Black Sailors Exonerated 80 Years After Deadly World War II Disaster

Eighty years after a deadly explosion rocked a California port, the U.S. Navy has exonerated the Black sailors who were unjustly tried and convicted for refusing to go back to work after the tragic accident.

On Wednesday, the military announced that Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro had officially cleared all 256 Black service members who were punished in connection with the explosion.

None of the men are alive today. But the exoneration may help bring some semblance of closure to their surviving family members. The move represents “the end of a long and arduous journey for these Black sailors and their families, who fought for a nation that denied them equal justice under law,” according to a statement from President Joe Biden.

“May we all remember their courage, sacrifice and service to our nation,” he adds.

The explosion took place on July 17, 1944, at Port Chicago, California, situated on Suisun Bay about an hour’s drive northeast of San Francisco. The port supplied ammunition to American forces in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

At the time, the U.S. Armed Forces were still segregated, and Black sailors working at the port were overseen by white officers.

On the day of the accident, troops were loading munitions onto the S.S. E.A. Bryan cargo ship. For unknown reasons, some of the munitions detonated, which ignited 5,000 tons of explosives. The accident killed 320 sailors and civilians, most of them Black; it also injured roughly 400 people. It was the deadliest home-front disaster during the entire conflict.

Afterward, Black sailors were forced to clear debris and recover human remains from the pier while white officers were granted hardship leave.

Black sailors had previously raised concerns about the safety of loading operations at the port. However, not long after the deadly blast, they were ordered to return to work. Worried about the working conditions, some of the men refused, arguing that they needed more training and protective equipment.

Initially, 258 Black sailors declined to return to work. But after being threatened with punishment, 208 resumed their posts. The Navy still convicted the 208 men for disobeying orders and sentenced them to bad conduct discharges. They did not get paid for three months.

The 50 men who continued to refuse were tried as a group and convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit mutiny. The so-called “Port Chicago 50” were dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a military prison. Their pay was revoked completely, and their military ranks were downgraded.

Later, the men’s sentences were reduced. Two convictions were thrown out: one because the sailor was found to be mentally incompetent, and the other due to lack of evidence.

In their appeals, the Port Chicago 50 were represented by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working as a defense attorney for the NAACP. Two decades later, Marshall became the first Black justice appointed to the Supreme Court.

Marshall died in 1993. But his son, Thurgood Marshall Jr., was on hand to watch Del Toro sign the paperwork officially exonerating the Black sailors this week. He described the exonerations as “deeply moving,” reports Tara Copp of the Associated Press (AP).

In the 1990s, then-Navy Secretary John H. Dalton declined to clear the men. At the time, a Navy review determined that racism had not affected the outcome of the courts-martial, but it did find that the assignment of Black men to jobs involving manual labor “was clearly motivated by race and premised on the mistaken notion that they were intellectually inferior,” as the New York Times reported in July 1994.

Now, however, the U.S. Navy has concluded that the courts-martial were “fundamentally unfair, plagued by legal errors and tainted by racial discrimination,” according to Biden’s statement.

Ultimately, the Port Chicago accident—and the ensuing battle for equal treatment—“helped force the Navy and the larger military to desegregate,” per Matthew F. Delmont, a historian at Dartmouth College and the author of the 2022 book Half American.

“The Port Chicago 50, and the hundreds who stood with them, may not be with us today, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice,” says Del Toro in a statement. “They stand as a beacon of hope, forever reminding us that even in the face of overwhelming odds, the fight for what's right can and will prevail.”

This week’s exoneration is more than just symbolic. With the men’s dishonorable discharges converted to honorable ones, “surviving family members can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs on past benefits that may be owed,” reports the AP.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.