Biography
First Sergeant Vida Henry, a nineteen-year veteran of the all-Black 24th Infantry Regiment and a leader in Company I, took command of the soldiers' uprising during the Houston riot of 1917 (the Camp Logan mutiny). On the night of 23 August 1917 — after Houston police enforcing Jim Crow had beaten and arrested men of the regiment — Henry formed a column of about 150 soldiers and led them on a march into the city. As the march broke up outside the San Felipe district, he shook hands with the remaining men, told them he intended to take his own life, and was found dead the next morning. Never captured or tried, he was not among the 118 soldiers court-martialed — of whom 19 were executed and 63 imprisoned for life — whose 110 convictions the U.S. Army set aside in 2023.
