Heather Kushnerick, M.A, M.L.S., C.A. — special collections librarian and college archivist for The Fred Parks Law Library at South Texas College of Law Houston — recently inspired law librarians from around the world with her story about a collection of military records that led to long-delayed justice.
The well-attended talk was part of the 43rd annual meeting of the International Association of Law Libraries, a prestigious event that took place in Houston this year and was hosted by The Fred Parks Law Library.
Partnering with criminal attorney and military law expert Terri Zimmerman, an adjunct professor at STCL Houston and a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Kushnerick discussed creating a digital collection of military records that ultimately led to justice for more than 100 Black World War I soldiers denied a fair trial in 1917.
Reading these historic documents changed some perspectives for Kushnerick. A California native who spent part of her childhood living in Germany, she attended a suburban, middle-class high school in north Texas. “I grew up knowing interracial couples. I had no personal history with racial violence,” she said.
The Historical Event
On a sweltering August night in Houston, the sound of gunfire erupted. Within a few days’ time, the nation would read headlines about one of the deadliest racial incidents in U.S. military history — the Houston Race Riot of 1917.
Houston’s race riot — which was technically a mutiny in time of war — began just outside Camp Logan, a military training base under construction on the city’s outskirts. The soldiers assigned to guard the base were members of the 3rd Battalion, 24th U.S. Infantry Regiment, a highly decorated, all-Black unit.
They had fought bravely on the frontier during the Indian Wars, hence they were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by the Native Americans. Later, the men of the 24th battled fiercely in the Philippines and rode with General “Black Jack” Jim Pershing against Pancho Villa. However, in segregated, Jim Crow-era Houston, neither their history of bravery nor their U.S. Army uniforms offered any protection from racism.
The soldiers endured daily slurs and harassment at the hands of white police officers and the citizens of Houston. The tension was combustible, and on Aug. 23, 1917, it finally exploded.
That afternoon, two Houston police officers arrested a Black woman and brutally beat a Black soldier who tried to intervene. When a corporal from the 24th Infantry went to inquire about the soldier’s arrest, he was pistol-whipped and taken into custody. False rumors soon spread through the camp that a white mob was approaching with the intent to kill soldiers.
In fear and fury, more than 100 armed soldiers marched toward the city. Along the way, confusion and panic took hold. They exchanged fire with police officers and armed, white civilians. By the time the violence ended hours later, five Black soldiers and 15 white Houstonians were dead.
The military’s response was swift and severe. Martial law was declared, and the 24th Infantry was disarmed. In December of that same year, 63 black soldiers were court-martialed as a group at Ft. Sam Houston, in San Antonio. Thirteen were hanged within days — the largest mass execution of American soldiers by the U.S. Army. Forty-one others received life sentences. Two other trials followed. In total, 110 soldiers were convicted. Nineteen of them were executed. No white civilians or police officers faced trial.
How Kushnerick’s Project Came About
“As a historian with a master’s degree, educated in Texas, I was truly shocked that I had never heard of the 1917 Houston Race Riot, or its consequences,” Kushnerick said. “I was very new to The Fred Parks Law Library when I first heard about it from my former colleague, Jessica Alexander.”
Alexander, who was a reference librarian at the time, not only told Kushnerick about the event but also informed her of a microfilm collection the library owned — the Houston Mutiny and Riot Records.
“The collection is 16 reels of microfilm containing the military and trial documents of this event, which are housed in the National Archives,” Kushnerick said. “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had microfilmed these files in the 1970s, and institutions could buy them. Many research institutions across the country also have these records; we were just the first ones to think about digitizing them.”
Fresh from a professional conference about digital preservation methods, Kushnerick had already been planning to start a digital archive at The Fred Parks Law Library.
“This was the perfect opportunity to create a purposeful digital collection, one that would bring this hidden collection into the light,” she said. “Making these records available to all was important, and no one wants to go through microfilm anymore. I knew getting these documents online would provide researchers in legal history, military history, Texas history, Houston history, and the history of race relations in our country unlimited access from their living rooms.”
The Fred Parks Law Library partnered with a vendor, Law Library Microfilm Consortium, to digitize the microfilm. In total, 15,000 digital files had to be reviewed, organized, and put back together into their original form.
“A lot of work that had to be done to make the digital files usable,” Kushnerick said. “Some documents were in triplicate, the trial transcripts didn’t always have page numbers, and they weren’t always in order.” It took two years to put the documents back together and to transcribe the handwritten letters in the prisoners’ files.
Going through the records proved to be an emotional experience for Kushnerick. “I read their testimony, their letters, and their family’s letters as I transcribed them,” she said.
She recalls wanting to cry sometimes as she typed. “As a historian who has read and studied about conflict and injustice over time, the unfairness of the trials was so obvious. It was infuriating.”
The buffalo soldiers had been given little notice of their death sentences. Most of them wrote to their families immediately, knowing they would most likely be hanged before their letters were delivered. Many claimed they were innocent of the charges against them.
“I credit Jessica with the idea of wanting to make the legal community aware of our online collection,” said Kushnerick.
What began as a plan to observe the 95th anniversary of the race riot with a continuing legal education seminar became a daylong, open-to-the-public symposium with multiple guest lecturers — including Angela Holder, a local history professor and the great-niece of one of executed soldiers. “It was packed full,” said Kushnerick. “In 2012, we had no idea where it would lead.”
Word spread that a treasure trove of information was available to anyone interested in learning more about the riot and the buffalo soldiers. “The creation of the digital archive at The Fred Parks Law Library and the connections made at our symposium were really the starting point for the clemency process,” Kushnerick said.
Without access to this digital archive — and the persistence of dedicated family members like Holder and other individuals (including a seasoned military affairs reporter for the San Antonio Express-News) seeking justice for the men of the 24th Infantry — the riot/mutiny and subsequent courts martial would have perhaps remained unnoticed by historians and eventually been forgotten.
“As I understand it, the families had been trying to get pardons for the executed soldiers,” Kushnerick said. “The military legal experts involved determined pardons were not going to be possible. Crimes were committed, and people died. What seemed possible, however, was to seek clemency for all the soldiers based on the failures in trial procedure.”
By the end of 2022, the team of legal experts from STCL Houston — full-time faculty, adjunct professors, and dozens of law-student researchers in the law school’s Actual Innocence Clinic — and the NAACP had filed a 129-page petition for review with the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, complete with letters of support.
“It was an amazing coalition of professors, descendants, historians, and students who worked on this project,” said Kushnerick, eager to credit the hard work of all involved. “We in the library were assisting in the research, helping them pull things from different archives and other sources as they worked on the petitions. I am proud to have been part of this team.”
In examining the case, the review board found that the original trials were flawed with procedural deficiencies: the soldiers had no civilian-licensed defense counsel, had only a few days to prepare, and much of the evidence consisted of inconsistent or speculative identification of accused men under poor lighting. Executions were carried out within 24 hours without meaningful appeal. These systemic defects played a key role in the Army’s decision.
In late 2023, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth accepted the board’s unanimous recommendation to set aside the convictions of all 110 soldiers. She called the move “setting the record straight,” acknowledging that the men had been denied due process and punished because of their race.
“The outcome of this story is extremely important,” Kushnerick said. “You don’t see the righting of historical wrongs very often, if at all. But this is the kind of thing we strive for at South Texas College of Law Houston. When the whole community comes together, we can move mountains. I think in today’s world this lesson is more important than ever.”
