The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

“This became a pattern with Joe Small. He didn’t go around asking for respect, but he just naturally commanded it. He didn’t ask to be put in leadership roles, but people just naturally turned to him for advice, or to settle disputes, or to speak up to the bosses on their behalf.”

Sheinkin writes this after sharing an anecdote in which Small proves himself while working in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The passage foreshadows the difficulty Small would face during his Naval career. Though Small’s abilities as a leader initially earn him respect from his white Naval officers (including Lieutenant Delucchi), those same skills ultimately convince the Navy that Small has been the orchestrator of the alleged mutiny.

“Absurdly, the military even segregated its blood supply. Military leaders knew there was no difference between the blood of black and white men. They knew it was a waste of time and money to store two separate blood supplies. But that was the tradition, and no one in power wanted to challenge it.”

Sheinkin uses the example of segregating blood to emphasize how “deeply ingrained” the military’s segregationist policies are during World War I (19). As Sheinkin notes, there is no scientific reason to separate the blood of black and white people—a fact with which Naval officers were well aware. However, the Navy remains committed to following segregation regardless of science, as it believes the tradition must be upheld.

“We figured that by serving and fighting and dying in the service, that when we got back home, we would get better rights.”“We figured that by serving and fighting and dying in the service, that when we got back home, we would get better rights.”

This is a quote from one of the Port Chicago 50 sailors, Percy Robinson, describing his reasoning for enlisting in the military. As Robinson explains, joining the military and fighting alongside white soldiers in World War II seems like a way to illustrate the falsity of wide-spread beliefs that African-Americans were lesser than whites.

“The Navy never even gave the men any kind of written manual describing how to handle bombs safely. No such manual existed. Some safety regulations were posted on sheets of paper at the pier, but not in the barracks, where the men might actually have had time to read them; the officers didn’t think the black sailors would be able to understand written regulations.”

Though the Navy tasks the sailors with handling explosives, it declines to provide them with proper safety instructions, as the white officers incorrectly assume the black sailors are illiterate. While the officers are implementing what they believe to be fair and just policy, they are actually actively endangering the lives of men on the basis of racist beliefs.

“The schoolwork was no problem, but there was an irritating kid in his class, a white kid who thought it was funny to call black kids like Small ‘Smokey’—and then duck behind his 200-pound cousin. Small was thin, about five foot seven, but never one to back down. He promised his tormentor he’d catch him one day when the big cousin wasn’t around. He kept the promise.”

As a child, Joe Small is unafraid of standing up to racist taunts. Rather than shy away from a racist bully at school, Small “put a good whipping on him” (28). By narrating this anecdote, Sheinkin suggests that Small’s encounters with racism as a child helped to form his resilience in the face of injustice later in Small’s life.

“I mean, I would tell a man, ‘Shut up. You talk too much.’ Look him straight in the eye, and that was it, and he’d get the opinion I meant what I said, and if he didn’t shut up the consequences would be disastrous. And through that attitude I gained the respect of the men.”

In this passage, Joe Small describes how he asserts himself at Navy boot camp. The quote provides important insight into Small’s character and resilience, displaying how he is able to quickly rise to the top of the ranks within a short period of time in new and difficult circumstances.

“We’re supposed to be fighting the same enemy,” [Robert Edwards] thought. “I don’t know who my enemy really is.”

Robert Edwards is one of the African-American sailors stationed at Port Chicago. On his days off, Edwards initially spent leisure time in the nearby city of Oakland. On one occasion, he goes with white sailors to a bar, where the bartender refuses to serve Edwards due to his race. The experience of racism makes Edwards question whether he is fighting for the freedom of his “enemies” in his own nation.

“When his boss came down to the [police] station to get him out, Marshall apologized for the ruined hats. The elderly Jewish man put his arm around Marshall’s shoulder and said, ‘It was worth it, if you’re right.’”

When Thurgood Marshall is a teenager in Baltimore, he works as a deliveryman. On one delivery, Marshall bumps into a white man on a bus, who, in turn, uses a racial epithet against Marshall, resulting in a brawl. When Marshall’s boss bails him out of prison, he tells Marshall that fighting for a just and right cause is always worth the discomfort. Sheinkin suggests with this passage that Marshall’s early encounters with racism—as well as his boss’ words—convince Marshall of the need to fight racism with passion and conviction.

“Both civilian and military leaders hid behind the same old argument. Segregation was a fact of life, they said, and trying to force a change would upset white communities and white soldiers. ‘The urgency of the war situation does not justify experimentation,’ explained one general.”

Despite widespread reports that black soldiers and sailors are experiencing racism throughout the country, the US military is unwilling to intervene in the segregationist policies that soldiers encountered in the towns near their bases. In the military’s eyes, segregation is a deep-seated American tradition that it has no responsibility to change. To many black military men, this position communicated that the military cares more about the ease of whites than the suffering of AfricanAmericans.

“By July 1944, there were 1,431 black enlisted men at Port Chicago and 71 white officers. The base was guarded by 106 marines, all white.”

Sheinkin uses statistics to describe the immense gulf between the white and black Navy members working at Port Chicago. Though Sheinkin tends to favor a descriptive and emotional approach in his historical writing, the use of data allows the reader to fully understand how deeply segregationist policies structured the demographics at Port Chicago.

“‘The consensus of opinion of the witnesses,’ summarized the official report, ‘is that the colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally nor intellectually capable of handling high explosives […] .’”

In the Navy’s official report following the Port Chicago explosion, the Navy placed all of the blame on the black sailors—arguing that they had been careless and incapable of handling explosives. Overlooking the numerous faulty policies in place at Port Chicago, the Navy instead decides to rest its report on a racist belief that AfricanAmericans contain personality defects that resulted in the explosion.

“When the report used the word witnesses, it was referring exclusively to white officers. Surviving black sailors who had done the loading didn’t have a chance to tell their stories or offer their own opinions. The court never asked them to testify.”

In this passage, Sheinkin suggests why the Navy is unable to recognize how its segregationist policies are discriminatory against blacks and helped lead to the explosion. The Navy refuses to listen to the experiences of AfricanAmericans, whose testimony may have shed light on how deeply unjust it was that only black sailors were tasked with loading explosives without proper training.

“I realized that I had to work. I wasn’t trying to shirk work. But to go back to work under the same conditions with no improvements, no changes, the same group of officers that we had […] So I came to the conclusion that I was not going back to the same work under the same conditions, under the same men. And that was it.”

For Joe Small, it is not an easy decision to refuse to handle explosives. Small recognizes that his duty as a member of the US military is to follow orders and failing to do so could result in harsh punishments. However, Small recognizes that he is being tasked with unfair and unsafe work—and that, ultimately, he must stand up and insist on safer working conditions for himself and his fellow sailors.

“‘You know, all this stuff builds up,’ Robinson said later, explaining his mindset at this critical moment. ‘A lot of things you didn’t like before, you just didn’t do anything about ’em. But now they’re all piled up. I guess you put ’em all together.’”

Percy Robinson explains in this quote why he made the decision to disobey the order to load explosives. For Robinson, it is not one major incident, but rather a series of on-going, smaller racist acts that lead to him refusing work. As Robinson expresses, the order to return to work after the Port Chicago explosion is the breaking point that pushes him to standup against the Navy’s segregationist policies.

“‘handled ammunition for approximately thirty years, and I’m still here,’ Wright told the men. ‘I have a healthy respect for ammunition—anybody who doesn’t is crazy.’”

Admiral Wright, a white Naval officer, addresses the Port Chicago 50 sailors in this passage. Wright argues that the sailors are crazy to think there are any risks with handling ammunition, as Wright performed similar tasks during his time in the Navy. However, Wright fails to recognize the difference between his own experience and that of the Port Chicago 50, ignoring the racism and damaging ways the black sailors were treated as compared with white sailors.

“‘We concede the fact that a superior officer’s command is to be obeyed, but we know that prejudice exists in the Navy,’ Irma Lewis, an Oakland woman, told a newspaper reporter. ‘We mothers want to know why these loading crews are all Negroes.’”

While mainstream newspapers only sparingly reported on Port Chicago, newspapers for black audiences paid far closer attention to the story. Whereas white reporters and audiences may have only seen the Port Chicago 50 as cowardly or mutinous sailors, AfricanAmericans recognize the discriminatory policies of the Navy.

“The whole trial gave Albert Williams the unsettling feeling of being a kid and being accused by an adult of something he hadn’t done. ‘That was the atmosphere there,’ he said of the mood in the courtroom. ‘No matter what you say, you’re going to get this whipping. Whether you’re right or wrong, somebody did it—and you’re going to get whipped.’”

Williams–one of the Port Chicago 50—describes here his sense of condescension throughout the trial. Though each of the black sailors is given an opportunity to testify, Williams suggests  the Admirals had already decided on the sailors’ guilt before the trial began. For the Navy, the purpose of the trial is less for ensuring justice than it is for displaying that any sailors who disobey orders will receive a harsh punishment.

This is not an individual case. This is not fifty men on trial for mutiny. This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes.”

In this passage, Thurgood Marshall describes the trial at an NAACP meeting in San Francisco. In Marshall’s view, the case of the Port Chicago 50 extends beyond the individual sailors and points to the deeply segregationist policies of the Navy. For Marshall, it is impossible to understand the actions of the Port Chicago 50 without considering the discriminatory policies they encountered at their work.

“Decades after the trial, Gerald Veltmann revealed a shocking detail. Between courtroom sessions, while the accused men were still testifying, Veltmann had overheard Admiral Osterhaus say, ‘We’re going to find them guilty.’”

Though the Admirals overseeing the court-martial are supposed to judge the trial fairly and without bias, this quote by Admiral Osterhaus reveals that they had already judged the Port Chicago 50 as guilty before the sailors had finished testifying. In these admirals’ view, the testimony of the sailors is irrelevant, as  the black sailors’ words could never hold more weight than those of their white commanders.

“It has denied them their rights as Americans to serve in active sea duty. It has segregated them, insulted them, risked their lives by sheer unnecessary inefficiency, and now it will send them to a Federal penitentiary for years in order to save its own face.”

This passage is taken from a pamphlet published by the NAACP in the wake of the Port Chicago 50’s guilty convictions. In the NAACP’s view, the sailors had been punished so the Navy could avoid admitting to the flaws in its segregationist policies. The NAACP pamphlet helped to publicize the Port Chicago 50 case to the general public, resulting in outrage over the Navy’s injustice.

“‘The Navy accepts no theories of racial differences in inborn ability,’ the Bureau of Naval Personnel informed all Naval officers in February 1945, ‘but expects that every man wearing its uniform be trained and used in accordance with his maximum individual capacity.’”

Though the Navy refuses to re-open the Port Chicago 50 case, it begins to advance desegregation in the months following the trial. The Navy eventually becomes the first branch of the military to fully desegregate and denounce the concept of innate differences between whites and AfricanAmericans. Sheinkin suggests that such a momentous change could not have occurred without the uproar sparked by the Port Chicago 50.

“‘I found out something,’ the big redhead said to Small. ‘A man is a man.’”

This quote describes the friendship between Small and Alex, a white sailor aboard the first ship that Small is allowed to serve on. For many white sailors on the ship—including Alex—the Navy’s new integration policy introduces their first social interactions with black people. Though Alex is initially racist towards Small, his experience of meeting a black person teaches him that there are no fundamental differences between races.

“You didn’t want your friends to know that you had been charged with mutiny, you didn’t want people to think, you know, that you didn’t like your country.”

This quote is by Freddie Meeks, one of the Port Chicago 50, and describes his feelings after returning to civilian life. The quote underscores the deep sense of shame that accompanied the Port Chicago 50. Though many of them join the military to demonstrate that AfricanAmericans are as capable as whites, the Port Chicago 50’s attempts to combat institutional racism result in the charge of choosing to completely disobey the military’s authority.