SAN ANTONIO — Every headstone has a story at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. With small American flags in hand, Air Force veteran Billy Gordon visited the graveyard to pay homage to his fallen brothers.

“It’s a way to honor them for serving the nation,” Gordon said as he placed flags near a headstone.

Gordon visited to see the men buried in plots 20 through 36. That’s where 17 members of the all-Black 24th Infantry are buried. The 24th Infantry was sent to Houston to guard Camp Logan in 1917. For months they encountered racism from civilians and local police, which sparked the Houston Riot of 1917. Of the 64 soldiers tried for mutiny, 19 men were hanged at Ft. Sam after being found guilty.

“It saddens me to hear and see what happened to these men,” said Gordon, who's a founder of the Bexar County Buffalo Soldier Association. “Because it could have happened to me if I had been in service at that time.” 

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott visited San Antonio after making a movie about the men called “The 24th.” 

Willmot said these men’s headstones represent buried American history. 

“To actually see their graves was a moving experience,” Willmott said. “Because we depict their lives in the film, but to see their real lives and their headstones.”

Willmott says he wrote the movie "The 24th" nearly 30 years ago. When the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum invited him to a screening of the film at the River Walk, he said he had come out because the story is still relevant.

“Police abuse is still a big problem in America,” Willmott said. “These guys were dealing with that over 100 years ago with the police brutalizing them in Houston, Texas, and then eventually fighting back and the riot happening.”

Gordon said the film shows what’s possible when people are treated unfairly.

“What happened was legal, but it was not just,” Gordon said.

In 1937 their bodies were moved from a mass grave to the national cemetery without normal military inscriptions on their headstones, just their execution date.

“They do not have their rank,” Gordon said. “They do not have their branch of service like all these other headstones.”

Only a few have heard about the trial of the 24th, even though it’s the largest murder trial in American history.

“San Antonio is a great city,” Willmott said. “What makes a city great is embracing its past. Embracing its history, even the difficult parts of it.”