Today in Labor History July 17, 1944: Two ammunition ships exploded at Port Chicago, CA (now known as the Concord Naval Weapons Center). The explosion killed 322 sailors, including 202 African-Americans assigned by the Navy to handle explosives. The explosion could be seen 35 miles away in San Francisco, across the Bay. In response, 258 African-Americans refused to return to the dangerous work, initiating what would be known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. 50 of the men were convicted and sentenced to hard labor. 47 were released in 1946. During their court proceedings, Thurgood Marshall, working then for the NAACP, prepared an appeal campaign, noting that only black men had been assigned to the dangerous munitions loading job. At the time, navy had over 100,000 black sailors, but no black officers. Beginning in 1990, a group of 25 Congressional leaders began a campaign to exonerate the mutineers. However, Congress did not exonerate the men until 2019.
In the 1980s, activists regularly protested at the Concord Naval Weapons Center against U.S. arms shipments to the Contras in Nicaragua. These shipments were supposedly secret, and illegal under the Congressional Boland Amendment. The base shipped 60,000 to 120,000 tons of munitions each year to U.S. forces and allies, including the Contras. On September 1, 1987, a weapons train deliberately ran over veterans who were blockading the tracks, including Brian Willson, who lost both of his legs, and a portion of his frontal lobe, in the collision. Days later, activists dismantled the train tracks. And for years after, activists maintained a 24-hour vigil at the site. The FBI had been surveilling Willson for more than a year as a “domestic terrorist,” even though all of his activism and protests had been entirely nonviolent. The train crew had been told to not stop the train, even if protesters were on the tracks.
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