Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 294

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MILITARY.) Billie Mayfield Jr. Chroniclings of Billie: Camp Logan Ballads. 16 pages. Quarto, 11 x 6¼ inches, original color wrappers, moderate wear and soiling; rehinged with tape, coming disbound, 3-inch closed tear to final leaf. [Houston, TX], [1917]
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Additional Details

This series of satirical poems addresses the "Camp Logan Mutiny," also known as the "Houston Race Riot of 1917." In response to egregious harassment, members of the all-Black 24th Infantry Regiment engaged in a pitched battle with Houston police and civilians. Afterwards, 110 soldiers were convicted and 19 executed. The Army set aside their convictions in 2023, finding that "these Soldiers were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials."

These poems were originally written by Billie Mayfield Jr. for his popular column in the Houston Chronicle. Just a few years later he became "the most ardent public spokesman for the Klan in Houston" (Casey Greene, "Guardians Against Change: The Ku Klux Klan in Houston and Harris County, 1920-1925, in Houston History 8:1). In other words, he was not sympathetic to the men of the 24th Regiment.

In the first poem, "The Mutiny," Mayfield describes his small role in suppressing the mutiny: "Sheriff Hammond / Says, Billie, I want you / To join a picked squad, / And I gulped / And they put a howitzer / On my side / And a siege gun / In my hand / And I felt ferocious. . . I didn't feel so ferocious / After we got into / The nigger quarters. / Captain Green said / 'Boys, it will be wrong / Very wrong, to kill / Any of these / Murderers. / I think anyone / Who does so / Ought to be-- / Well, ought to be / Censured.'"

No other examples traced (in OCLC or at auction) of this overtly racist document of the Camp Logan Mutiny.

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