Port Chicago: Righting Wrongs

BACKGROUND: On July 17, 1944, 320 people died--including 202 black American servicemen--in an explosion at Port Chicago, a munitions dock east of Oakland, which is now the Concord Naval Weapons Station (View, July 16, 1991). Fifty African-American seamen were subsequently convicted of mutiny after they and others refused to work until safer conditions were implemented.

UPDATE: The Navy, under a congressional order signed by President Bush, is investigating whether racism tainted the trial. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill designating the port as a national historic memorial.

“One of the things government does from time to time is right wrongs,” says Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who sponsored both bills. “Sometimes you have to reach back in history to make the record correct.”

A paperback edition of “The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in U.S. Naval History” by Robert Allen, originally published in 1989, is scheduled to be released in February by Amistad Press. Allen is also negotiating with a television production company over a movie.

The case of the Port Chicago 50 eventually prompted Navy desegregation. Says Allen: “They were just ordinary boys, teen-agers, who changed the most powerful military institution in the world. All of us have that in us, to rise up and face injustices and change history.”