I t’s often said that Houston isn’t much of a protest city.
But in the late 1970s, after 23-year-old Vietnam War veteran José “Joe” Campos Torres was beaten by Houston police officers and left to die in Buffalo Bayou, the city’s Latino community spent 12 months proving otherwise. Grieving and organizing together, the appetite for justice that had been building within the community for a year erupted at Moody Park on the night of May 7, 1978, in what some call a riot, and others, a rebellion.
Today marks the 49th anniversary of Torres’ brutal murder, and the two events (his killing and the riot a year later) have proven inseparable in the historical record. To understand one, you have to understand the other. So, let’s start by looking back at the life and death of a man who deserved better from the city he called home, a man every Houstonian should know by name.
Who was José “Joe” Campos Torres?
Torres grew up in Houston between Denver Harbor and Second Ward, one of seven children in a working-class Mexican American family…