The “Port Chicago 50,” a group of black sailors who were charged and convicted in the largest mutiny in U.S. Navy history, were exonerated by the U.S. Navy on Wednesday.
The verdict marks the culmination of a mission for Carol Cherry of Sycamore, Ill., who has fought for the exoneration of her father, Cyril Shepherd, and his fellow sailors.
Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro said the court-martial of the 50 sailors “contained serious legal errors that were fundamentally unfair.”
“But for 80 years, unjust convictions have continued. Now I am trying to right a great injustice that has plagued so many people for so long.”
Shepard was serving as an assistant gunnery officer third class in the Navy in Port Chicago, Calif., when he and a fellow black sailor from the Bay Area were given a dangerous job for which they had not been trained: loading live ammunition onto ships.
“Sailors were performing the dangerous task of loading munitions onto munitions ships without the proper training or equipment, and were being asked to load munitions onto munitions ships as quickly as possible without any awareness of the danger that this posed. This is completely unfair and wrong,” del Toro told CBS News in Chicago.
One evening, he came home from work and there was an explosion. Then another explosion. On July 17, 1944, 320 people were killed and 390 were injured. It was the nation’s worst disaster of World War II.
Sheppard and the other black sailors were ordered to resume the same dangerous work, but they refused.
Fifty people from Port Chicago were convicted of sedition and sentenced to prison, and Cherry said her father spent nearly two years in prison.
Not a single crew member survived to this day.
“It is completely unfair and wrong that our sailors were performing the dangerous task of loading munitions onto ammunition ships without proper training or equipment, and that they were asked to load the munitions as quickly as possible without any awareness of the danger that this posed,” del Toro said.
read more
