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Gr 7 Up—In the summer of 1944, 50 sailors, all of them African American, were tried and convicted of mutiny by the U.S. Navy. They had refused to follow a direct order of loading dangerous rockets and munitions on ships bound for battle in the Pacific after an enormous explosion had killed more than 300 of their fellow sailors and other civilians working on the dock. At the heart of this story is the rampant racism that permeated the military at all levels, leaving minority sailors and soldiers to do the drudge work almost exclusively whi...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Sheinkin follows Bomb (rev. 11/12) with an account of another aspect of the Second World War, stemming from an incident that seems small in scope but whose ramifications would go on to profoundly change the armed forces and the freedom of African Americans to serve their country. The Port Chicago 50 was a group of navy recruits at Port Chicago in California doing one of the few service jobs available to black sailors at ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

The Port Chicago 50 was a group of black navy recruits assigned the dangerous job of loading bombs onto battleships. When an (in...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

In a searing indictment of institutional racism, segregation, and cronyism, Steve Sheinkin reveals how a segregated Navy—and its attendant discrimination against African Americans—led to sailors being court-martialed for demanding workplace safety. Disparate, politically charged matters are woven into a cohesive whole. The narrative clearly links workers’ rights (sailors were expected to load munitions with no training, even after the Port Chicago explosion); civil rights (the explosives handlers were all African Americans, the officers all white); patriotism (wh...Log In or Sign Up to Read More