded the attempts to free the imprisoned soldiers: “petition for release of negro prisoners made by attorneys.  Thirty-nine Are Serving Sentences Imposed by Court-martial.” Part of a statement by John A. Hull was included as part of the petition: “In this statement it was asserted that negro soldiers of the Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry, from the time of their arrival in Houston, July 28, 1917, to the day of the riot, August 23, 1917, had repeatedly been molested and assaulted by white civilian policemen of the city of Houston, and that the day of the outbreak Lee Sparks, a white patrolman, had engaged in an altercation with Corporal Lee [Charles?] Baltimore, a negro soldier of the 24th Infantry, who was a member of the military police and that the while civilian policemen had beaten the negro military policemen over the head repeatedly with the butt of a revolver, and finally lodged the negro in jail. Exaggerated reports of this incident, according to the statement, which was art of the record at the original court-martial trial, were the immediate cause of the outbreak of August 23.” In February 1918 the NAACP petitioned President Wilson with 12,000 signatures protesting executions of the imprisoned soldiers without personal review of the President. On 31 August 1918 President Wilson retained the death penalty already imposed on 6 of 16 solders and commuted the rest to life imprisonment, the fate of all the 63 still living soldiers who had been convicted.  The Pittsburgh Courier on 30 April 1938 looked back at the NAACP’s” long continued and steady campaign for the pardon or parole of the men whom all colored people regard as martyrs, but whom the law branded as rioters. The Association never ceased activity with each new President and Secretary of War.” As I first learned from Angela Holder, some of these soldiers died or were pardoned in the 1920s and 30s until the last prisoner was released in 1938.  In this chapter I give no history of the men hanged and imprisoned or their early tormentors, for in word and deed Houstonians had been displaying arrogant racism toward the newly arrived Buffalo Soldiers.  Instead, I focus on the Texas policeman whose behavior destroyed so many lives and tarnished the reputation of the Buffalo Soldiers. All the suffering of 23 August 1917 and for decades afterwards  occurred as a direct consequence of the brutal racism of  one man, Lee Sparks, a Houston Mounted Policeman.

             Lee Sparks was born on the last day of 1877 in Wilson County, Texas.  He died on 9 January 1934 in Houston.  He is a cousin of mine, descended like me from the brave old Tory Solomon Sparks who was tricked  by the deceit of young George Parks and, bound on the bottom of a canoe, going down the Yadkin to a Patriot jail in Salisbury, kept shouting “Hurrah for King George!”  Find A Grave says that Lee Sparks, “never married and made his living as a Texas Ranger and farmer.” Farmer is doubtful, and I have yet to confirm that he had been a Texas Ranger. His father, John C. Sparks, was not the John C. Sparks who had some notoriety as a member of the Frontier Battalion. Lee’s father was a Georgia-born farmer, 28 in the 1880 census, with a 24 year old wife born in Texas. His own father, George Washington Sparks, also a Georgian, was 64, and living with him, but not head of the family.  Lee was officially Louis E. (E. likely from his mother Catherine’s last name, Edmiston). The only known description of Lee Sparks is from his draft registration card on 12 September 1918. At almost 40, he was slender, tall, with brown eyes and dark brown hair. One more detail confirms that his build was slight: the Houston Post on 27 April 1921 reported Sparks’s saying that “he wore a size 15 shirt.” And one reason he pistol-whipped a sturdy Black Sergeant in the Buffalo Soldiers and then shot at him was that he did not want personal contact-- “he wasn’t going to wrestle with the big negro.” 

            Lee Sparks emerges in newspapers on 29 November 1916 when the headline in the Houston Post was “NEGRO WITH KNIFE SHOT BY POLICEMAN MAKING ARREST. Tom Farrington in Hospital Following an Encounter With Mounted Officer Sparks.” Sparks, then on duty, had supposedly received a call saying that “a negro was trying to kill some one.” What follows is from Sparks’s account: “Hastening to the scene Officer Sparks started to arrest the negro who was causing the trouble.  Farrington, according to the officer, resisted and in the melee drew a knife, cutting a button off the officer’s blouse, at the same time trying to choke him. The officer, finding his life in danger, drew his pistol and fired, several shots taking effect in the negro’s body.” Then Westheimer’s ambulance carried the negro to the infirmary--probably St. Joseph’s, which accommodated black, white, and Mexican patients.  

            “Several shots” into Tom Farrington’s body suggests at least that Sparks  liked to be thorough in his job.  Then the Houston Post on 28 June 1917 printed an ominous little notice: “two officers suspended.” These were Lee Sparks and J. H. Walsh, who may have misbehaved together or separately but were punished differently: “The members of the police department must have the respect of the general public, and in turn the officers must not do anything that would subject them to criticism,” remarked Superintendent of Police Brock Wednesday afternoon” (the 27th), “as he announced the suspension for 10 days of Officers Lee Sparks and J. H. Walsh, the latter for 15 days.” No one may have reproached Sparks for putting multiple shots into Farrington, but seven months later In his dealings with the “general public” he had had done something that deserved sharp criticism and a severe punishment (suspension without pay?).

             Lee Sparks continued to show contempt for the “general public,” particularly any negro. What he did on the late morning of  23 August 1917 could have been insignificant, just a routine episode of police brutality, verbal and  physical. Maybe a report of a negro craps game had come into police or maybe Sparks and his partner R. H. Daniels came upon the game in progress at San Felipe and Wilson. The gamblers were negro boys, not grown men. One ran into a nearby house where a negro woman lived.  After he barged in and questioned her,  Sparks “slapped her in the face,” according to Kneeland Snow’s testimony as recorded in the Post of 2 November 1917. What that means, is that Sparks struck her across the face with his pistol--pistol-whipped her, and arrested her.  (Habitually he stuck with the butt of his pistol, you would think the barrel would be a risky way to grip a gun.) Private Alonzo Edwards, company L., 24th infantry (newly moved to Camp Logan), who had reportedly already started day-drinking, tried to protect her (“to interfere”) “and as a result was promptly beaten up and placed under arrest by Sparks.” Beaten up means being pistol-whipped. When Corporal Charles Baltimore challenged Sparks for the condition Edwards was in, Sparks pistol-whipped him. Baltimore fled into a house while Sparks was shooting at him (just a shot to the ground to stop him, Sparks said but others counted more). Baltimore hid under a bed but Sparks forced him to come out, pistol-whipped him again “twice over the head,” and arrested him and hauled him to the city jail. 

             The New York Times on 25 August printed what Private Leroy Pinkett, Company J of the 24th Regiment, called “a complete story of the trouble”:

             “Yesterday [the 23rd] about 3 P. M.,” he said, “we heard that Corporal Baltimore of our company had been shot by special officers, (white officers who ride horses.) All the boys said, ‘Let’s go get the man that shot Baltimore.’ It was getting late then, and we stood retreat at 6 o’clock, and then I heard Sergeant Henry of our company say: ‘Well, don’t stand around like that. If you are going to do anything, go ahead and do it.’

            After that I saw some of the boys slip over to Company K, and I heard them say they had stolen the ammunition. Then Captain Snow called the men out in line. He asked what we were doing, and ordered a search made for the ammunition, and also ordered that our rifles be taken up. Another Sergeant, I forget his name, took up our rifles from our tents. In this same talk Captain Snow told us that Baltimore was not in the wrong; that the policeman was in the wrong. I heard him say that. A big fellow in our company named Frank Johnson, then came running down the company street, hollering ‘Get your rifles, boys.’

            “We all made a rush then for the supply camp, and got our rifles, and we went to a large ammunition box and got our ammunition.

Captain Snow was right--the mounted policeman Lee Sparks “was in the wrong.” But what followed was murderous and suicidal.

             Newspaper men all around the country knew that the behavior of Lee Sparks had caused the riots although there was a noticeable effort to palliate the blame of a policeman..

            On 8 September 1917 the Chicago Tribune headlined: “POLICE OFFICER IS INDICTED FOR HOUSTON RIOTS.”

            In Texas the Fort Worth Record-Telegram on the 8th hedged in the headlines (“HOUSTON POLICEMAN WHO PARTLY STARTED TROUBLE IS INDICTED”) and hedged again in the text (Sparks’s assault on “Sergeant Baltimore” “is supposed to have been the incentive which caused the troops to mutiny”). 

            The Portage, Wisconsin Register in the subhead said: “Police Officer, Whose Alleged Assault on Negro Sergeant Caused Trouble, Faces Two Charges.”

            The Los Angeles Times on the 10th started with “Accusation. BLAME POLICEMAN FOR NEGRO RIOTS,” but reduced the pistol-whipping of Baltimore to “Alleged Brutal Assault Upon Colored Corporal said to Have Precipitated Clash.”

            The Nashville Globe on the 14th made a typographical error in headline: “MUONTED OFFICER SPARKS STARTED NEGRO RAID.”                   

             C. L. Brock, the Chief of Police, before the riot called Sparks into his office (the Post on 1 September). Sparks and his partner Daniels (a short time before he was killed) made a “verbal statement” about Sparks’s beating of Baltimore, and Brock told Sparks “he would be suspended in the morning.” Defiantly, “Sparks said he could not afford to be suspended, that he had been suspended before and Brock told him he would wait until he investigated the matter. Sparks spoke strongly about Brock. As for suspension, he “would rather work than lay around.” He declared, “I don’t respect him as chief. I got a little mad and told him a little of my mind. I told him I didn’t think he would back me up, that he didn’t show it that far. I told the chief I wasn’t getting a square deal and I didn’t think he ought to suspend me when I was doing my duty.” He had absolutely done nothing wrong: “I arrested the negro woman for abusive language. While I was waiting for the wagon Edwards came up with about 30 negroes following him and said he wanted the woman. I said he couldn’t have her. He said he was going to have her anyway and reached over. I hit him over the head three or four times till he got his heart right and sat down.”  Detective E. F. Daugherty had taken down Baltimore’s statement on the typewriter in Brock’s office. Baltimore had claimed that when he asked why Sparks had beaten his companion, “Sparks told him he was not in the habit of reporting to a negro.” The typed report said that Spark had hit him with his pistol then ran as Sparks fired three shots at him. Claiming to have pistol-whipped Baltimore only once, brought the question, why only once?  Sparks said “he wasn’t going to wrestle with the big negro.” Daugherty said that later Brock and Sparks were in the office alone, “and that when Sparks came out he said something to the effect that he wasn’t getting a square deal. He also said that “any man who would stick up for a negro was no better than a negro himself.” Sparks muttered something which Daughertry may have understood: “as he went out the door he continued that if that wasn’t enough he would give him (Brock) the rest of it.”

            To the citizens’ and the military investigating committee on the DATE Friday. Sparks declared that he “did not apologize to Superintendent of Police Brock” later in the day of the riot; in fact, “Officer Sparks was very emphatic in his denial and requested that it be published.”  According to the Post on the 2nd of September, on the day before. Sparks had received a written notice from Superintendent Brock suspending him from duty starting the next day, Sunday: “Officer Lee Sparks: You are hereby notified that you are temporarily suspended, pending the investigation now being carried on by the citizens committee and the grand jury.” Sparks later said he had continued work as if not suspended.GET Get POST, but on 7 September the Harris county grand jury indicted him on two charges: “One indictment charges him with aggravated assault on Sergt. Baltimore. The second charges with murder in connection with the death of Wallace Williams, a Negro civilian who was shot to death on the Sunday following the riot.”

             On 8 September the Post reported that while suspended Lee Sparks had been “Charged With Murder and Aggravated Assault.” He was charged with shooting Wallace Williams, a negro, to death on 26 August. Sparks and two other policemen had gone to a Dallas Avenue house “on a report that gambling was in progress among negroes.” The negroes were told to stay in the house but “Williams attempted to make a break for liberty” and a policeman put “a bullet in the back” which killed him. The Assault was against Baltimore, now dead in the riot: “The beating of Baltimore and several shots which are said to have been fired at him, has been the subject of much inquiry by the civilian investigating committee and also by the military committee. It has resulted in Sparks’ suspension from the force, pending further inquiry.”

             Despite all the new evidence of his unfitness, Sparks was promptly hired (ironically) “as a guard at Camp Logan, being employed by the American Construction company. He has a commission as a deputy sheriff.” On 12 September Sparks was freed on a $5000 bond--but, the court emphasized, only temporarily. By 3 October he was back in the county jail, only to be released on a $7500 bond on 10 October, according to the Post of the next day.

             The jurors on the charge of the murder of Wallace (“Snow”) Williams retired to debate at 9:15 at night on Monday 15 October but milled a moment rather than sitting down. The headline in the Post the next day was “Sparks Acquitted in Less Than a Minute”: The jurors had hardly all “entered the jury room before it was announced that they were ready to return with their findings.” They bought the defense story “that the fatal shot was fired by some one else and that Sparks was a block away at the time.”

 

            Some workers at the Post apparently forgot Sparks’s name fast enough because his history is not mentioned in the 9 March 1918 article “Negro Wounded in Duel With Officer”: “As a result of pistol duel between Special Officer Lee Sparks and two negroes in the International and Great Northern yards early Friday morning P. H. Hill, negro, is in a serious condition at St. Joseph’s infirmary. Sparks was unhurt. The other negro escaped.” All the information came from Sparks. “According to Officer Sparks, the negroes were engaged in taking the brass car journals off of oil cars belonging to the Texas company at the unloading rack near the plant of the Magnolia Cotton Oil company, when he surprised them while making his rounds as watchman for the company.” This suggests that Sparks at this time was hired by the  Magnolia company, no longer with the Houston police. Sparks said that the two negroes fled and opened fire on him. “He succeeded in bringing down Hill,” having found his pistol, “but the other negro made good his escape.” Sparks had been “detailed to catch” whoever had been stealing the brass. “Tom Harris of the district attorney’s office took what was supposed to be a dying statement from the negro, in which the negro admitted they were engaged in stealing brass, and that they fired at Sparks.”

             Forty on the last day of 1917,  the tall, slender Sparks was in the news again. The headline in the Post on 14 November 1918 was “INJURED IN RUNAWAY.” This time the subject was only “Former Policeman Lee Sparks.” Was he unemployed? Here is what happened. He “received a broken arm, a scratched face, and other injuries when he was thrown from a wagon by a runaway team in the 1700 block on Franklin avenue, shortly before 2 o’clock Wednesday afternoon” (the 13th). “The team started from a point in the Second ward and ran more than a dozen blocks when they ran into a fence, throwing Mr. Sparks to the ground. He was taken to his home and a physician summoned. His injuries are not regarded as serious.” Now, strong men approaching 40 may sometimes lose control of a team they are driving, but judging from what comes later, had Cousin Lee been day-drinking?

            Sparks may have known he was in new trouble the first week of January 1921, as I explain later. On 17 February 1921 the Post reported that in Harris and Fort Bend counties many suspects had been arrested and freed in the aftermath of the 14 February robbery at the Blue Ridge State Bank in which the robbers killed the cashier, R. L. Kirby. Four men were asleep in the woods when arrested on the 15th near Stafford and Blue Ridge, and were brought to Houston Wednesday afternoon by Deputy Sheriff Lee Sparks and three others.  The Chief decided they were merely boon companions, over-excited after participating in the “systematic” search in Blue Ridge, after which they had the idea of going hunting in the woods and catching some robbers.

             The news on 17 February  left it unclear where Lee Sparks was employed as a deputy sheriff, but on the 19th the Post identified him as “Deputy Sheriff Lee Sparks of Blue Ridge.” He had lost his job before 14 November 1918, and had been hired in Blue Ridge despite his appalling record in Houston.  The ability of bad cops to move on to jobs in other cities is a constant. Deputy Sheriff “Doc” Sammon (or Samon) of Blue Ridge had first picked up the trail of Kirby’s murderer “and tenacious followed it until the man was run down” at a hotel near “the busiest corner of Houston.” In the assault on the hotel room Deputy Samon was “accompanied by Deputy Sheriff Lee Sparks of Blue Ridge, Sheriff Henry Collins of Fort Bend county, and City Detectives Rainey and Heard of Houston.” Collins (and perhaps the deputies from Blue Ridge)  drove the prisoner and his female accomplice to Richmond but covertly turned back to Houston to prevent a lynching, “making a wide detour around Blue Ridge.”

             That was February 1921. On 6 March 1921 the Post announced “2 Indicted on Charge Of Operating Still”: “Lee Sparks, former member of the Houston police force, and J. H. Brown, formerly a peace officer at Blue Ridge, were jointly indicted Saturday by the federal grand jury on a charge of unlawfully manufacturing whisky, possessing whisky and having a still. The still is said to have been found some time ago under operation in the house where Sparks and Brown lived.” Also on the 6th the Austin American-Statesman added this information: “Their farm near Alameda was raided Jan. 5. Both are out on bond and it is expected they will be tried at this term.” The Galveston Daily News on 11 March had more: “Sparks and Brown both took the stand and denied knowledge of the still that prohibition officers are said to have found. A raid was made Jan. 4, after which  C. C. White, S. M. Jester, prohibition agents, and Hugh Graham, city detective, testified they found a still. Sparks denied knowledge of the still being there. Sparks testified that the room had been locked since November. He blamed an old man and stated he had discharged him and hired Brown the day preceding the raid.” Strangely, no one believed him. The next day the Galveston paper had the verdict: “A fine of $1,000 was given Lee Sparks, deputy sheriff of Fort Bend County, this morning soon after the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Sparks on charge of possessing a still and moonshine whisky. J. H. Brown, who was employed on Sparks’ farm at the time the place was raided, was declared not guilty by the jury and released. Sparks was acquitted of the charge of manufacturing liquor and of the charge of conspiracy.”  He was given two days to pay the fine.

             Stewart W. Phillips, sentenced to life, escaped from Leavenworth and for five years “was a free but hunted man for five years,” the Pittsburgh Courier said on 30 April 1938: “He finally gave himself up and returned to prison so he could win a parole and enjoy his freedom in peace. His escape counted against his record and therefore he was the last to be released.” The Los Angeles California Eagle on 5 May noted this: “Mr. Phillips received executive clemency from President Roosevelt, and an unconditional release, and expresses himself as deeply indebted to the NAACP for their efforts in his behalf.” He offered a restrained picture of what life in Leavenworth had been like: “According to Phillips, segregation is rampant in Leavenworth prison. Negroes are given the most gruelling and unpleasant work in the shoe factory. In the furniture shop Negroes can only be porters, and the same is true to the other trade shops. Everything which carries much in the way of salary is kept from the Negro, and if he is accepted in say the shoe factory, he is kept at one job and not given the chance to learn the entire process of the trade. None of this is conducive to a happy adjustment of a man, and really presents a grave situation.” The “martyrs” were not tortured, not pistol-whipped daily, but they experienced daily humiliation in stultifying work. These men had been proud Buffalo Soldiers!

            Lee Sparks gave many members of the NAACP and families of the imprisoned soldiers work to do, year after year through the twenties and far into the 1930s. Meanwhile, Sparks was not doing much to stay in good health, and a fair assumption is that a moonshiner might do more than sample his product, when he could. However, Sparks lived on without any more recorded mishaps. Early on 9 January 1934, just turned 56, he died in a Houston hospital of emphysema, probably due to “cancer of lung tissue.” There was no autopsy. For at least two decades he had shamed his family name.  To adapt his own formula about negroes, any man who would stick up for a man like him was no better than Lee Sparks himself.

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