Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1917 — 13 Nagroes Hang—4l Given Life Sentences [ARTICLE]

13 Nagroes Hang—4l Given Life Sentences

San Antonio, Tex., Dec. 11.— Thirteen negroes, soldiers of the Twenty-fourth United States infantry, were hanged to death .simultaneously at dawn today in exjiation of theirm urder of Houston citizens last August when members of that regiment engaged in mutinous rioting in the city’s street. Forty-one negroes were sentenced to life imprisonment; four others for short terms and five were acquitted. In the dark of the night army motor trucks conveyed the lumber for the scaffold to a little clearing in a lonely mesquit'g on the big government reservation where the negroes convicted by court martial were to die. , > And there, by the light of bonofires, army engineers erected the death traps to which, at 5 o’clock in the morning other motor trucks hurried the condemned negroes and the officers and men of the military guard. It was the army motor truck, the only incident which, made this military execution different from previous ones, that enabled the officers in charge to keep secret the time and the place of \ the hanging. And it was the army truck that so quietly obliterated all traces of the execution and carried the dead bodies to a place nearby which is as indistinguishable as the execution site, before official announcement had been made of how the order of the court martial had been carried out. The bonfire illumination for the hanging just as the eastern sky was streaking with grey through the morning clouds, the bleak landscape of dull grey and bronze against which the new timbers of the rough scaffold stood out, the khaki-clad military guard, officers with coat collars upturned against the cold, all made an unforgettable picture. The condemned men were aroused this morning a few minutes before regular army reveille, 5:30 o’clock. The military guard had been summoned silently and no sound was heard in the camp where nearly forty thousand men were sleeping except the purring of the army truck motors awaiting their loads. The negroes dressed in their regular uniforms as carefully as for inspection. They displayed neither bravado nor fear. They rode to the execution singing a hymn but the singing was as that of soldiers on the march. Arrived at the clearing, the singing stopped, the men, shackled, were helped from the trucks to the scaffold and seated on chairs. A lew “good-bye boys” addressed to members of their military guard, who had been in charge of the negroes since they were brought here from Ft. Bliss, was the only expression from any of the negroes. An army chaplain offered prayers. An officer called “attention” and as on parade, the negroes stood erect. They stood quietly while caps and nooses were adjusted and then stepped on the traps. The major in charge of the execution gave a signa! and soldiers plunged nine feet to instant death.