July 17, 1944 (320 killed)

[Omaha Steve]

http://todayinlaborhistory.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/july-17-1944-2/




An explosion while loading munitions onto a cargo vessel at the military depot at Port Chicago, California, kills 320 and injures nearly 400 sailors (mostly African-American enlisted men who were part of a segregated unit) and civilians. Following the disaster, many of the surviving sailors refused to resume loading munitions, citing unsafe working conditions. Fifty men were convicted of mutiny and received 15-year sentences. It was the largest mass mutiny trial in U.S. history. (Photo: Freddie Meeks, one of the “Port Chicago 50.”)

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Recommended. 69 years on.

[okaawhatever]

2. Do you know if we ever pardoned them or paid back pay or anything? nt

[Brother Buzz]

3. Clinton pardoned one of them in Dec 1999

Clinton Pardons Wartime 'Mutineer' / Port Chicago black sailor of 50 in infamous case
December 24, 1999

1999-12-24 04:00:00 PDT CONTRA COSTA -- President Clinton granted a formal presidential pardon yesterday to one of the last of the African American sailors convicted of mutiny after the Port Chicago explosion during World War
II.

Freddie Meeks was one of 50 black sailors who were tried and convicted of mutiny after they refused to load ammunition on cargo ships because of a huge explosion at the naval magazine at Port Chicago in Contra Costa County on the night of July 17, 1944.

Meeks is one of only three survivors of the so-called mutiny, and the only one who applied for a pardon.

The Port Chicago case has become a cause celebre -- one of the last of the unresolved injustices left from World War II, and the subject of books, articles and a television movie.

Those who asked for a pardon for the convicted mutineers said that the black men were punished by a segregated Navy to make an example of them. They called it a "shameful episode of racism." White sailors, they said, would never have been tried for mutiny.

Meeks, who is now 80 and in poor health, said yesterday that he is "deeply grateful" to the president for granting a pardon.

<more>

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Clinton-Pardons-Wartime-Mutineer-Port-Chicago-2888986.php

[okaawhatever]

4. Thanks for the info. We owe them more than that. I didn't try to research because i'm keeping my

data usage down until I get my desktop computer hooked back up.

[zbdent]

5. It's Obama's fault, right? Anything bad with Chicago, right?

[Omaha Steve]

6. Kick