Port Chicago Disaster and Black Sailors Mutiny Conviction

On July 17, 1944, two transport ships loading ammunition at Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California explode, killing 320 men instantly, including 202 African American enlisted men who comprised the entire loading workforce. Three weeks later, 258 surviving Black sailors refuse to return to loading ammunition under the same dangerous conditions that caused the disaster. The Navy convicts 50 of them of mutiny in the largest mass trial in naval history, sentencing them to 8-15 years in prison.

The explosion ranks as the deadliest homeland disaster of World War II. Black enlisted men at Port Chicago worked under white officers in segregated units, handling live ammunition without adequate training or safety equipment. White officers supervised from a distance while enlisted Black men moved bombs and shells by hand. Officers ran informal contests between work crews to see who could load ammunition fastest, offering prizes for speed while ignoring safety protocols.

After the disaster, the Navy orders surviving Black sailors back to the same work under the same conditions, with the same untrained white officers. When 258 men refuse, the Navy charges 50 with mutiny, a capital offense. Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP, attends the trial and later writes that it reveals “the viciousness of the Jim Crow system” in the military.

The mass trial lasts just 80 minutes per defendant. All 50 are convicted. Their sentences range from 8 to 15 years. Thurgood Marshall leads an appeal, gaining support from Eleanor Roosevelt and eventually forcing the Navy to review the case. The men are released in 1946, given general rather than honorable discharges, denying them veterans benefits.

Port Chicago accelerates pressure to desegregate the military, contributing to Truman’s Executive Order 9981 in 1948. However, the Navy never acknowledges wrongdoing. In 1999, President Clinton pardons only one of the 50 men. Repeated efforts by survivors and their families to obtain a full exoneration fail. The Port Chicago case demonstrates how military justice systems perpetuate racial discrimination while punishing those who resist institutional racism.