By Tony Hicks – The new park coming to the former Concord Naval Weapons Station will be named Thurgood Marshall Regional Park – Home of the Port Chicago 50.
The East Bay Regional Park District board of directors voted unanimously on the name at its Tuesday meeting.
“Truly, a historic moment,” board president Dee Rosario said after the 7-0 vote.
The 2,540-acre park will take up a little 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.
The Concord City Council — officially the local reuse authority of the former base — endorsed the name last week.
Nearby Port Chicago was where 320 sailors — mostly African American — died when unsafe conditions led to the explosion of two ammunition ships on July 17, 1944. Another 390 were wounded. The blast was strong enough to be felt in San Francisco.
While white sailors and officers were allowed to go on leave during the weeks after the explosion, African American sailors were tasked with cleaning up the aftermath. Shortly afterward, 50 African American sailors refused to go back to loading ships at nearby Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo.
When they were charged with mutiny, future Supreme Couty Justice Thurgood Marshall – then lead attorney for the NAACP – advocated for them. Though they were convicted, Marshall used the case as a springboard to help end segregation in the military in 1948.
“It’s horrifying what happened, and its horrifying that it’s not more broadly known,” said board member Elizabeth Echols, “I think it’s so important to have this name, and have this park, that we can celebrate the courage of these men to protest, really risk their lives, to protest an unjust and racist system.”
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 approximately a quarter of all African American deaths in World War II, according to a park district report.
Local U.S. Representative 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, hoping to do so by August.
Just like Biden Concord will screw things up.
You forgot to add will screw things up “AGAIN”
Wow and the end sows up what the council was up to the whole time
De slacker is the democrats scape goat
Since when does a visitors center cost 10 million dollars
The democrats sure like to throw our money around
I am sure half of that 10 is fluff money going to dems general usage fund
Pay to play with our money
I am sure the toilet seats cost 10 thousand each
They sure know how to hit us hard when we are down
and agreeing with their fake lockdowns and masks
Now the fleecing comes
Well and a city council plaque for ripping us off again
Same old corruption even during crisis
Go figure
Do we have to take a knee or raise our left arm in the air with a clenched fist as we step into the park?
This is nauseating.
I will refer to it as Concord Hills Regional Park. Ditto for the Concord Pavilion,
Sears Point Raceway, Oakland Colosseum, Giants Stadium, etc. despite their commercial names.
Barf.
When does Concord get their MLK Blvd?
tough investigative reporting by news hack Tony Hicks: City names park!
following up last weeks exhaustive expose’ : City to name park!
Give poor Tony Hicks a break. I mean, Huey Lewis and the News hasn’t played the Pavilion in ages, what’s he supposed to report on? In all seriousness, I thought he was a good music critic.
And this
NSFW
lets make everything about race and social justice gosh this is getting old… I agree with RTC “Concord Hills Regional Park” would have been better and I will call it that too…
Wrong!
This is the bureaucracy paying back the bureaucracy.
Well isn’t that just so P C
We will all be dead before they do anything.
They spelled Weapons Station Park wrong.
Refused to go back to work in the following weeks??? Sounds like mutiny, I don’t care who was in charge. This is the military.
I’m sure there were people of all races doing dangerous jobs throughout the military at this time.
What about Pearl Harbor, beaches of Normandy ETC… I don’t think they were able to pull the race card.
Wake up people.
Did you read the article? The dangerous work of loading munitions was done essentially exclusively by African American sailors and, because the work was done by African Americans, none of the senior officers cared about how unsafe the working conditions were.
Were there other dangerous jobs in the Navy? Of course. But this one was assigned to them because of the color of their skin and nobody cared about the danger because of the color of their skin.
You may call that the “good old days,” but people with any trace of decency recognize it as an injustice that should be remembered.
@xyz123
The guys storming the beaches of Normandy didn’t whine and pull the race card. The guys who cleaned up Pearl Harbor didn’t whine and complain about working conditions.
They fought and died bravely. So many brave men and women fought and died, but due to woke culture theses guys are being celebrated????? Why??? Service men follow orders.
You can call these guys hero’s they are mustiness cowards.
Wow! That just ROLLS off the tongue! Such poetic brevity! And I bet people will say it just like that, too.
“Meet me at Thurgood Marshall Regional Park.”
“Which one?!?!”
“oh, my bad. The Home of the Port Chicago 50 one.”
“Oh ok cool.”
My objection has nothing to do with politics, that’s just a stupid geographical name. Very disappointing coming from the EBRPD. Most of their parks have lovely, geographical names that people actually use. Point Pinole, Briones, Crockett Hills. And if you ARE going to name it after a person, with their full name (bad idea), at least pick a name that when inevitably shortened, yields an ok name. “Sibley” ain’t so bad. It’s distinctive. Sibley means Sibley. “Marshall Park”? In one ear and out the other.
Why all these negative comments. From what I read these sailor’s died due to unsafe work practice. If you read the story certainly Thurgood Marshall is connected to it. I will agree that in todays environment there are many instances that are labeled racist when clearly it is not. However, back in the forties it was a different story, why should it not be remembered and honored?
Just as the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa massacre is being honored. Making everything about race is going overboard, but ignoring these real tragedies is a very different story. Would you feel the same way if it had been mostly white sailors that died, and the park would be named after a white lawyer you pleaded their case??
@hanne
Yet here you are making it about race. The name is stupid, period. Yes I would feel the same if they were white. Why you over here gaslighting? You are a piece of work.
I would feel the same too. It should be Weapons Station Park. This race crap is getting long on the tooth.
Am I the only one who had never heard of the Tulsa Massacre before? Now it’s constantly in the news. I read that some descendants are “still suffering” from the trauma of this event. Gosh, they prob need some free stuff to help them get through this. I also saw that there was a candlelight vigil a few nights ago, with anguished participants crying over this event that they just learned about two weeks ago Couldn’t help but notice people wearing hats with Black Wall Street printed on them. So, rest assured, somebody’s making money off of this. And don’t forget to get good ol’ Ben Crump in there to sue the city. He needs his 1/3 cut of the $ettlement. Do I sound cynical? Yep – sick of all of this.
War is inherently unsafe Hanne. How about the lives lost at Pearl Harbor or D-Day? Or maybe we should memorialize all allied lives lost in ammunition explosions during WWII:
5 Jun 1942 – Elwood Ordnance Plant, Joliet IL
14 Apr 1944 – SS Fort Stikine, Bombay
7 Nov 1944 – RAF Fauld, Hanberry, Staffordshire
10 Nov 1944 – USS Mount Hood, Manus Island
29 Jan 1945 – USS Serpens, Guadalcanal
18 Jul 1945 – Halifax Explosion, Halifax NS
@Sam
Hanne didn’t make it about race, it always was about race. The work was being done almost exclusively by black sailors because it was dangerous and, by using black sailors, the Navy was able to get away with not trying to make it safer. Those are just plain historical facts. Are you going to pretend the Navy wasn’t segregated in the 1940s? That sailors weren’t assigned to different roles based on the color of their skins? Again, these are just historical facts.
Contrary to what many here feel, it’s a great plan! Finally some honor to the 300 who lost their lives due to racism, and the men who were punished for standing up to what was wrong.
Then call it Port Chicago Memorial Park or Port Chicago 50 Park or something that memorializes the men who were actually killed or the mutineers even, not the friggin’ lawyer.
@jazzman
Serving your country is racism???
They refused to go back to work in the following weeks. Definitely mutiny. This is the military. I don’t care who was in charge.
They were cowards and played the race card.
Hanne it’s not necessary that’s why ppl are tired of this race grifter bs
Bill, Race grifter bs, really. This was a great number of men who died, because of unsafe conditions, are you suggesting they should not be remembered at all?
I said it before….
While other men faced bullets, bayonets, cannons & mortars, bombs dropped from above and starvation in POW camps….
50 soldiers AT HOME mutinied because they were afraid to load ships with bombs and ammunition.
So let’s name a park after their lawyer?
This is beyond stupid.
There are six colleges at UCSD; one of the colleges is thurgood Marshall. He also has a elementary school in San Diego. Enough is enough! How many buildings does he want.
Paul, The man is dead, it is not his doing. Don’t we have many school, streets, buildings named after, just to mention a few: JFK, Washington, Jefferson. What is too much or too little. Many of these comments comes off as racists.
And while I’m ranting about stupid names, PORT CHICAGO is a stupid name. The world knows what Chicago is, and that it is located next to a large body of water, and it probably has a port. It is NOT in California. New York is a stupid name. York is in England. Manhattan is a good word. They should use it for the whole city. And like Manhattan, virtually everywhere in the world that’s not in Antarctica ALREADY HAS A NAME. Why not ask the locals what the proper name is that they’ve been using for thousands of years?
My father was in the Navy in the Pacific when the Port Chicago disaster took place. According to him, there was a general sense of outrage in the ranks that the mutineers were treated so poorly. He said the Navy used fire hoses to push them back on the docks when they refused to load ordnance. The fact their fellow sailors were treated this way, regardless of their race, was insulting.
At the same time, what would happen to a white Marine if he threw down his rifle and refused to go on patrol at Peleliu? It would not have ended well for him. He may have even get shot on the spot.
War is dangerous. It goes with the territory.
So they thought loading ammo onto ships was dangerous? They could have been serving on a Destroyer like my uncle. Him and a lot of other people lost their lives on those ships. And should we mention Bomber Crews? The odds of surviving the minimum number of missions were not good…more dangerous than serving in the infantry (which surprised me).
How long before the public can actually start having access to the existing trails and roadways for walking and safe bike riding?
Does the place still smell like Malathion or Round-Up or whatever that was? That place was chem central. You could smell it from Highway 4. I used to deliver magnetic tapes there in the 80s and the smell was horrible. They must have used 20,000 gallons of herbicides and pesticides a year.
Not to mention the chem they buried and didn’t tell anyone about.
Please DO THE RESEARCH on what actually happened! Heat was extreme and exceeded the Navy’s own parameters of safety ammunition/powder/bomb loading! White Navy enlisted had already refused to approach the loading docks that day. Think of how many Navy and CIVILIAN lives were lost that day…. the property damage over so great an area…. because some self-serving officers decided to push their weight around.
Read about what Thurgood Marshall did to prevent the charge of mutiny from following the names of those who lived and those who died as a result of commanding officers’ stupid bullheadedness.
READ instead of making fools of yourselves! Research material is available all over the place, including at the Rosie the Riveter National Memorial museum just over on the Richmond shore.
I preferred that the park be named Port Chicago Memorial Park, but it wasn’t. So what?!?!?
Antler, Do not confuse some commenters here with facts, that would interfere with their already made up mind.
WWII was a time in which the US and other countries rose up to fight the evil of totalitarianism that took over Germany and Japan who were killing and enslaving tens of millions in genocide and conquest across the globe. The clear and obvious reason for the left to cherry pick this one episode almost a century later is not to honor those who perished in the war, but to push the political flavor of the day about “wokeness.”
@to do list
Well stated!!!!
Hanns jeppp how do you like those facts!!!
Was it wrong to force the sailors to resume loading ships with ammo? as all but 50 of them did.
Well they did it and gee golly! No more explosions!
They managed to do their job without blowing up after all.
But the right thing to do would have been to stop loading the ships?
Too bad we can’t send Hanne & Antler back in time to explain to soldiers in the South Pacific why they were going to run out of ammo & die at the hands of the Japanese.
“Sorry guys, it’s just too dangerous to load ammo on the ships!”
I’m sure they’d understand.
In fact, the soldiers would agree “This fighting is just too dangerous… let’s desert”
Ships Captains and crews delivering ammo would obviously agree too “Sail thru submarine infested waters dodging torpedoes? Forget that!”
Pilots would wonder aloud “Guys… how far away from the Front do you think we can fly and bail out?”
Now let’s compare the Port Chicago 50 to the Tuskegee Airmen!
I wonder if I’d be making a fool of myself if I mentioned the crews used to race to be the first ones done loading because the fastest crews were rewarded with extra time off and other incentives…
I didn’t see the ladies address that.
How much will the park be after this?
13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space.
A little common sense goes a long way
Patton was tougher on his troops (mostly white) he slapped a couple.
“It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy”.
— Patton directive to the Seventh Army, 5 August 1943
I’m familiar with Patton’s speech, but it was not received well by some of the other generals. I also think we understand much more about PTSD now than we did then. To call someone coward because he has PTSD is a disservice to all whose who serves and has served.
Yeah… well I guess General Patton just took that whole World War II thing too seriously. He should have lightened up and taken some vacation time… learned to mellow out at little. We were going to catch up to that rascal Hitler sooner or later anyway.