Only blacks loaded explosives at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Port Chicago, California, and white officers sometimes raced work crews against each other. On the night of July 17, 1944, an explosion rocked the Bay Area. It razed two anchored ships; killed 320 civilians and servicemen, 202 of them black; and injured more than 400 others. It was the worst home-front disaster of World War II.

The tragedy also caused injustice. Ordered back to work in the same unsafe situation, 258 black sailors refused; 208 were court-martialed for mutiny and dishonorably discharged. Fifty of the men received 8- to 15-year prison terms. Civil rights activists launched protests and the NAACP filed suits. After the war, the navy released those imprisoned without pardons. Later research by Robert Allen, editor and publisher of the Black Scholar, resulted in an official review (1994); it did not vacate the convictions. The president pardoned only one of the few survivors (1999).