Houston Riot of 1917 Gentlemen and generals, members of the Bar, I ask you to hear and review the facts just as they are, in the matter of this riot and soldiers’ mutiny, of the Third Battalion, 24th black US Infantry.   The boys were sent to Houston, from free New Mexico, under orders from the War Department telling them to go, but the segregated Texans denied equality, they saw black soldiers as a threat to racial harmony.   Two hundred Negro soldiers refused the Jim Crow stamp. A mob of angry citizens approached Fort Houston camp. Sergeant Vida Henry,…