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The “Court-martial
proceedings were one of the worst frame-ups
we have come across.”
Thurgood Marshall - NAACP Counsel
“It has been
a major struggle for many of the men to
talk about Port Chicago and the day of July
17, 1944.”
Sandra Evers-Manly - President,
Black Hollywood Education & Resource
Center
In 1944 when America
was at war, the majority of the seamen assigned
to load munitions onto Liberty ships in
this country were black. For the black Navy
recruits, it was their dream to serve this
country as sailors and be trained to go
to sea. That did not happen. Instead, some
of the men feared for their lives on their
own home land because of racial prejudice.
With dreams deferred and the prevailing
discriminatory attitudes of the Navy during
that time, the black seamen were assigned
to do either menial labor or dangerous work
such as loading ammunition without proper
training at port Chicago Naval Weapon Station.
On July 17, 1944 at
10:18 pm, two explosions, with a force equal
to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, nearly
leveled the Port Chicago area. Two military
cargo ships loaded with ammunition and the
entire Port Chicago waterfront (located
in the East Bay area outside of San Francisco)
vanished. Three hundred and twenty men died
from the blast, 202 of them – black
men. Hundreds of others were physically
and emotionally injured for life. The cause
of the blast was never determined. After
spending several weeks picking up the remains
of their fellow seamen, the surviving black
sailors were ordered to return to work on
August 9, 1944 to load ammunition at a nearby
base (Mare Island) under the same unsafe
working conditions that existed previously.
Fearful that another blast might happen,
258 of the black seamen refused to go back
to work and were consequently imprisoned
on a barge. Several days later, after being
threatened with the death penalty, 208 of
the black seamen agreed to return to work.
The remaining 50 were charged with mutiny,
an act punishable by death.
NAACP counsel Thurgood
Marshall, who represented the men, stated
that the “Court-martial proceedings
were one of the worst frame-ups we have
come across.”
There have been several
courageous efforts by Congressmen Pete Stark,
Ron Dellums and George Miller of Northern
California, along with others, to have the
Navy overturn the convictions based on new
evidence that demonstrates racial prejudice
played a major factor in the trial proceedings.
On January 7, 1994, the Navy refused to
overturn the convictions following a review
mandated by legislation approved by Congress.
Port Chicago is one
of America’s darkest and long forgotten
secrets. The black sailors who served their
country under horrific conditions deserve
recognition for their journey in the segregated
Navy.
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