Port Chicago Mutiny

The Port Chicago Mutiny of 1944 placed the military's discriminatory racial policies in the public eye. The incident highlighted the harsh realities of a segregated military that fought for liberty overseas while placing African Americans in jobs that afforded them less status and placed them in tremendous danger. All of the manual laborers at Port Chicago, California, were black, and all of their officers [Page 643]were white. The case of what became known as the Port Chicago Fifty underscored the secondclass treatment afforded to African Americans despite their enthusiastic participation in the war effort. The case became a national cause célèbre that remained active until 1999 when the Navy finally pardoned one of the last two surviving members of the Port Chicago Fifty.

On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the Port Chicago Naval Munitions Base near San Francisco. Explosives being loaded onto two transport ships detonated, sending hundreds of pounds of munitions raining down on workers and civilians in the nearby town. The ensuing explosions killed 320 servicemen and injured another 390. More than 300 buildings were damaged and the two transport ships (along with much of the dock facilities) were destroyed. One source later compared the power of the blasts to a five kiloton bomb; windows as far away as 20 miles were shattered and a column of smoke and fire 12,000 feet high was visible for miles.

The explosion killed and wounded African Americans disproportionately because the Navy used only black laborers for dangerous jobs such as those at Port Chicago. Of the 320 men killed, 202 were black; of the 390 men injured, 232 were black. Most of those killed had volunteered for military service hoping to see combat duty; instead, they were given the dangerous job of loading munitions. Their jobs became even more perilous when white officers began betting on whose laborers could load munitions the fastest, creating a situation where safety was routinely subordinated to speed. Officers calmed their men's fears by telling them the bald-faced lie that none of the shells they were loading was fused.

The deadly explosions at Port Chicago constitute the worst domestic loss of life during the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and account for 15 percent of all African American naval casualties in World War II. A Navy investigation into the incident found that the facility had not provided black workers with any training in handling dangerous materials nor had a safety manual been written to ensure proper safeguards were in place. Black workers, who could not even eat in the mess hall until all whites had finished eating, saw the incident as symptomatic of the larger problem of racial discrimination. They demanded changes in the safety arrangements at Port Chicago and the nearby Mare Island Shipyard before returning to work.

The Navy determined that it could not identify the cause of the explosion and therefore decided not to institute changes in safety procedures. A Navy court of inquiry refused to assign blame or to punish any of the white officers for creating a dangerous working environment. The Navy then granted one month's leave to white survivors of the incident, but gave no leave at all to black survivors. At the same time, Rep. John Rankin of Mississippi orchestrated a reduction in the compensation given to the families of those killed in the blasts from $5,000 to $3,000. With white workers still on their leave, the Navy ordered 258 black workers back to work on the loading docks. They refused, leading the Navy to arrest 50 presumed ringleaders and charge them with mutiny, a crime that carries the possibility of a death sentence. The remainder of the workers were threatened with capital charges and ordered back to work after a three day incarceration in a makeshift brig.

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