Herman Short

Summary

Houston Police Chief Herman Short, whose order sent the Houston police into the Texas Southern University dormitories on the night of May 16-17, 1967, in the June-July 1967 SNCC Newsletter’s reporting and in Rev. William Lawson’s eyewitness account (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.2, p.7-8).

The newsletter’s facts box gives his order to the 500 cops who charged the dormitories as the order to go in there and clean out this mess (PDF p.2). The strength is given differently within the issue: the facts box and Carolyn Baker’s editorial give 500 (PDF p.2), while Lawson’s account gives over six hundred policemen in the charge (PDF p.7); both figures are held as printed.
Lawson’s account describes his negotiation with Lawson, Rev. F.D. Kirkpatrick and Rev. Earl Allen, his compromise of pulling the barricade of squad cars back without blocking off Wheeler Street, and his order, without warning, to charge the dormitories and shoot as they charged; Lawson, questioned with others in Short’s office at 4:00 A.M. on May 17, told the Chief that his own command had endangered his men (PDF p.7).
In Lawson’s conclusion, the Chief realized he had ordered his own officers to risk death and, when no serious opposition developed, had to confess there never were the hordes of snipers they had pretended filled the dormitories; it became vital for him, facing his city and the widow of his young officer, to prove the decision wise and approved even by Negroes; and he will hear for the rest of his life his own words — the orders he did not give, to call them out and search them or to throw a few tear-gas bombs and force them out (PDF p.8).

tags
aliases