Almost from the arrival of the Twenty-fourth Infantry in Houston, the presence of black soldiers in the segregated Texas city caused conflict. Jim Crow laws were in place when the Twenty-fourth was deployed in Columbus, New Mexico, and as a result, in Houston the soldiers encountered segregated street cars and white workers at Camp Logan who demanded drinking water facilities be separated by race into "white" and "colored". Prior to the riot, the soldiers from the Twenty-fourth were involved in a number of "clashes" with city police, several of which resulted in the soldiers sustaining injuries after being beaten and attacked.