By Tony Hicks – The Concord City Council threw its weight behind naming a future park in the former Concord Naval Weapons Station after Thurgood Marshall and the 50 sailors he represented who stood up to racism after the Port Chicago explosion in 1944.
The East Bay Regional Park District will decide whether to name the park “Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50” at its board meeting next Tuesday.
The council is the official local reuse authority of the former base, which the U.S. Navy abandoned in 1999. The council on Tuesday night voted to send a letter to the park district officially backing the name.
The 2,540-acre park will take up more than half of the massive redevelopment effort at the 5,046-acre site, which would also include 13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space.
Before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Marshall challenged Navy segregation policies by advocating for 50 African American sailors who refused to load ammunition onto ships in the weeks following the Port Chicago explosion.
Unsafe conditions led to two ships exploding on July 17, 1944, killing 320 men (two-thirds of them African American) and wounding another 390. The blast was powerful enough to be felt as far away as San Francisco.
The dangerous task loading of weapons was done exclusively by African American sailors at the base and was supervised by white commanders, who frequently pushed sailors to work harder. The disaster accounted for about a quarter of all African American deaths in World War II, according to a park district report.
The 50 African American sailors were convicted of mutiny after refusing to go back to loading ammunition at nearby Mare Island in Vallejo in the weeks after the disaster, while white commanders were granted leave. The Black sailors were also tasked with cleaning up the aftermath of the explosion.
They contacted Marshall, then lead counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Marshall sat in on the court martial proceedings and published a series of articles and spoke out against Navy policies. Though all 50 were convicted and sentenced to prison, Marshall’s campaign was widely credited with President Harry Truman’s decision to end segregation in the armed forces in 1948.
U.S. Rep. Mark Desaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, is requesting $10 million in federal funds to build a joint visitor center at the park featuring the history of the Port Chicago disaster.
The city is currently going through the process of finding a master developer for the project. Lennar Five Point was selected as the initial developer in 2016 but pulled out in late 2020 when its negotiating agreement expired after if couldn’t reach consensus with local labor unions.
The city went back to the drawing board and expedited the process and is trying to have a new developer in place by August.
23 comments
Great
Can’t wait to see it in 20 years
The city councils self absorbed self centered self PLAQUE
Should be a nice distraction from the actual great purpose
of naming the park After him
We see how the plaque at todos democrat money pit park
has really brought in the crime and bums
Do any of those bank employees really go there on break
So they went all corrupt the first time
So bad they had the skewed construction company
that usually bends over cities they work on
Actually bail out after giving multiple donations to city council lol
Now they say no rat race
They will confer with their appointed city manager and sjw to hand pick a company
Errrr can anyone say seeno lol
A joke of course or not
The corruption continues and we get to pay for their benefits for the rest of their lives for doing nothing but ripping us off
So we paid for all those solar panels
They closed the schools
Who got all of that money from them selling it to pge
Not us we had to pay 8 billion dollars for them to open schools half way for 6 weeks
They are really good at not working and yet getting rich
Go figure
But what do you expect from democrat self righteous self absorbed politicians
Accept a goodwill store on every corner and empty business space and bums and prostitution on Clayton rd
Why do your posts always look like they are written in the form of a poem? If you tell me English was not your first language that would make sense if so I understand otherwise…
Really don’t care for PC decisions. Naming the park after a lawyer? Weak !!
Ten million dollars of fed money (from our taxes) for a visitor center is absurd. The developer will make millions on the contracts. Make him build a visitors center.
big scoop story by Tony Hicks! He worked hard to get this story too…LOL!
$10M for a visitor center – No. Naming things after people – No
You think 10M for a visitor’s center is absurd, you’re gonna love the estimates for the Superfund cleanup project.
The parked should not be named after a person.If it were George Washington or Abraham Lincoln that wouldn’t fly.How about just CNWS park that way you don’t offend anyone.
I’ll still call it Weapon Station Park, easier to remember.
Forgot the S in Weapon…
What an ugly name for “a park”
Such a waist, somehow they always focus on the past stories, not in the present or future . They’re even lazy to choose an original name for a park .
Not creative at all. 👎🏽
How does one focus on future stories?
Neat. Now fix the roads you jackals.
I will also be referring to this park as “Weapons Station Park” That’s the perfect name for it.
Alternative name…Boom Boom Park, and this covers the past and the present.
Refused to go back to loading ammunition in the weeks after the disaster???
I don’t care who’s in charge, sounds like mutiny.
I’m sure there were sailors of other races doing the same type of dangerous work in the Navy.
Anybody recall storming the beaches on Normandy, PearHarbor, who cleaned up those atrocities??? ETC????
I’m against naming dedicating anything to anyone. The only time it’s not racist is when the democratic left agree with it. Hypocrisy
How about fixing the pot holes instead of this crap?
While better men faced bullets, bayonets, cannons & mortars, bombs dropped from above and starvation in POW camps…. 50 guys at home went on strike because they were afraid to load ships with bombs & ammo ……
So let’s name a park after their lawyer?
It should be named the Concord Naval Weapons Regional Park, so that we can recognize all the history that happened on the property. I think in the visitor’s center, visitors can learn about the native California Indians who had villages on the site; the Spanish explorers (DeAnza); Mexican land grants; California gold rush; ranchers; farmers; then the Naval weapons base opening in 1942; the WWII war effort; the Port Chicago explosion and the dangerous jobs African-American soldiers were given on the base; civil rights and Thurgood Marshall; Korean War; Vietnam war; Vietnam war protests there; Sept.1987 protest of weapons going to Nicaragua – protester couldn’t get off the train tracks in time; SuperFund cleanup.
Of 125,000 blacks that served overseas in World War II nearly 800 were killed.
Throughout the world “an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. Deaths directly caused by the war are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war”.
None of these people were allowed to lawyer up and avoid duty.
That park should be named to honor all those who served during the war, not a select few who demonstrated nothing short of cowardice while others excelled in bravery and paid with their lives..
Yes, it’s quite shocking to me the 320 men who died in that awful explosion – in the service of their country – are being ignored and these sailors that staged a mutiny are being “honored”. I just can’t believe the insensitivity of that.
I’d use the historical name and language for the area. Parque del Monte del Diablo. This article talks about the Monte del Diablo part of the name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Monte_del_Diablo
El Trabajo del Diablo – Refer to the weapons that were stored there and the job of loading ammunition
Another option is Seal Beach Park. The lowlands near the river used to be known as Seal Beach. There’s still a Seal Island just offshore.
Did the Concord City Council survey residents about this proposal to name the park after Thurgood Marshal? I doubt it. No way would this proposed name for the park fly with most of Concord’s senior citizen population, or the many veterans who live in Concord. This name is being proposed by some regional park staffers, including the park district CEO ,who formerly was the city manager of Oakland. It’s highly doubtful any of these regional park staffers even live in Concord, why are Concord City Council members listening to them?
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