William Monroe Trotter - the first African American to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key at Harvard - pushes a petition calling for mercy for still imprisoned soldiers of the 24th US Colored Infantry

"To free by pardon or on parole the Colored soldiers of the gallant 24th in Fort Leavenworth federal prison already so long for retaliation, poorly proven or not proven at all, against goading insult and provocation and insult to women of their race. We do now ask whether you will grant this special plea for clemency."

The Secretary of the National Equal Rights League writes to a Massachusetts state senator asking for his support for clemency for black soldiers imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. The drive on behalf of soldiers convicted of participation in the 1917 Houston riot, resulted in 124,000 signatures, and reduction in the sentences of the 54 soldiers still in prison. (19 of the soldiers had already been executed).

WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER. Typed Letter Signed, to Albert P. Wadleigh, Boston, February 1, 1924. With a blank printed petition to President Calvin Coolidge, and an envelope to return the petition to the National Equal Rights League in Boston. 2 pp.

Excerpts:

"On Oct. 6 this League presented to President Coolidge at the White House a Colored American race petition of which the following was a plank:-

"'To free by pardon or on parole the Colored soldiers of the gallant 24th in Fort Leavenworth federal prison already so long for retaliation, poorly proven or not proven at all, against goading insult and provocation and insult to women of their race. We do now ask whether you will grant this special plea for clemency.'

"President Coolidge is to receive two national delegations February 7, to make the formal plea and present signature petitions and appeals for those soldiers, one delegation from this League. Since President Coolidge and the Secretary of War are both from Mass., where also our League has its National Headquarters, we desire to carry with us the conscience and heart of Mass. for these soldiers, ever brave, ever loyal, whose self-control only broke down under terrible persecution and who, with 19 comrades executed and no whites penalized, have been punished sufficiently for mercy to come.

"Will you please be one of the Mass. elected magistrates, officials and friends of our race to sign the enclosed petition."

Petition:

"We, the undersigned, citizens of Massachusetts, publicly elected officials, hereby join in the nation-wide appeal of our fellow Colored American citizens, to be presented to you at the White House, February 7, 1924 for the pardon of the 54 Colored soldiers of the U.S. Infantry regiment, still incarcerated in Fort Leavenworth federal prison for the so-called 'Houston Riot' of August 1917, in the representation to us that they never have been guilty of disloyalty, cowardice, or treason, or of breach of prison rules."

Historical Background

In July 1917, 654 African American soldiers of the 24th U.S. Infantry arrived in Houston, Texas, to guard the construction site of Camp Logan. After white Houston police officers beat two of the soldiers, a mob of more than 150 soldiers marched into Houston, killing 12 policemen and civilians and (accidently) 4 fellow soldiers. In the three courts martial that followed in San Antonio, nearly 200 witnesses testified. At the first trial, 13 soldiers were convicted of murder; they were hung on December 11 at Camp Travis. At the second, 15 were tried, and 5 were sentenced to death. In the third, in the spring of 1918, 40 were tried, 23 were found guilty, and 11 sentenced to death. In August 1918, President Woodrow Wilson commuted 10 of the death sentences to life in prison. In all, 19 of the soldiers were executed, 41 were given life sentences, and several received lesser sentences.

When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its annual conference in Kansas City, the delegates visited the imprisoned soldiers at Fort Leavenworth. In October 1923, Boston editor and activist William Monroe Trotter met with Calvin Coolidge, who had just become president two months earlier after Warren G. Harding unexpectedly died. Trotter urged Coolidge to support an anti-lynching bill expected to come before Congress in 1924 and to take steps to increase the enrollment of African Americans at the Military and Naval Academies.

The unsigned petition here suggests that Trotter failed to get Massachusetts state senator Albert P. Wadleigh to join the petition drive. But, in February 1924, representatives of the NAACP and the National Equal Rights League presented petitions with 124,000 signatures urging the pardon of still imprisoned soldiers of the 24th U.S. Infantry. The petitions and a meeting with President Coolidge resulted in a War Department investigation that reduced the sentences of all the soldiers still in prison.

William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934) was born in Ohio to formerly enslaved parents. His father served in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and was the first African American to rise to the rank of lieutenant. The family moved back to Boston when he was an infant. The younger Trotter graduated as valedictorian from the otherwise all-white Hyde Park High School and went on to Harvard University, where he became the first African American to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1895 and a master's in 1896. Three years later, he married Geraldine Louise Pindell (1872-1918); they had no children. In 1901 he co-founded the weekly Guardian newspaper that condemned accommodationist tactics. With W. E. B. Dubois, Trotter was one of the founders in 1905 of the Niagara Movement to fight segregation and disfranchisement. In 1908, Trotter organized a conference in Philadelphia that led to the founding of the Negro-American Political League, which eventually became the National Equal Rights League, an all-African American alternative to the NAACP. Trotter's opposition to Booker T. Washington put him at odds with Republican Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Trotter at first supported Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but the segregation of federal offices led to a very public rupture.

Albert P. Wadleigh (1886-1967) was a merchant in Merrimac, Massachusetts. In 1917, he became half owner of the Dutra Tobacco Company. He was a Republican member of the Massachusetts State Senate from 1923 to 1924. Once asked about Lt Governor Calvin Coolidge, Wadleigh replied, "I like him all right, but he makes me think of a human icicle."