Black & Blue

February is Black History Month, a fitting time to look at a slice of military history involving Black sailors.

The United States Naval Magazine at Port Chicago in Contra Costa County, California, about 35 miles northeast of San Francisco, near the city of Martinez, was formally established by an order of the Secretary of the Navy on June 27, 1942. It was designed to receive munitions by rail and load them from the railway cars directly onto seagoing vessels and barges.

The racial atmosphere and attitude in the Navy and at Port Chicago

Throughout World War II, the races served in segregated units. Blacks were excluded from all naval assignments except the messman’s service in 1941 when Frank Knox was Secretary of the Navy. Knox argued that to allow Black sailors to do other tasks would “provoke discord and demoralization.” The policy for Black seamen was known as “chambermaids for the braid.”

According to author Charles Wollenberg in a 1979 article in California History: “When Dorie Miller, a black messman, manned a machine gun and shot down at least four Japanese planes during the Pearl Harbor attack, Navy brass initially played down the incident, apparently to prevent attention to the fact that Black men could perform well in combat. But under pressure from civil rights groups and President Franklin Roosevelt, Knox finally announced on April 7, 1942, that black enlistees henceforth would be accepted for ‘general service.’ The ‘messman only’ era was at an end.”

However, the Navy’s new policy was not one of integration. In his book, The Port Chicago Mutiny, author Robert L. Allen described the racial conditions at Port Chicago. Blacks were required to wait for Whites to finish eating before entering the mess hall.

The explosion

When Black enlisted men, trained for combat, received orders to report to a seaport, they must have assumed they would have sea duty. In fact, the Navy’s policy at the time, even after Blacks were accepted for “general service,” was that it didn’t allow Blacks in combat. The reality was that the Navy’s commanding officers were all White, and all of the enlisted men assigned to load munitions onto ships at Port Chicago were African American. The men had received no training in munitions handling.

It was common for the White commanders to have wagers to see whose divisions could load the most ammunition in the shortest period of time. Those who didn’t win for their superiors had liberties reduced and leaves canceled. The officers had promised the men that none of the bombs were fused and therefore could not explode. The atmosphere was speed over safety. It was an accident waiting to happen.

There was a gigantic blast at the port on July 17, 1944, causing the deaths of 320 sailors and civilians and injuring approximately 400 others. The cargo ship E.A. Bryan had been loaded with over 4000 tons of munitions, 2000 of which were high explosives. After the blast, nothing was left of the E.A. Bryan. Another nearby cargo ship was also destroyed. Over 300 buildings were demolished or damaged. A column of fire and smoke rose over two miles high. It was the worst home front disaster of World War II.

Mutiny charged

Most of the enlisted men who were killed and maimed were African American. When the survivors were ordered to return to work a month after the explosion, some of the sailors refused to perform their duties due to unsafe and unfair working conditions. Over 250 Black men were arrested and incarcerated. After being threatened, 200 returned to work, but 50 refused to continue loading munitions under the prevailing unsafe conditions. Because the work refusals occurred within the military, the men, many still teenagers, were charged with mutiny. Had it been in civilian life, it would have been deemed a labor strike or work stoppage.

The officers in charge were cleared of any responsibility; their wagering was explained as healthy competition. In his book, Allen says it was the “Black troublemakers” who would bear the brunt of the terrible situation and get the officers off the hook. “Someone had to pay.”

What ensued was the longest and largest mutiny trial in naval history.

The trial

The mutiny trial in the form of a general court martial began on Sept. 14,1944 at Treasure Island Naval Base in San Francisco Bay.

Does the name James Frank Coakley sound familiar? He was the elected District Attorney of Alameda County when Huey Newton and other Black Panthers were tried for murder and other crimes in 1968.

But in 1944, he was Lieutenant Commander Coakley, the prosecutor for the Navy in the case of the 50 Black men charged with mutiny. He vehemently argued the seamen were cowards, guilty of treason and that fear was no excuse.

The presiding officer sided with Coakley on major rulings. For example, the defense argued that a mutiny required a deliberate attempt to usurp, subvert or override the authority of a superior officer. But Coakley countered that simultaneous disobedience of a lawful order by two or more persons amounted to a mutiny. Coakley’s argument prevailed. The prosecution also successfully introduced statements supposedly made by the accuseds, even though there were no witnesses who could identify who made the statements. One such unattributed statement was: “Don’t go to work for those white m _ _ _ f _ _ _ s.” Defense hearsay objections were overruled.

But the defense did score a few points. On cross-examination, prosecution witnesses admitted the defendants had been polite and respectful and had obeyed all orders except those to load ammunition. A psychiatrist testified the shock of the explosion could produce such great trauma that the men might reasonably refuse to load ammunition out of a sense of self-protection, pointing out the men received no psychiatric treatment after the disaster.

All 50 men testified they acted out of fear. They had no intention of challenging military authority. They said they only requested a change of duty.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, took up the cause for the sailors. He filed a brief on their behalf. The Black press created such nationwide media coverage of the trial that the new Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, permitted Marshall to sit in and observe the trial.

Marshall said he was disappointed by what was obvious racist railroading by the Navy and a seemingly toothless defense. According to author Allen, Marshall told reporters: “This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes. Negroes are not afraid of anything anymore than anyone else. Negroes in the Navy don’t mind loading ammunition. They just want to know why they are the only ones doing the loading! They want to know why they are segregated; why they don’t get promoted.”

On Oct. 24, 1944, the Navy trial board deliberated about 80 minutes, during which time they also managed to eat their lunch, before declaring the Port Chicago men guilty of mutiny. Marshall disgustedly told reporters that it averaged out to a minute and a half per defendant. Sentences ranged from eight to 15 years in prison. The sailors were busted to seaman apprentice and were to be dishonorably discharged from the Navy.

Afterward

Marshall argued the men’s cause to the highest governmental officials to no avail. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt futilely urged leniency to Forrestal.

The sailors were shackled, handcuffed and sent by train – under Marine guards with machine guns – to the Terminal Island Disciplinary Barracks in San Pedro, California, where they remained for 16 months. Thereafter, they were then ordered to sea on various ships. A year later, the convicted sailors were quietly released from captivity and discharged “under honorable conditions” – a step above dishonorable discharge, but one that nevertheless negated veteran benefits.

The case was widely publicized. Protests and public pressure resulted in Forrestal’s December 1944 order that “in the administration of naval personnel, no differentiation shall be made because of color.” He further ordered that henceforth ammunition loading would be performed by a cross section of sailors. He also appointed a “special representative” to study race relations in the Navy. His appointee was a Black graduate of Forrestal’s alma mater, Dartmouth, named Lester Granger. Granger was presented with the President’s Medal of Merit for his work in 1947.

Wollenberg wrote that Forrestal’s action was undoubtedly influenced by growing evidence of racial tension and conflict throughout the Navy. A full-scale riot broke out between Black Seabees and White Marines on Guam. At Port Hueneme, California, Black sailors staged a hunger strike to protest discrimination.

In 1992, Congress ordered the Navy to review what happened to those Port Chicago sailors. Navy Secretary John H. Dalton, pointing out that the men’s actions were clearly insubordinate, upheld the convictions.

Also in 1992, the National Park Service unveiled a monument to those killed at Port Chicago. It is known as the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial. The names of the dead are etched on granite slabs. There is also a small museum with photographs and clippings. It has no mention of the mutiny trial.

On Dec. 24, 1999, one of the sailors, 80-year-old Freddie Meeks, was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. When told of his pardon, Meeks said to reporters: “We stood up to get the same rights the Whites had. We all should have been treated the same, because we were all in the Navy and were going to fight for the same purpose. But they thought we should do the dirty work.”

Conclusion

The actions of the Black sailors played a huge role in the Navy’s initiating equal treatment of the races in the Navy shortly after the mutiny trial in 1944. Author Allen stated in his book that “This work stoppage created conditions where the liberals and conservatives in the military thought segregation was bankrupt as a policy.”

The actions of the Port Chicago sailors reverberated in the civilian world as well. An NAACP pamphlet titled “Remember Port Chicago? …The real story of how the Navy branded 50 fear-shocked sailors as mutineers” was written in 1945. Its message was that young Black men who were in shock from an immense explosion were unfairly court-martialed and railroaded to prison by the Navy. The pamphlet included a coupon for contributions.

The Port Chicago incident must have played a large part in launching the post-World War II Civil Rights Movement. The fear that drove the men to refuse to load ammunition under unsafe working conditions resulted in the Navy’s 1944 decision that “in the administration of naval personnel, no differentiation shall be made because of color.” That decision was four years before President Harry Truman’s Executive Order 9981 that began the process of desegregation of America’s armed forces.