US Navy Exonerates 256 Black Sailors 80 Years After Conviction
The US Navy has declared that the 256 Black sailors who were charged in 1944 due to a horrific port explosion that killed hundreds of service members, were innocent and unjustly punished, 80 years after the incident.
The explosion k*lled 320 sailors and civilians, almost 75% of which were Black, and further injured 400 personnel. The Black sailors who survived were compelled to pick up the human remains and clear the blast site while white officers were granted leave to recover.
The pier was used as an ammunition supply site for forces in the Pacific during World War II, and for manual labor, such as loading ships. Such tasks were left mostly to Black enlisted sailors, while they were overseen by white officers.
Prior to the explosion, the Black sailors working at the dock mentioned their concerns about the loading operations. However, after the blast, they were ordered to return to loading ships with no changes made to improve their security.
When the sailors refused, citing the need for training on how to safely handle the b*mbs before they returned, they were met with punishments that barred them from receiving honorable discharges. The vast majority returned to work at the pier and served throughout the war, despite the insurmountable pressure.
Fifty sailors who spoke up for their rights were sent to prison. Thurgood Marshall, who was then a defense attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, defended the 50 sailors who were wrongly convicted of mutiny. Marshall then became the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday July, 17 – the 80th anniversary of the Port Chicago explosion – the Secretary of the US Navy, Carlos Del Toro, signed paperwork which cleared the sailors who have all now passed away. Del Toro handed the first pen to Thurgood Marshall Jr., the late justice’s son.
The exonerations “are deeply moving,” Marshall Jr. said. “They, of course, are all gone, and that’s a painful aspect of it. But so many fought for so long for that kind of fairness and recognition.”
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