Berkeley

War, ‘Mutiny’ and Civil Rights: Remembering Port Chicago

Published

11 years ago

July 14, 2014

By Barry Bergman, UC Berkeley News

Just after 10:18 p.m. on July 17, 1944, UC Berkeley seismographs measured what looked like a 3.4-magnitude earthquake. Far from a routine temblor, though, this was a seismic event of a different kind: a ferocious explosion at the Port Chicago naval base, the worst stateside disaster of World War II.

The cargo ship E.A. Bryan, docked at the base east of Martinez on the southern bank of the Sacramento, was loaded with 4,000-plus tons of bombs and ammunition, roughly half its capacity, when it lit up the East Bay skies. With the explosive force of five kilotons of TNT, the blast instantly killed 320 men, 202 of them African American, and injured another 390 military personnel and civilians.

A view of the wrecked pier after the explosion at Port Chicago. The submerged stern of the Quinault Victory is visible at upper right. (U.S. Navy photo, courtesy of Robert Allen)

The Quinault Victory, set to start taking on munitions later that night, was also destroyed, along with the base itself and much of the small town of Port Chicago, more than a mile away. The Bryan was so decimated that its wreckage was never recovered. Neither were most of the bodies.

Aftershocks followed. The explosion led to the six-week trial — and dismayingly swift conviction — of 50 Black sailors, whose refusal to return to loading ammunition was judged by the Navy to be mutiny. But Berkeley sociologist Robert Allen, who spent years poring over records and interviewing Port Chicago

survivors, views the “mutiny” as an act of resistance, best understood in the context of other protests by African American servicemen during wartime, and of the nationwide civil-rights movement it foreshadowed.

“What happened there was what was happening to black labor generally — namely, to be segregated into the most demeaning jobs, the hardest jobs, the lowest-paying jobs,” says Allen, whose 1989 book, “The Port Chicago Mutiny,” sparked a resurrection of public interest in a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. race relations. “That was the history of black labor, going back to sharecropping, the Jim Crow system, all of that. These guys were products of that themselves.”

Allen, a soft-spoken Georgia native and recently retired Berkeley adjunct professor, will moderate a panel discussion at a 70th-anniversary symposium July 17 at Diablo Valley College, near the site of the disaster. A second panel at the event, which will feature speakers including historian Leon Litwack, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Berkeley professor emeritus, will be moderated by John Lawrence, a Berkeley Ph.D. and former chief of staff to East Bay congressman George Miller, with whom he has worked for federal recognition and exoneration for the convicted sailors.

Allen himself was unaware of the case until 1976, when he came across a pamphlet written in 1945 by Thurgood Marshall, a future Supreme Court justice, for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. It began with a question: “Remember Port Chicago?”

Allen read on. The brochure laid out not only the facts of the case, but the broader racial context. All of the roughly 1,400 enlisted men assigned to load ammunition at the base were black, while all the commissioned officers were white. The African American sailors could not become officers, or even transfer laterally to other types of work — including combat, which is why many had volunteered for service in the first place.

“A racially segregated base — here in California,” Allen says, his wonder at the

Robert Allen

discovery still evident. “And segregated by federal law at that.” The sailors, he adds, “were basically locked in a prison called Port Chicago Naval Depot.”

And though neither enlisted men nor officers were trained to handle bombs, they faced constant, round-the-clock pressure to ship ammunition from Port Chicago, built in response to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The odds of a catastrophic accident were not lost on the men.

After the worst finally happened — an explosion so violent it blew a 440-foot Navy vessel to bits, along with any clues to the accident’s cause — the survivors were understandably fearful of returning to work.

“Keep in mind that half of them are teenagers,” Allen says. “These are kids, terrified of going back to work and getting killed in another explosion.”

Joseph Small, who was 23 when the Bryan blew and respected by most of his younger crewmates, recalled in interviews with Allen how the survivors were expected simply to return to their regular jobs: “The men said, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’ And he said, ‘I’m not going back to the same work under the same conditions under the same officers.’

“That’s the language of a strike. That’s exactly what the stevedores would have said on the waterfront here if they were engaged in a wildcat strike,” Allen says. “But there’s no such thing in the military. And so they get put on trial for mutiny, and for their very lives.”

Labeled a “ringleader,” Small was among the 50 sailors convicted by a panel of admirals. Their defense counsel, a white Navy lieutenant, argued that the men — many of whom acted heroically in the wake of the accident — may have refused to follow orders, but had made no concerted effort to seize command from established military authorities, and so were not guilty of mutiny.

Outside the San Francisco courtroom, meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall was raising broader issues. “This is not 50 men on trial for mutiny,” he declared. “This is the Navy on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes.”

Nonetheless, after barely an hour of deliberation, all 50 men were sentenced to 15 years in prison, to be followed by dishonorable discharge from the Navy. (The end of the war brought their early release.) But they also won a crucial victory.

The notoriety of their plight — which had prompted Eleanor Roosevelt to send a copy of Marshall’s pamphlet to Navy Secretary James Forrestal, with the wish that “in the case of these boys special care will be taken” — led to two white divisions sharing the work of loading ammunition at Port Chicago.

“That’s the very first step in beginning to desegregate the Navy, when they bring in these guys to do the same work that only blacks were doing before,” Allen says

. Over the next year the Navy would permit mixed crews of black and white sailors, though initially limiting black sailors to 10 percent of crews on some auxiliary vessels, and 30 percent at ammunition depots. (The other military branches remained segregated until 1948.)

With the dawn of the postwar era, the explosion and subsequent trial — not to mention their larger significance — were relegated to footnotes in history. “So by the time I was onto it, it was really lost to memory,” Allen says. “And I became interested in trying to find out what had happened.”

It would be 13 years before The Port Chicago Mutiny was completed. Its publication quickly led to an Emmy Award-winning KRON documentary, and then to a spate of other articles, movies and books. (Steve Sheinkin, who recently published a book on the topic for younger readers, is scheduled to speak at Diablo Valley College next week.)

As media attention grew, so did public interest and political efforts to “remember Port Chicago.” Prodded by Lawrence — now a visiting professor at the UC Washington Center — Rep. Miller and others pushed Congress to create the Port Chicago National Memorial at the site of the explosion in 1994, and helped persuade President Clinton to pardon one of the few surviving convicted sailors in 1999.

Yet the Navy has refused to exonerate them, and Allen’s not optimistic about Congress. He’s pinning his hopes on a proclamation by President Obama — and on the spotlight from events like Thursday’s symposium.

Though none of the 50 are still alive, “it would be important to the families to remove this stigma, and it’s important to the nation,” he says. “Because then the nation could say, ‘OK, we understand it. These guys did something that was technically illegal. But they did it in a way that brought about change for the better, just as the civil-rights activists did in the South.’

“The government may not necessarily want to paint them as heroes, but it can no longer paint them as demons,” he adds. “When we look at the process of desegregation in the military, one of its sources is what happened at Port Chicago. We should stop penalizing these sailors for having done something that we now recognize was for the benefit of the country.

“It’s time,” Allen says, “to exonerate these fellows.”

For more details, or to register for the free July 17th event, visit http://portchicagomemorial.org/

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Lawsuit Accuses UC Schools of Giving Preference to Black and Hispanic Students

The lawsuit also alleges UC is violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination by federally funded institutions. In response, UC stated that race is not a factor in admissions, as per state law, and that student demographic data is collected only for statistical purposes.

Published

1 month ago

February 17, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

A lawsuit filed in federal court accuses the University of California (UC) of racial discrimination in undergraduate admissions, alleging that Black and Latino students are favored over Asian American and white applicants. The lawsuit, filed by the group Students Against Racial Discrimination, claims UC’s admissions policies violate Proposition 209, a state law passed in 1996 that prohibits the consideration of race in public education.

In response, UC stated that race is not a factor in admissions, as per state law, and that student demographic data is collected only for statistical purposes.

Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the UC system, said the entity had not been served with the lawsuit.

“If served, we will vigorously defend our admission practices,” said Holbrook.

“We believe this to be a meritless suit that seeks to distract us from our mission to provide California students with a world-class education,” he said.

The complaint criticizes UC’s use of a “holistic” admissions process, arguing it replaces objective academic criteria with subjective considerations that disadvantage certain racial groups. It cites admission rate disparities at UC Berkeley, noting a decrease in Black student admissions from 13% in 2010 to 10% in 2023, compared to an overall drop from 21% to 12%.

The lawsuit follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning affirmative action in college admissions, which has prompted challenges to race-conscious policies nationwide. The plaintiffs seek a court order preventing UC from collecting racial data in applications and request a federal monitor to oversee admissions decisions.

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Alameda County

New Data Show an Increase in Californians Enrolling as Undergraduates at UC Berkeley

UC and campus officials state that the increase in California undergraduates reinforces their dedication to expanding access to the state’s students and fulfilling the university’s compact with Gov. Newsom, and with the Legislature’s support, to grow in-state enrollment.

Published

2 months ago

January 11, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley Campus. Photo by Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley News.

The trend reflects an increase in Californian students enrolling across the UC system

By UC Berkeley News
Public Affairs Office

More Californians enrolled as new undergraduate students at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses in fall 2024 compared to the prior year, according to data released Tuesday by officials with the University of California systemwide office.

At the University of California, Berkeley, 7,657 new transfer and first-year students from California enrolled in fall 2024. Their percentage increased to 85% of all newly enrolled undergraduates, compared to about 80% in fall 2023.

Last spring, UC Berkeley officials admitted fewer first-year and transfer students to compensate for prior admissions cycles in which more students enrolled than anticipated. However, they increased the proportion of California residents offered first-year admission, increasing that number from 75% for fall 2023 to almost 80% for fall 2024. This occurred by offering fall 2024 admission to fewer first-year, out-of-state students, and international students.

Additional enrollment data for Berkeley and the nine other UC campuses are available on the UC website.

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Expect The Worst? Political Scientists Have a Pessimism Bias, Study Finds

The research, co-authored by UC Berkeley political scientist Andrew T. Little, offers a possible solution: an approach that aggregates experts’ predictions, finds the middle ground, and then reduces the influence of pessimism, leading to the possibility of “remarkably accurate predictions.”

Published

2 months ago

January 6, 2025

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Fears of unknown political outcomes. iStock image.

Political experts surveyed recently were prone to pessimism — and were often wrong, says a study co-authored at UC Berkeley. Still, when their predictions were averaged out, they were ‘remarkably accurate’

By Edward Lempinen, UC Berkeley News

The past decade has seen historic challenges for U.S. democracy and an intense focus by scholars on events that seem to signal democratic decline. But new research released two weeks ago finds that a bias toward pessimism among U.S. political scientists often leads to inaccurate predictions about the future threats to democracy.

The study was released by Bright Line Watch, a consortium of political scientists who focus on issues related to the health of U.S. democracy. It offers provocative insight into political scientists’ predictions for the months ahead, including some that would be seen as alarming risks for democracy.

According to an analysis that Little distilled from a Bright Line Watch survey done after the November election, political scientists generally agreed that incoming Republican President Donald Trump is highly likely to pardon MAGA forces imprisoned for roles in the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising that sought to block the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.

The research concluded that it’s less likely, but still probable, that Trump will pardon himself from a series of federal criminal convictions and investigations, and that his allies will open an investigation of Biden.

In understanding the future course of U.S. politics, Little said in an interview, it’s important to listen to the consensus of expert political scientists rather than to individual experts who, sometimes, become media figures based on their dire predictions.

“If we’re worried about being excessively pessimistic,” he explained, “and if we don’t want to conclude that every possible bad thing is going to happen, then we should make sure that we’re mainly worrying about things where there is wider consensus (among political scientists).”

Believe the Consensus, Doubt the Outliers

For example, the raw data from hundreds of survey responses studied by Little and Bright Line researchers showed that more than half of the political scientists also expected Trump to form a board that would explore the removal of generals; deport millions of immigrants; and initiate a mass firing of civil service government employees.

But once the researchers aggregated the scholars’ opinions, determined the average of their expectations and controlled for their pessimism bias, the consensus was that the likelihood of those developments falls well below 50%.

Bright Line Watch, founded in 2016, is based at the Chicago Center on Democracy and is collaboratively run by political scientists at the University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan and the University of Rochester in New York.

The research collaboration between Little and the Bright Line Watch scholars sprang from a collegial disagreement that emerged last January in the pages of the journal Political Science and Politics.

Little and Anne Meng, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, authored a research paper in that issue positing that there is little empirical, data-based evidence of global democratic decline in the past decade.

At the request of the journal editors, scholars at Bright Line Watch submitted a study to counter the argument made by Meng and Little.

But in subsequent weeks, the two teams came together and, in the study released on Dec. 17, found agreement that raw opinion on the state of democracy skews toward pessimism among the political scientists who have participated in the surveys run by Bright Line Watch.

A Stark Measure of Pessimism (and Error)

Surveys conducted during election seasons in 2020, 2022 and 2024 asked political scientists to provide their forecasts on dozens of scenarios that would be, without doubt, harmful for democracy.

The raw data in the new study showed a high level of inaccuracy in the forecasts: While the political scientists, on average, found a 45% likelihood of the negative events happening, fewer than 25% actually came to pass.

Before last month’s election, Bright Line Watch asked the political scientists to assess dozens of possibilities that seemed to be ripped from the headlines. Would foreign hackers cripple voting systems? Would Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, declare victory before the winner was called by the news media? Would Trump incite political violence again?

Altogether, the political scientists predicted a 44% probability for the list of negative events — but only 10% actually happened.

In the interview, Little defended the focus on possible negative developments by political scientists and others. It’s “very important” to be aware of the potential for harmful developments, he said.

But the focus on worst-case scenarios can also be distracting and destabilizing. The question, then, is why political scientists might develop a bias for pessimism.

To some extent, Little said, it may be a matter of expertise. The data show that scholars who specialize in American politics tend to be the least pessimistic — and the most accurate — forecasters. Political scientists with expertise in international relations, political theory or other areas tend to be more pessimistic and less reliable.

Little offered several other possible explanations. For example, he said, when scholars focus on one narrow area, like threats to democracy, they might see the potential threats with a heightened urgency. Their worry might shape the way they see the wider political world.

“People who study authoritarian politics are probably drawn to that because they think it’s an important problem, and they think it’s a problem that we need to address,” he explained. “If you spend a lot of your time and effort focusing on bad scenarios that might happen, you might end up thinking they’re more likely than they really are.”

And occasionally, he said, scholars may find that raising alarms about imminent dangers to democracy leads to more media invitations.

The Battle for Scholars’ Public Credibility

For the interwoven fields of political science and journalism — and for the wider health of democracy — accuracy is essential. That’s the value of the analytical system described by the authors of the new study. If researchers can find the expert consensus on complex issues and tone down unwarranted alarm, understanding should improve, and democracy should operate more efficiently.

Still, Little cautioned, it would be a mistake to discount or discard the insights offered by expert political scientists.

“You don’t want to say, ‘I’m just going to ignore the experts,’” he advised. “This research shows that that would be a very bad idea. Once you do the adjustments, the experts are very informed, and you can learn a lot from what they say.