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Mutiny of Rage: The 1917 Camp Logan Riots and Buffalo Soldiers in Houston
Winner, 2022 Nautilus Book Award. Salado Creek, Texas, 1918: Thirteen black soldiers stood at attention in front of gallows erected specifically for their hanging. They had been convicted of participating in one of America’s most infamous black uprisings, the Camp Logan Mutiny, otherwise known as the 1917 Houston Riots. The revolt and ensuing riots were carried out by men of the 3rd Battalion of the all-black 24th U.S. Infantry Regiment—the famed Buffalo Soldiers—after members of the Houston Police Department violently menaced them and citizens of the local black community. It all took place over one single bloody night.
In the wake of the uprising, scores lay dead, including bystanders, police, and soldiers. This incident remains one of Texas’ most complicated and misrepresented historical events. It shook race relations in Houston and created conditions that sparked a nationwide surge of racial activism. In the aftermath of the carnage, what was considered the “trial of the century” ensued. Even for its time, its profundity and racial significance rivals that of the O.J. Simpson trial eight decades later. The courts-martial resulted in the hanging of over a dozen black soldiers, eliciting memories of slave rebellions. But was justice served?
New evidence from declassified historical archives indicates that the courts-martial were rushed in an attempt to placate an angered white population as well as military brass. Mutiny of Rage sheds new light on a suppressed chapter in U.S. history. It also sets the legal record straight on what really happened, all while situating events in the larger context of race relations in America, from Nat Turner to George Floyd.
In the wake of the uprising, scores lay dead, including bystanders, police, and soldiers. This incident remains one of Texas’ most complicated and misrepresented historical events. It shook race relations in Houston and created conditions that sparked a nationwide surge of racial activism. In the aftermath of the carnage, what was considered the “trial of the century” ensued. Even for its time, its profundity and racial significance rivals that of the O.J. Simpson trial eight decades later. The courts-martial resulted in the hanging of over a dozen black soldiers, eliciting memories of slave rebellions. But was justice served?
New evidence from declassified historical archives indicates that the courts-martial were rushed in an attempt to placate an angered white population as well as military brass. Mutiny of Rage sheds new light on a suppressed chapter in U.S. history. It also sets the legal record straight on what really happened, all while situating events in the larger context of race relations in America, from Nat Turner to George Floyd.
- GenresNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 15, 2024
Lincoln freed the slaves, but full respect was still not given to the blacks by many of the citizens of the United States of America. Policies like: "separate but equal", quota systems, extra exams to qualify to vote, poll taxes, and restricted places for living, eating, and worship were efforts by the KKK and similar groups to keep the Negro "in his place". Mr. Salazar presents a good racial history of Texas in the Negro's struggle to become fully free using the military and the Buffalo Soldiers and the additional application of "separate but equal" policies which led to numerous riots, especially in the South where the equal concept is yet to be understood and practiced. The 1917 Camp Logan riots and the events of 2020 are related in so many ways when fully examined. The current protests about the wars in Israel and Ukraine are also related. A good balanced read.
June 14, 2022
For the sake of expediency I’ll put the TLDR of this review up front: it’s a solid book. It does a good job of engaging the reader and explaining the history and context that led up to the Camp Logan Riots as well as discussing the aftermath. My middling review is primarily from disappointment with the quality of the book’s analysis of contemporary events largely due (I believe) to the book having ostensibly been written while the George Floyd protests were still ongoing. One thing that did NOT detract from my enjoyment of the book but might for others is the author’s propensity for abrupt asides to mention historical parallels or literary allusions. The author references Kafka, Conrad, Dolstoyevsky, and John Donne just to name a few. To some this might feel pretentious but I didn’t really mind.
Similarly, Salazar has a tendency to abruptly bring up a historical parallel to whatever is being discussed, say maybe a single sentence expanding on that event and then just as abruptly go back to whatever was being talked about before. It was quite jarring for me at first and it almost started to break up my sense of time in the “narrative,” made things begin to feel almost surreal. For some that might be a deal breaker in a history book but I actually quite liked it, especially in a book discussing race relations in the US it helps cement that as the book’s central theme as opposed to the specific period of history it actually covers.
Anyway, on to my more detailed expansion on my criticisms.
__________________________________________
This book had a lot going for it. It's the first book on the Camp Logan Riots to come out since the 70s (with the exception of a shorter 100 page book done by a photographer and amateur historian for the riots' 100 year anniversary that I'm vaguely aware of). The riots are a criminally under discussed incident in American History (especially in the south, even more so in Houston) and I was elated to learn of a new book exploring the event. What's more, the decision to tie the Camp Logan Riots (a night of violent unrest catalyzed by the brutal beating of a black man by Houston police after weeks of undisguised hostility from Houston's residents in general) to the George Floyd Protests of 2020 (a period of intense civil unrest catalyzed by the murder of a black man from Houston at the hands of Minneapolis police after years of similar killings) seemed inspired. However, after reading it I feel the dust hadn't settled nearly enough at the time of the book's writing and publishing for the attempt at topicality to hold up.
The most easy instance of this to point out is a statement made later in the book contrasting black houstonians requesting a stronger police presence following the Camp Logan riots (though Salazar fails to mention part of that request was specifically asking for more “colored officers” to be hired) with the Defund Movement during the Floyd Protests. Of this, Salazar says “police forces of several major cites were defunded or wholly disbanded” (Pg 124) citing an article discussing the Minneapolis City Council’s announcement that they intended to disband the police department. Two years later we can see that never happened. Indeed, no major city “wholly disbanded” their police departments at all, many who promised to defund theirs didn’t, the few who followed through (like Austin, Tx) had to deal with state governments passing laws to reverse their decisions, and overall police budgets are still the highest they’ve ever been. Contrasting the black community’s response in the two incidents was valid and worth discussion but the framing and information used became outdated almost immediately.
That statement and another comment about how “In 2020, the widespread nationwide protests against racism were eventually taken over by a narrow cadre of white, university-educated Marxists” (Pg. 111) with no citation at all damage the book’s merit quite severely in my eyes. At the very least it brings any discussion of the George Floyd protests into question. The narrative that Floyd was co-opted by a cabal of white marxists is such a laughable characterization of the late George Floyd protests that I won’t even bother refuting it.
That last quote offers another feature that I felt detracted from the book: Salazar has an unfortunate habit of making pretty extraordinary statements which he then doesn’t bother citing a source for. This doesn’t necessarily mean I think what’s said is automatically wrong, for example Salazar says early on that “Although anti-Hispanic prejudice was qualitatively different from the black sort, Latinos were arguably more economically and politically disadvantaged than blacks.” (Pg. 27) but doesn’t cite any source and doesn’t go on to argue for this “arguable” position, he just sort of says it and drops it. That could be true, there could be a decent argument to be made about that but you won’t know what that argument is nor will you know where to look for it because there’s no citation.
The quintessential example of this comes on the last page when he says “Even in 1917, most Houston police were fair-minded and descent.” (Pg. 184) After spending the preceding 183 pages explaining how the Houston Police Department’s mistreatment of the soldiers played a crucial role in triggering the riot. He even discusses the police chief of the time who was ostensibly a reformer who wanted the police to not be racist or trigger happy, but who was incapable of getting his police department to fall in line because of how deeply entrenched that culture was. If you ever find yourself writing that most of ANY city’s cops were fair minded and decent IN 1917 you have to at least cite a source.
With all that being said, the sources that Salazar DOES use are actually pretty good. For the riots it’s almost exclusively news papers from the period and court/police records, with a handful of other academic essays and the aforementioned book from the 70s about the riots. Even the contemporary/George Floyd related sources were pretty uniformly well selected (ignoring the earlier criticism that the dust hadn’t settled for the facts to remain accurate). He uses Balko’s “Rise of the Warrior Cop” when (briefly) mentioning police militarization, several academic journals which analyzed the Rodney King beating and resulting LA Riots, his source for the defund movement was The Appeal (a pro-defund organization which I would argue is a good source to use when discussing what the defund movement believes/is trying to do) the only source I found personally objectionable was an opinion piece by noted torture enjoyer and general hack Marc Thiessen, used as the source for mentioning David Dorn’s murder in the context of collateral damage/deaths in the wake of the Floyd Protests. (A choice I find quite bewildering because there are several non-opinion pieces from non-wingnuts that are contemporaneous to Thiessen’s piece that he could have used instead but to each their own) While I have my own thoughts on the Dorn situation I think it’s a valid thing to include so my complaint isn’t even really over topic here, it’s just over the specific person cited in the notes which is admittedly quite a pedantic complaint.
In the spirit of pedantic complaints, the last thing I want to winge about involves the endnotes. Salazar appears to be using the Chicago style Notes Bibliography system (or a rough approximation) so each time a source is used it gets a little superscript number and at the end of the book it just tells you what source the information came from. Most of the time. Of the 540 end notes, there are a little under a dozen with additional commentary, however these special asides are not differentiated to the reader. The only way you would know is if you either check the end notes one at a time whenever you come across a citation as you read the book, or read the end notes in their entirety. Because of that I would guess many readers will completely miss the notes. Are they absolutely necessary for the reader? No, of course not. They’re not particularly earth shattering or special but they’re still nice little informative snippets that help expand on the material and I think it’s a shame for them to be buried in the back of a book to be overlooked and ignored.
I would have strongly encouraged either including those asides as footnotes on their respective pages or at least indicating there’s additional commentary with an asterisk or something after the superscript. For any who plan to read the book and want to know what these mildly irksome surprise notes are, they are as follows: Chapter 1 endnotes 1, 6, and 28; Chapter 3 endnotes 9 and 10; Chapter 4 endnote 12; Chapter 5 endnote 39; Chapter 8 endnote 38; Chapter 9 endnote 37; Chapter 10 endnote 29.
With all of that being said: I would like to end this review by saying that I do still definitely recommend this book if you have even a passing interest in the subject. While somewhat flawed, it’s still definitely worth the read.
Similarly, Salazar has a tendency to abruptly bring up a historical parallel to whatever is being discussed, say maybe a single sentence expanding on that event and then just as abruptly go back to whatever was being talked about before. It was quite jarring for me at first and it almost started to break up my sense of time in the “narrative,” made things begin to feel almost surreal. For some that might be a deal breaker in a history book but I actually quite liked it, especially in a book discussing race relations in the US it helps cement that as the book’s central theme as opposed to the specific period of history it actually covers.
Anyway, on to my more detailed expansion on my criticisms.
__________________________________________
This book had a lot going for it. It's the first book on the Camp Logan Riots to come out since the 70s (with the exception of a shorter 100 page book done by a photographer and amateur historian for the riots' 100 year anniversary that I'm vaguely aware of). The riots are a criminally under discussed incident in American History (especially in the south, even more so in Houston) and I was elated to learn of a new book exploring the event. What's more, the decision to tie the Camp Logan Riots (a night of violent unrest catalyzed by the brutal beating of a black man by Houston police after weeks of undisguised hostility from Houston's residents in general) to the George Floyd Protests of 2020 (a period of intense civil unrest catalyzed by the murder of a black man from Houston at the hands of Minneapolis police after years of similar killings) seemed inspired. However, after reading it I feel the dust hadn't settled nearly enough at the time of the book's writing and publishing for the attempt at topicality to hold up.
The most easy instance of this to point out is a statement made later in the book contrasting black houstonians requesting a stronger police presence following the Camp Logan riots (though Salazar fails to mention part of that request was specifically asking for more “colored officers” to be hired) with the Defund Movement during the Floyd Protests. Of this, Salazar says “police forces of several major cites were defunded or wholly disbanded” (Pg 124) citing an article discussing the Minneapolis City Council’s announcement that they intended to disband the police department. Two years later we can see that never happened. Indeed, no major city “wholly disbanded” their police departments at all, many who promised to defund theirs didn’t, the few who followed through (like Austin, Tx) had to deal with state governments passing laws to reverse their decisions, and overall police budgets are still the highest they’ve ever been. Contrasting the black community’s response in the two incidents was valid and worth discussion but the framing and information used became outdated almost immediately.
That statement and another comment about how “In 2020, the widespread nationwide protests against racism were eventually taken over by a narrow cadre of white, university-educated Marxists” (Pg. 111) with no citation at all damage the book’s merit quite severely in my eyes. At the very least it brings any discussion of the George Floyd protests into question. The narrative that Floyd was co-opted by a cabal of white marxists is such a laughable characterization of the late George Floyd protests that I won’t even bother refuting it.
That last quote offers another feature that I felt detracted from the book: Salazar has an unfortunate habit of making pretty extraordinary statements which he then doesn’t bother citing a source for. This doesn’t necessarily mean I think what’s said is automatically wrong, for example Salazar says early on that “Although anti-Hispanic prejudice was qualitatively different from the black sort, Latinos were arguably more economically and politically disadvantaged than blacks.” (Pg. 27) but doesn’t cite any source and doesn’t go on to argue for this “arguable” position, he just sort of says it and drops it. That could be true, there could be a decent argument to be made about that but you won’t know what that argument is nor will you know where to look for it because there’s no citation.
The quintessential example of this comes on the last page when he says “Even in 1917, most Houston police were fair-minded and descent.” (Pg. 184) After spending the preceding 183 pages explaining how the Houston Police Department’s mistreatment of the soldiers played a crucial role in triggering the riot. He even discusses the police chief of the time who was ostensibly a reformer who wanted the police to not be racist or trigger happy, but who was incapable of getting his police department to fall in line because of how deeply entrenched that culture was. If you ever find yourself writing that most of ANY city’s cops were fair minded and decent IN 1917 you have to at least cite a source.
With all that being said, the sources that Salazar DOES use are actually pretty good. For the riots it’s almost exclusively news papers from the period and court/police records, with a handful of other academic essays and the aforementioned book from the 70s about the riots. Even the contemporary/George Floyd related sources were pretty uniformly well selected (ignoring the earlier criticism that the dust hadn’t settled for the facts to remain accurate). He uses Balko’s “Rise of the Warrior Cop” when (briefly) mentioning police militarization, several academic journals which analyzed the Rodney King beating and resulting LA Riots, his source for the defund movement was The Appeal (a pro-defund organization which I would argue is a good source to use when discussing what the defund movement believes/is trying to do) the only source I found personally objectionable was an opinion piece by noted torture enjoyer and general hack Marc Thiessen, used as the source for mentioning David Dorn’s murder in the context of collateral damage/deaths in the wake of the Floyd Protests. (A choice I find quite bewildering because there are several non-opinion pieces from non-wingnuts that are contemporaneous to Thiessen’s piece that he could have used instead but to each their own) While I have my own thoughts on the Dorn situation I think it’s a valid thing to include so my complaint isn’t even really over topic here, it’s just over the specific person cited in the notes which is admittedly quite a pedantic complaint.
In the spirit of pedantic complaints, the last thing I want to winge about involves the endnotes. Salazar appears to be using the Chicago style Notes Bibliography system (or a rough approximation) so each time a source is used it gets a little superscript number and at the end of the book it just tells you what source the information came from. Most of the time. Of the 540 end notes, there are a little under a dozen with additional commentary, however these special asides are not differentiated to the reader. The only way you would know is if you either check the end notes one at a time whenever you come across a citation as you read the book, or read the end notes in their entirety. Because of that I would guess many readers will completely miss the notes. Are they absolutely necessary for the reader? No, of course not. They’re not particularly earth shattering or special but they’re still nice little informative snippets that help expand on the material and I think it’s a shame for them to be buried in the back of a book to be overlooked and ignored.
I would have strongly encouraged either including those asides as footnotes on their respective pages or at least indicating there’s additional commentary with an asterisk or something after the superscript. For any who plan to read the book and want to know what these mildly irksome surprise notes are, they are as follows: Chapter 1 endnotes 1, 6, and 28; Chapter 3 endnotes 9 and 10; Chapter 4 endnote 12; Chapter 5 endnote 39; Chapter 8 endnote 38; Chapter 9 endnote 37; Chapter 10 endnote 29.
With all of that being said: I would like to end this review by saying that I do still definitely recommend this book if you have even a passing interest in the subject. While somewhat flawed, it’s still definitely worth the read.
November 6, 2021
I’m glad that someone finally wrote about this story. For too long the only account was _A Night of Violence_ , which was faulty. However, I don’t know how much I trust this version either. There were things stated that made me think “why say that?”. I guess we’ll never know the real story of what happened that night in 1917.
October 4, 2023
The book is excellent. Well researched and well written. However the authors sympathy for the soldiers ( who were victims of racial bias and routine injustices) comes thru a bit too strong which leads one to wonder if all the facts are fairly presented .
Oh. And one other point. Eugene Bullard was not a celebrated WW1 ace. French records do not reflect any victories although he may have downed one or two planes This doesn't detract from the point that as a black American he managed to become a fighter pilot in WW1 with a French squadron
Oh. And one other point. Eugene Bullard was not a celebrated WW1 ace. French records do not reflect any victories although he may have downed one or two planes This doesn't detract from the point that as a black American he managed to become a fighter pilot in WW1 with a French squadron
September 18, 2025
2.5. An important topic and another example of part of US history that one must learn about on their own because secondary school and general university courses don’t teach it. However, the book lacked strong organization and clear transitions. The author also chose to randomly point to moments in ancient and modern history as potential comparisons, but these moments are either irrelevant or inadequately explained. In short, read it because it’s important history, but enter with average expectations.
May 4, 2023
I never knew anything about this event in Huston in 1917. I thought Salazar did a good job of explaining (maybe exposing) what happened, the cause, the trials, and the aftermath of an event that seems to have been at best forgotten, but just as likely, to have been buried. He (Salazar) also did it in a readable and concise fashion.
December 24, 2025
It’s a good story and the book is well researched but the writing is terrible. Eventually, I did force myself to slog it out but it was a constant battle of putting the book down for weeks at a time. The narrative style is bad, to fill up the page (or because of poor editing) the author includes random, yet constant deviations, into the storyline that he clumsily tried to link to the text. It is a really annoying distraction that ruins an important story that more people should learn. Particularly JAGs.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews