Commemorating 80 Years: Reflections on the Legacy of the Port Chicago Mutiny Trial

October 24, 2024
Yerba Buena Island, San Francisco, California –

As Treasure Island Development Vice President Linda Fadeke Richardson said, the mutiny trial was the start of the movement toward the civil rights era. That's a pretty big claim, but I'll prove it to you.

The Navy allowed press coverage at the trial, probably hoping to make an example of the fifty. And they did that, but not the example they wanted. There was racism, there was Jim Crow, but by finding those men guilty of mutiny, the Navy put fifty faces on it. As Thurgood Marshall tried to get the verdict overturned, he and the NAACP were able to get public attention by talking about these victims of unfair treatment. And that's exactly what the mutiny pamphlet did.

The pamphlet interwove the improprieties of the trial with the humanity of a number of the men. The pamphlet was a focus of Marshall's and the NAACP's publicity campaign, which created widespread awareness of racism in the Navy, and was a major factor in desegregation.

It's terrible that the men and their families suffered so much, but had the Navy not overreached and charged and convicted the fifty of mutiny, that campaign never would have happened. That widespread awareness of racism would not have been created. And that's why the trial was such a turning point.

Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' At this place 80 years ago, the arc of the injustice of the mutiny convictions of the Port Chicago 50 began its long bend toward desegregation of the Navy, then of all the Armed Forces, in the next decade, the civil rights era, and, finally, the justice of the exoneration of 256 Black Sailors, including the Port Chicago 50.

There's still a lot of work to do, but 80 years ago today, almost at this hour, here on Yerba Buena Island, in a wooden building 300 feet down the hill, the arc of the moral universe bent toward justice.

– Walt Bilofsky, Vice President, Treasure Island Museum