Date: 1999-03-23
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I rise in strong support of H.R. 130. to designate the court house on Centre Street in New York City as the "Thurgood Marshall United States Court House." It is particularly auspicious that this legislation appears before the House of Representatives this week when much of the nation will learn. for the first time. of one of Justice Marshalls early cases on behalf of oppressed members of our society. As a young attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeo0le (NAACP). Thurgood Marshall went to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in September 1944 to observe the largest mutiny trial in the history of our nation. The accused men were sailors who had refused to continue loading highly explosive munitions at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine because a terrific explosion just a few weeks earlier had. without warning or explanation. killed 320 of their colleagues and destroyed this important naval facility. It was the largest home front loss of life of the war. Marshall was concerned about the Port Chi"cago courts martial because all the accused men were blacks. men relegated to loading munitions on ships rather than firing them at the enemy solely because they were black. Men who lived in segregated housing. ate in segregated mess halls. men denied the posttraumatic leave typically granted. Indeed. benefits to the survivors of those black men killed in the explosion were reduced from $5.000 to $3.000 when southern senators learned the victims were blacks. The Navy. dismissing the protests of the NAACP and others over the hypocrisy of asking segregated blacks to fight fascism abroad. denounced their sailors as having "exhibited the normal characteristics of negroes." and prosecuted them for mutiny. Fifty stood their ground and were sentenced to long jail terms. later reduced in the aftermath of the war. Following their convictions. Thurgood Marshall launched an impassioned effort to force the government to rescind the convictions. and he won some concessions: two dozen pieces of evidence were thrown out as tainted. but the convictions stood. and continue to stand today. The Navy of the 1990s has proved equally resistant to revisiting the Port Chicago convictions. Directed by Congress to reexamine the case in 1992. Secretary of the Navy John Dalton admitted that there was "no doubt that racial prejudice was responsible for the posting of AfricanAmerican enlisted personnel to the loading at Port Chicago." Then Secretary of Defense William Perry agreed that "prejudice in the first instance resulted in the assignment of AfricanAmerican sailors to hard. dangerous work. but segregated them and denied them the dignity accorded to others in uniform." Like Dalton. however. Perry refused to overturn the convictions because. they asserted. the pervasive racism in the Navy and at Port Chicago was not documented in the actual trial proceedings. I wonder how the courts ultimately would have treated Rosa Parks if they had refused to consider the context in which she defied the law and launched the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s. I wonder how history might be different if judicial officers reviewing records of sitins at lunch counters did not consider the environment in which those acts of defiance occurred. The same is true of the Port Chicago case. and Thurgood Marshall knew it over a half century ago. Men who battled to enlist in the Navy to defend their country against fascism and racism were treated like second class citizens because of their race. They got second class jobs. second class training. and they got second class justice. For decades. virtually all of the surviving Port Chicago "mutineers" have suffered their unjustified humiliation in silence. much as they suffered the anguish of official segregation and Navy policies that placed them in extreme risk without even a modicum of training. Bolstered by books and news coverage a decade ago. a few of these menseveral now deceasedworked with Members of Congress to secure the Navy reviews and to successfully pass legislation in 1992 creating the Port Chicago National Memorial in California that honors the men who served and died at that facility. A decadelong effort to secure the exoneration of over 250 black sailors who refused to resume loading the ships is gaining steam. A national law firm. Morrison and Foerster. has taken up the pardon appeal of Mr. Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles. and will hopefully be able to represent additional survivors and the families of those men who passed away without ever knowing that this day of reconsideration was coming. The media also is finally paying attention to the travesty that followed the tragedy. The History Channel recently broadcast an hourlong show. produced by CBS. and the Learning Channel is set to air its own account on March 30th. NBC willnationally broadcast a madeforTV movie. produced by actor Morgan Freeman. on March 28 that tells a fictionalized account of the Port Chicago story. So it is fitting that. as the nation studies the Port Chicago case and the important role Thurgood Marshall played in challenging these unjust convictions. we meet here today to dedicate this building in his memory. Port Chicago was an early. and largely unknown. item in a distinguished legal and judicial career. and Justice Marshall surely deserves the honor we are about to confer on him.