HOUSTON – A lawn crew uncovered an old World War I-era artillery shell while working at Houston’s Memorial Park on Tuesday. Houston police safely detonated the shell later that day.
Given the park’s history, the find is not entirely surprising.
Memorial Park was once Camp Logan, a military training base active from 1917 to 1919. The park’s name honors the soldiers who trained there and later went off to war.
Today, joggers and golfers use the park’s trails. But more than 100 years ago, about 70,000 troops trained on the same ground for World War I. Nearly 1,000 of those soldiers never returned home, and more than 6,000 were wounded.
The park covers roughly 7,600 acres that once made up Camp Logan, with its history sprinkled along the trails.
Mike Heinz, a regular park visitor, said, “I’m usually on this track and I play golf every once in a while, that’s it, so I’m going to research that and go read them.”
Memorial Park also has a darker history. Dr. Tara Green, chair of the African American Studies Department at the University of Houston, recalled events from August 1917.
“The conflict that we know of is that an African-American soldier was accosted by the police and, yes, by Houston police,” Green said. “The rumor had gotten out that that individual had been killed. That is not what happened, but... Because black soldiers have been experiencing what they have been experiencing and, you know, it’s a sort of lifetime of an experience that made them say today is the day that I am going to respond. And so we see then that soldiers based on race are engaged in a conflict where many people die at that time. But they were outnumbered and outgunned.”
This event became known as the Houston Mutiny and Riots of 1917. 110 Black soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, were unfairly tried, convicted and court-martialed. 19 of them were executed.
“Some of them were hanged, some of them, of course, were in prison. There was not a jury trial and we still remember today the ways in which they were treated,” Green said.
In November 2023, the U.S. Army set aside the wrongful convictions of those 110 soldiers, granting each an honorable discharge. In February 2024, 17 of the 19 executed soldiers received headstones showing their ranks and commitment to duty.