U.S. Navy Exonerates Wrongly Convicted Black WWII Sailors
The United States Navy exonerated 256 former prisoners on July 17, 2024, all of them Black sailors convicted of refusing to return to work after a deadly 1944 explosion at the Port Chicago naval weapons station in San Francisco.
On the night of July 17, 1944, some 3.5 million armaments detonated in a blast that killed 337 personnel and injured over 300 more. Reflecting widespread racism within the military, white officers were granted leave to decompress after the tragedy while Black sailors were forced back to the dangerous task of handling ammunition without proper safety measures.
In 1995 interviews with survivors of the hellish explosion, documentarian Dan Collison recorded what sailor Freddie Meeks recalled about the sailors’ reluctance to load munitions after the incident: “We felt like we was getting a raw deal because we was the one that was doing the dirty work,” Meeks said. “We was the one that’s fooling with the ammunition. So why shouldn’t we have a leave of absence to get away, to get your nerves settled? But that didn’t happen.”
When 258 Black sailors refused to return to work under these conditions, they were branded mutineers. After a six-week trial, 50 of them were sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and dishonorably discharged. Others faced lesser punishments, including bad conduct discharges and unpaid leave.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sent a young Thurgood Marshall to observe the trial. The future justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. wrote the sailors’ appeal, arguing that “there is no set rule as to what a mutiny is and racism did play a role in the decisions.” Marshall’s appeal was rejected, though, and the convicted sailors served about a year and half until released under a general amnesty after World War II ended.
A recent U.S. Navy investigation uncovered a host of legal violations in the trials, including denial of adequate counsel and failure to allow sufficient time for an investigation into the explosion itself. The report also revealed a shocking disregard for the safety of Black sailors. U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro called their story a powerful reminder of the enduring struggle for justice and equality “in the face of overwhelming odds.”
Sources: America’s Navy, NPR News
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