Chronology of Mare Island Mutiny Trial and the Segregation of the U.S. Armed Forces During World War II

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
15 (Winter 2001). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2001, Organization of American Historians

January 1941. Ernest Calloway, an African American from Chicago, refuses his draft notice as protest against segregation in the armed forces, and is sentenced to jail for his stand.

February 1944. The Department of the Navy orders the creation of two all-black combat ships to open opportunities for black troops to see combat duty.

17 July 1944, shortly after 10:18 p.m. While being loaded with ammunition at the Port Chicago naval base, a ship (the Quinalt Victory) suffers an explosion, killing 320 men and injuring 390. Two hundred and two of the men killed are African Americans who had been loading the ship with ammunition. The surviving men are put to work searching the wreckage for the bodies of their fellow sailors. Men from the units are denied survivors' leave to visit their families after the blast.

21 July 1944. A naval court of inquiry hears evidence on why the ship exploded. One hundred and twenty-five people testify, but only five are ammunition loaders from the unit that loaded the ship. The court, after hearing evidence of unsafe loading conditions and men being rushed to load faster, rules that "colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally or intellectually capable of handling high explosives....These men, it is testified, could not understand the orders given to them, and the only way they could be made to understand what they should do was by actual demonstration....It is an admitted fact, supported by testimony of the witnesses, that there was rough and careless handling of the explosives being loaded about ships at Port Chicago."

31 July 1944. The men from units at Port Chicago are transferred to Mare Island, another naval loading facility. Sailors meet to determine whether they should return to loading ammunition or refuse to do so.

9 August 1944. When ordered to march to the docks to load ammunition, sailors from Port Chicago refuse. Two hundred and fifty-eight men out of 328 continue to refuse, and are imprisoned on a barge.

11 August 1944. Men are marched off the barge and told by Admiral Carleton Wright that if they continue to refuse to work, they will be charged with mutiny, a capital offense. Fifty men continue to refuse to work and are taken to the brig (a military jail). The 208 men who agree to work are tried by a court martial (a military court) for refusing to obey orders. They are sentenced to a bad conduct discharge from the navy and forfeiture of three months’ pay.

14 September 1944. The mutiny trial opens for the fifty sailors who refused to work at Mare Island. They are prosecuted and represented by navy lawyers. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP attends the trial as an observer.

24 October 1944. After twenty-three days of testimony, the seven-member court deliberates eighty minutes before announcing a guilty verdict for all fifty men, each of whom receives a sentence of fifteen years in prison. The decision is appealed to Admiral Wright for review. The NAACP launches a nationwide protest campaign against the sentences, charging that the navy treated the men unfairly.

15 November 1944. Admiral Wright reduces twenty-four sentences to twelve years, eleven sentences to ten years, and five sentences to eight years.

December 1944. The first integrated units fight in Europe when an infantry shortage necessitates mixing black and white units fighting the Battle of the Bulge.

October 1945. An army committee led by General Alvin Gillem recommends greater use of black troops in all combat roles. No action is taken by the army on the basis of this report.

January 1946. The Secretary of the Navy announces that forty-seven of the Mare Island Mutiny convicts will be released from prison. Two remain in the prison hospital, and one man remains in prison due to prison discipline problems. The men are sent overseas to serve in the navy for a few months, then discharged, with a mutiny conviction on their service record.

27 February 1946. The U.S. Navy allows African Americans equal access to assignments, housing, and medical care.

1949. The navy is integrated, with no separation of sailors by race.