On July 17, 1944, hundreds of sailors were loading ammunition onto two cargo ships in Port Chicago, Calif., not far from San Francisco, when an explosion powerful enough to be felt 50 miles away killed 320 of the men, most of them Black.
More than 400 sailors were injured in the blast, the cause of which has never fully been determined.
When ordered to continue loading ammunition the next day, 258 Black sailors objected until safety conditions improved. All of them were subjected to a sham trial and convicted of various offenses, though most of them eventually agreed to return to work at the piers. The situation was so bereft of justice that Thurgood Marshall, who was then a lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. and would later became a Supreme Court justice, attempted to intervene on their behalf.
The group of 50 men who continued to resist were given dishonorable discharges and jail sentences. They became known as the Port Chicago 50, and their case was used as a driver in the early days of the civil rights movement nationwide and helped lead to the desegregation of the armed forces.
On Wednesday, 80 years after the explosion at Port Chicago, the Navy secretary, Carlos Del Toro, officially exonerated all 258 Black sailors, none of whom are still alive.
“Today, the U.S. Navy is righting a historic wrong,” President Biden said in a statement after the announcement.
“The Port Chicago 50, and the hundreds who stood with them, may not be with us today, but their story lives on, a testament to the enduring power of courage and the unwavering pursuit of justice,” Mr. Del Toro said in a statement. “They stand as a beacon of hope, forever reminding us that even in the face of overwhelming odds, the fight for what’s right can and will prevail.”
An earlier petition to exonerate the men was rejected in 1994 by one of Mr. Del Toro’s predecessors, John H. Dalton.
In February, the Navy announced that it would name a new Virginia-class attack submarine in Mr. Dalton’s honor.
The men who served at Port Chicago did so in racially segregated units, with Black enlisted sailors and white officers.
According to a Navy history of the disaster and its aftermath, a report written by a court of inquiry convened after the explosion in 1944 “strongly implied that specific attributes — essentially the common racist stereotypes of the era — of the African American enlisted personnel had slowed training evolutions and day-to-day operations, and made them more difficult.”
“The report raised no questions concerning the white officers’ leadership responsibilities,” the Navy document added.
The exoneration came a week too late for Robert L. Allen, an emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who interviewed scores of survivors for a book about the disaster that was published in 1989.
Mr. Allen died on July 10, according to Yulie Padmore, the executive director of the Port Chicago Alliance, which will hold a commemoration of the disaster’s 80th anniversary this weekend. Mr. Del Toro is expected to attend.
“Robert was aware that the secretary of the Navy was coming and that it was likely he was bringing good news, but we didn’t know for sure,” the Rev. Diana McDaniel, a close friend and colleague of Mr. Allen, said in an email.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III applauded the Navy secretary’s decision to exonerate the sailors.
“We honor the memory of the 320 dedicated Americans who lost their lives in the Port Chicago explosion,” he said in a statement, “and we honor the service of the 258 brave Americans who refused afterward to bend to racist and cruel treatment.”
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