-It was a time of struggle, a period of daily discrimination,
an era that sparked the fight for one's rights.
And yet, the war had only just begun.
It was 1941 and the U.S. was at war.
However, while battles ensued far overseas
during World War II,
another fight was already taking place close to home soil.
Although President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
banned discrimination against African-Americans
in the defense industry that year,
segregation in the armed forces remained.
Nevertheless, more than 2.5 million African-Americans
registered for the draft when the war began.
And over 1 million served.
As a result of this dual fight for freedom,
African-Americans pursued a double victory,
one over Axis abroad
and the other over discrimination at home.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this special
electronic field trip.
This webcast is coming to you live
from the National World War II Museum
in New Orleans, Louisiana.
I'm Commander Damon Singleton,
meteorologist and retired naval officer.
Throughout the entire month of February,
we call special attention to the stories of African-Americans.
The founders of Black History Month,
the Association for the Study of African-American Life
and History or ASALH, provide a theme each year,
focusing on historical issues of importance.
2018's theme is African-Americans
in times of war.
Through that lens,
this webcast will spotlight significant history
and perspectives of black Americans
with students like you all across the country.
Today is also Digital Learning Day
and we have a unique opportunity for you to learn
and participate live with us right from your classroom.
Throughout the program, there will be polls for you
to vote on that help inform our story.
Shortly, we'll be joined by World War II expert
and museum historian Dr. Rob Citino,
who'll be providing insights
and answering some of your questions.
If you're watching on the museum website,
you can ask questions and answer polls
in the box directly below this screen
or you can go to slido.com and type in the code #S085
to join in the conversation.
Captioning for this program is also available below.
You'll also meet our two excellent student reporters
Mizani Ball here in New Orleans and Maceo Carney,
broadcasting from California's Bay Area.
They are exploring important sites,
checking out historic artifacts,
and talking to very special guests along the way.
Before we take this coast-to-coast trip
with Maceo and Mizani,
we begin our story with a date which will live in infamy --
December 7th, 1941.
It's a day that shocked our nation
when Japan launched a surprise attack
on the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The next day, Congress declared war.
In addition to the Japanese expansion in the Pacific,
the Allies fought to stop the spread of Fascism
as Nazi Germany took control of large parts of Europe.
The country's military and defense industry
mobilized to fight and support a global conflict.
Our factories buzzed around the clock
and our military swelled to millions of Americans.
Starting our exploration today is reporter Mizani Ball
who is in the museum's Arsenal of Democracy exhibit
to learn about the build-up of our war industries
and what these expanded opportunities
meant for black Americans.
But first, let's take a look at the opening poll question.
+We'll reveal the answer once we return.
Okay, take it away, Mizani.
-Hi, my name is Mizani Ball and, right now,
I'm with educator Shelbie Johnson
in the museum's newest exhibit, the Arsenal of Democracy:
The Herman and George Brown Salute to the Home Front.
-Welcome, Mizani.
I brought you to the exhibit today,
so we can talk more about discrimination in factories.
Now we were in a time of war, so jobs were plentiful,
they were easy to come by for both men and women,
but this wasn't the case for African-Americans.
If you were African-American, it was very unlikely
that you could easily get a job.
Even white labor unions
protested the employment of African-Americans
and, sometimes, white employees would actually resort
to violence against African-Americans
who were applying for these jobs.
-Now did anyone speak out about this and how?
-Yes.
There were protests all over the country.
One that's really famous that never really took off
was one that was proposed by a man named A. Phillip Randolph.
He organized 100,000 railroad workers to march on Washington.
The reason he did this, he felt that the federal government
wasn't really taking a stand
against this discrimination in hiring practices.
President Roosevelt eventually yielded to Randolph's demand,
so the protests didn't take off.
Instead, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802,
which made it illegal to have discriminatory hiring practices
if you were a factory that had a wartime contract
with the government.
Let's take a look at this poster here.
This is a poster that was issued by the government
to enforce Executive Order 8802.
What do you notice here?
-Well, instantly, I notice the black worker
and the white worker working together,
which kind of symbolizes the "United we win".
And then, I also the American flag in the background.
-Yes, so what do you think the overall message is here?
-I feel like the overall message here on this poster
is saying that we can come together and work together
and get things done
and that segregation really isn't the way to go.
-Yes, that appears to be the overall message here,
but we have to remember, this wasn't the reality in factories.
During the war years, we were living in a time of both legal
and de facto segregation.
Now, when we think of legal segregation,
we're thinking of the Jim Crow laws,
things that were on the books,
but de facto segregation was more social, the status quo,
what people found as normal.
So once these African-Americans were hired into factories,
they could still be segregated in the workplace,
so this wouldn't be a typical image of a black man
and a white man working together.
In addition, African-Americans were discriminated against
and segregated in cafeterias,
even in entrances into the building,
and when factories did provide housing to their employees,
they would even segregate the African-American
and white employees that way.
Now let's go over and take a look at another poster
that shows us Pearl Harbor survivor Obie Bartlett.
What do you see?
-Now I see Obie working with a tool in his hand
and he's missing an arm
and I know he served in the military
before getting injured at the attack on Pearl Harbor
and it says here that he takes his job in the factory
as serious as his time in the war
and then it also says, "Twice a patriot",
which kind of means, for me,
that, even though he's African-American
and he's an injured veteran, he still matters.
-So what do you think the overall message is here
to African-Americans?
-I think the overall message here
is to reinforce to African-Americans
that working in a factory is critical to winning the war
and that, like you and Obie,
we have to make sacrifices
in order to benefit the global struggle.
-Yes, that's exactly correct, and African-Americans
here in the United States often received
mixed messaging like this because, on the one hand,
this poster is telling you it's your patriotic duty
to work in a factory,
but on the other hand, as I told you earlier,
African-Americans were discriminated against
in the work place.
Now, African-Americans did have some progress in factories.
At the beginning of the war,
we had about 500,000 African-Americans
working in defense jobs.
By the end of the war, we had approximately
1.5 million African-Americans working in these defense jobs.
Now, even though they were employed,
they weren't always receiving the best jobs or the best pay,
so they were still being discriminated
against in the work place.
-Okay, let's take a look at the answer
to our first poll question.
And the answer is true.
As your heard Shelbie in the last segment...
To get a bit more insight about war work on the home front,
let me welcome in Dr. Rob Citino,
the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian here at the Museum.
So Shelbie and Mizani were exploring the Museum's
Arsenal of Democracy exhibit.
What exactly does that mean?
-Well, Damon, first of all, it's great to be here with you.
I think we have a great show
and there's a lot of great material to talk about.
It's going to be an interesting class.
We use the phrase "Arsenal of Democracy"
and that's what Franklin Roosevelt said
in a speech, even before America got involved in the war.
What Arsenal of Democracy implies is
that America not only had the ability,
but also the duty to produce weapons and material
to fight the forces of dictatorship abroad.
Now, that's not just to defend the United States,
but also to defend our allies.
I'm thinking primarily here of the British,
even then locked in a life-or-death
struggle with the Nazis.
And if the British went down, that was going to be a very,
very difficult series of conquests
on the part of Adolf Hitler to roll back for the United States.
So it made good sense to help out friends
and, at the same time, make sure that we were
defending ourselves adequately
against this threat that we found abroad.
-Wow.
You know, turning to here in New Orleans,
one of the more notable defense companies in the city
was Higgins Industries.
What did they produce during World War II?
-So, that's a good one to answer, Damon,
because they produced
just about everything that the U.S. Military
and especially the Navy asked for.
But perhaps this is the iconic item that they produced.
This is a landing craft, vehicle, personnel -- LCVP.
The military gives everything in initials, of course,
but better known as the Higgins boat.
What happens is this craft sails up to the shore,
the ramp comes down,
and then troops or vehicles pour off the ramp
onto the beach ready to fight.
So, Adolf Hitler famously said Higgins was the new Noah,
that is he took entire armies
and put them on these landing craft.
Without the Higgins boat, it's impossible to imagine
the United States fighting the war that it did.
And so, when you look here,
you're really looking at the iconic
U.S. naval craft of World War II.
Photos of D-Day or any amphibious landing,
you're going to get your share of Higgins boats.
My father landed in one on Guadalcanal in 1942, in fact.
-Wow. That's amazing.
So did these new jobs at Higgins mean expanded opportunities
for New Orleanians or black Americans?
-Absolutely.
It's fun to talk about the equipment and I love to do it,
but I can take you through every tank and every naval craft
in World War II,
but I think the bigger story here is that
Higgins Industries --
Andrew Higgins, the owner, had a very, very good record.
What he realized, if you wanted to be efficient,
you wanted to produce efficiently,
you had to treat all your workers equally,
so black, white, male, female,
even those with physical disability,
all were paid pretty much by the work they were doing
and their work classification at Higgins
and that's quite something
given the tenor of the times we were living in.
Legal segregation down here in South
and all sorts of forms of non-legal,
but, nevertheless, very serious segregation up north.
So, you know, at the beginning Higgins had a single plan
of employing a few hundred workers.
By the end, seven big plants, 20,000 workers, 24/7/365.
Americans pulling together for the war effort.
Without companies like Higgins,
we have a very hard time winning this war.
-Yeah, that's incredible information.
So let's go to some student questions.
-Sure. -And we got a few of them.
So, here's the first one from Magoffin County High School.
-It's a good question.
It takes us to that -- there's a term today
called "intersectionality",
how discriminated against you are.
African-American women are really getting hit
from two directions.
You might say that there's the discrimination
they're receiving on the race question, racial discrimination,
but there's also the discrimination
they're experiencing as women, so I can say I think
and probably give examples of the way
that African-American women -- we tend to say,
"African-Americans -- last hired, first fired",
but that might be particularly true of African-American women
who are kind of getting hit by that double whammy.
-Wow.
Well, let's go to another question.
-By all means.
We can stand here and do this, though.
-This is from the same school.
-Sure.
De facto segregation -- so, I'm from Cleveland, Ohio,
so this would be the North and this would be the land
of not Jim Crow, but de facto segregation.
So there's no law that says whites and blacks
have to have separate facilities in Cleveland, Ohio
where I grew up, but, nevertheless,
whites and blacks do have separate facilities.
There are secret arrangements on the part of realtors
as to who they will sell a home to
and who they won't sell a home to
and what you wind up with are segregated neighborhoods,
but without the force of law, but rather the force of custom.
And, you know, that's a problem because you can change a law.
You can go to Congress and get a law changed,
but what's much more difficult is to change people's hearts,
to change people's habits, to change people's culture.
-Wow.
-By the way, I must say, that's some school.
-Yeah, so similar things were happening in both locations,
just down here in the South it was open and it was legal.
-As a dino northerner, I never try to be too brutal
in my comments about the South,
because the same things were happening all over the country,
simply without the force of law as they were here in the South.
-Thanks, Rob.
Well, next time we'll venture to the World War II boomtown
of Richmond, California.
The war industry there was heavily influenced
by Henry Kaiser,
who operated four shipyards in the city.
Kaiser also built housing, hospitals,
and childcare centers to support this rapidly
expanding population flocking to the city for jobs.
Our student reporter Maceo is there to learn
about these new employment opportunities,
but first, let's take a look at the next poll question.
Now let's go to Maceo at a notable national park
as he interviews a true national treasure
who both made and interprets history in her town.
♪♪
-Hey, everyone. My name is Maceo Carney.
And I go to school right here in the Bay Area.
Today I'm taking you to sites around northern California
to learn a bit more about African-Americans
during World War II.
We're here at a really neat national park,
the Rosie the Riveter World War II
Home Front National Historic Park
in Richmond, California to discover more.
The Rosie The Riveter
World War II Home Front National Historic Park
tells the story of millions of Americans
who mobilized after the attack on Pearl Harbor
to support the war effort,
causing shifts in our society and our culture.
Despite being united in a common purpose of defeating the Axis,
not all Americans received fair or equal treatment,
even with plentiful new employment opportunities.
To share the mission and stories of this park, along with her own
World War II story, is Betty Reid Soskin,
who is the oldest active U.S. Park Ranger.
Thanks for joining us today, Betty.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
-I'm 95 and will be 96 in September.
-How long have you been working at the Rosie the Riveter site?
-I came here in the year 2003,
as a consultant to the National Park Service.
I became a ranger 10 years ago.
-Betty, why exactly was Richmond, California
chosen as the site for this national park?
-Well, though they were many, many boomtowns
throughout the country around different plants,
it was only here in Richmond
there were enough still-standing structures
related to that era through which to interpret the history.
Everywhere else, they'd been redeveloped out of existence.
Here in Richmond, though these sites were not revered
as historic landmarks,
this was a city that was a very poor city
that couldn't afford to knock them down
and put something else up.
The signs of the Richmond Shipyards were still here.
All of that history was still evident in the city of Richmond,
so it became the only place in the country
through which you could interpret that history
with any kind of accuracy.
-Lots of new jobs in Richmond,
but not for all Americans, right?
-That's right.
That's right, except that Henry Kaiser
for his four Kaiser Shipyards
imported a workforce of 98,000 black and white southerners
out of the five Southern states of Mississippi,
Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana.
These were whites coming off the Dust Bowl
and blacks coming up from the slow mechanization of cotton.
Everybody recovering from the Great Depression of the '30s.
Possible for a black man
to be standing on the sidewalk in Jackson, Mississippi
where southern tradition would demand
that he not only not make eye contact with a white person,
but that he also step into the gutter
if a white person approached.
That man could find himself tapped on the shoulder
by a Kaiser recruiter and find himself two weeks later
in the city of Richmond,
riding in the front of the bus 10 years before Rosa Parks
would refuse to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama.
So, here in Richmond, that cauldron that absorbed
all of those southerners had to deal with it
without the benefit of focus groups and diversity training.
They had to all answer the mission of their leader,
which was, simply, build ships
faster than the enemy could sink them
with no time to take on a broken social system.
They were all living under the common threat
of fascist world domination, so the black-and-white struggle
played itself out in the city of Richmond
in many, many ways, unlike other parts of the country.
-I see we're sitting next to a sign that says "Double victory".
What does that mean?
-You know, it's striking to me that that's so forgotten.
African-Americans come here
and they've never heard of the Double V campaign.
And it really was the campaign that set in motion
what happened in the '60s.
It was actually created by James Thompson,
who was a young man in his mid-20s
who was due to be drafted into the armed forces
and who sent in a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier,
which was probably the most widely
read black newspaper nationally.
And he sent it in saying that he was perfectly willing
to fight for his country,
but that he thought that there were two battles --
that he thought that his people, African-Americans,
those like us,
should not only be fighting for victory overseas,
but they ought to be fighting for justice at home.
And he encouraged -- that encouraged the creation
of the Double V campaign
that was promoted by the Pittsburgh Courier
and it became, actually, a national movement.
-Did you see yourself as a Rosie the Riveter during the war?
-No, I didn't.
I don't even see myself as that now.
The country that we were then is not the nation that we have now.
For instance, I grew up as a child
with the service workers' generation.
Our fathers and our uncles were the red caps
and the pullman porters and the bellhops
and the janitors and the laborers.
And our mothers were 50¢-an-hour domestic servants.
But I share that history,
in order to indicate that being a clerk,
even in a segregated union hall in 1942, was a step up.
My folks were really proud of me
because I wasn't making beds in a hotel.
I was a clerk, which in 1942 would have been the equivalent
of today's young woman of color
being the first in her family to enter college
because that's how different we were in those years.
And I hope you can understand that,
but that's how much social progress
the country has made over those 70 years.
You're not living in that world,
but that's the world I grew up in.
At the time that Rosie the Riveter was a campaign
to entice women out of their homes
into non-traditional labor for the first time,
to take the place of the men who are off fighting,
that was simply not my story at all.
-Betty, before you had mentioned that you had worked as a clerk,
could you please specify your jobs as a clerk?
-Yeah, I was working for Boilermakers Auxiliary 36.
The unions were not yet racially integrated.
They wouldn't be another decade.
And so, the unions created auxiliaries
and that's a fancy word for Jim Crow.
And that was where all the black workers were dumped.
I came in every day in a car pool.
I changed addresses on 3x5 file cards of people
who were constantly in motion
'cause everyone was trying to get settled into housing
and I was doing this to save the world for democracy.
As you can see, it worked.
It's also true that I had no idea
what was happening around me.
I never saw a ship under construction,
I never saw a ship being launched.
I was in a temporary building that was torn down immediately
when the war ended.
At 20, I was -- what --
maybe four years older than you are, five years.
I was not much more than a child,
slightly out of adolescence.
The larger political issues were not a part
of my life at the time.
I only could see what was around me
and that was that little union hall.
-Why do you think it's important for Americans
to remember all of these home front stories?
-Because it's out of who we have been
that has determined who we're going to be.
The future's based on the past
and we have encapsulated our past
in this series of national parks.
One could educate themselves
by traveling through the national parks
of which there are now over 400.
I think it is the greatest gift for ourselves.
And it is important, especially for African-American children,
to go back and walk through the past
because we've been left out of a lot of history,
but we can reconstruct it and that's what we're doing.
That's what we're doing here.
-These historic sites spread throughout all of Richmond
remind us of the tremendous economic, social,
and cultural changes on the U. S. home front
brought about by the war.
These changes had a lasting effect
on the fabric of American society
and exposed unity and division and harmony and disparity
within our diverse country.
-Wow, an amazing woman.
Thank you, Maceo and Betty.
Now let's check out the answer to the last poll question.
Amazingly, the answer is D.
Now, Betty mentioned the story of Rosa Parks
and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Let's bring in Rob Citino to share with us
to share the story of another bus rider
who took a stand when he was ordered to go to the back.
-So, a little show-and-tell time, Damon.
I have a baseball card. What are we looking at?
-Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson.
He was one of the best in the MLB,
racking up accolades like Rookie of the Year
and National League MVP,
all while his team, the Brooklyn Dodgers,
won six pennants in his 10 seasons.
-You know, all true, of course, but there's another story
to tell about Jackie Robinson.
A few years before he became the baseball icon
that he became, he was also in the U.S. Army.
He was in the 761st Tank Battalion in World War II
and he refused to go to the back of the bus while riding on base.
He was court martialed, that is, put on trial
for breaking the laws of the U.S. Army at the time.
He managed to go public with this story,
went to the Pittsburgh Courier,
one of the great African-American newspapers
of the day, and won defenders in other newspapers, as well,
and he got his story out.
The charges were dropped and eventually Jackie was acquitted
of all those charges and discharged from the Army.
But, you know, a shout-out, too,
to that unit, the 761st Tank Battalion.
They were in combat
almost constantly during World War II --
an African-American unit,
138 straight days at the front, in contact with the Germans.
I don't know if it's a record,
but it's certainly something, though.
It's something worthy of an accolade.
They went by the nickname, a name much in the news nowadays,
they were the Black Panthers.
-It's okay. [ Chuckles ]
-And just fought as well as any unit
in the entire U.S. Army in World War II, so...
You know, that's the kind of story
we're trying to tell here today.
There's a view of combat in World War II
that largely emphasizes the white soldier.
We're trying to broaden that picture a little bit today.
-Yeah, 'cause I know I certainly didn't hear much
about this unit when I was growing up.
-Yeah, today you can find a lot of good books
on the 761st, the Black Panthers.
-Wow.
So, an inspiring and courageous story
of one of America's most highly regarded sports heroes
and the unit in which he served.
Let's turn to a couple of questions.
-Absolutely. Let's do it.
-So, this is from Benjamin.
-He sure did.
Henry Kaiser is a -- what's the word?
A visionary in many ways.
Not only in terms of building the ships faster,
more efficiently,
and churning them out in abundance,
but also realizing a healthy workforce
was going to be a more productive workforce.
And Kaiser Shipbuilding
was probably the first firm in America
to have some kind of general health care for their workers.
The corporation today, Kaiser Permanente,
which is a massive, nationwide,
health-care organization
comes from the care that Kaiser first provided to his workers
in his Richmond, California facility.
-That's incredible.
Let's go to another question. -Absolutely.
-This is from Ms. McGrath.
-I think in general you can probably answer this question
in terms of their male counterparts, as well,
that by and large African-American workers
were given more difficult jobs under more difficult conditions,
perhaps the jobs where you couldn't produce
such a large number of pieceworks,
so, de facto, you might be paid a little bit less,
even though your hourly wage was the same.
I've mentioned already once,
it was the sort of "last hired, first fired".
And so, if you're looking at both women and both race,
you know, you probably have African-American women
who occupy that position and so, by virtue of their white skin,
white women probably a bit up on that hiring-and-firing scale.
-Wow. Thanks, Rob.
So, let's reveal our latest poll question.
Maceo is back at another national park
to commemorate a tragic day in history
and reveal its critical legacy.
-I'm at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial
in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This site commemorates the 320 lives that were lost
in the largest munitions explosion
in U.S. naval history.
It was the worst disaster to happen here
at the home front during World War II.
Let's go check out the memorial to understand
what happened here on that tragic day in 1944.
On July 17, 1944, Navy sailors were loading explosives
and ammunition into ships right at this port
when a massive explosion occurred at 10:18 p.m.,
it created a fireball approximately three miles across
and was felt over 450 miles away.
Most of the 320 deaths were black sailors
who were never trained on how to properly load ammunition
and were pressured by their commanding officers
to load these dangerous munitions
as quickly as possible.
Let's talk with Kelli English,
who is a National Parks Service Ranger
here at the site to find out what happened next.
-Hi, Ranger Kelli. Thanks for joining us today.
Can you tell me what type of work was going on here
at Port Chicago during the war?
-Absolutely.
Here at Port Chicago during the war,
even before the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the Navy had identified that they needed a place
that had deep water to be able to load munitions and munitions
are all those huge bombs and missiles and warheads
that they would use during the war.
And there are only a few locations along the West Coast
that had water that was deep enough
to be able to have these huge ships come in
and be loaded with all of these munitions
and so they were already building a facility here
at Port Chicago,
which was called Port Chicago Naval Magazine
and this was the main place
where munitions were loaded to go out
to what we call the Pacific Theater during the war.
-Who was working here and what were they doing?
-Here at Port Chicago many African-American sailors
who signed up to work with the Navy
were assigned here to help load munitions
and the work of loading munitions was extremely dirty
and it was extremely dangerous
because these are huge bombs and explosives and warheads
and it was a really dangerous sort of work.
And, essentially, you had a situation where you had almost
an exclusively African-American crew of sailors
who were doing the most dangerous job in the Navy,
stateside at least.
And it was a really, very segregated situation,
in that it was the African-American sailors
who were assigned to do the dirtiest,
most dangerous work and that was pretty consistent
with military practices at the time.
Along with segregating like that comes a hierarchy
of who is considered to be more important
and, in this case, more expendable or in the sense that,
if an accident happened with loading munitions,
"Well, at least, it was only the black sailors that we lost".
And it's very hard for us to understand
that today in today's world,
but that really was the world that existed
back then in the 1940s.
And I should add, too, that this was in the middle
of this huge mobilization
for trying to get all of these munitions
out to the troops overseas as fast as possible.
And so, the white officers would even have races with each other,
like they were racing to see whose unit could load
the most munitions the fastest.
Here at Port Chicago, they were racing
with some of the other operations
in the Bay Area like at Mare Island
and other loading areas across the Bay.
And so, they were not paying any attention whatsoever
to safety practices.
-What were the conditions like at work?
-Well, it was pretty hot [ Chuckles ],
as you can see today.
It's a very hot day.
Or at least it would have been --
there would have been many hot days out here.
And so, it was hot, they were sweaty,
they were working long hours.
It would have been pretty laborious.
A lot of the things that they were moving
and lifting were really heavy.
And, again, they were moving around this really heavy,
dangerous stuff,
so they had to try to move slowly and be careful
but they worked long hours out in the heat
and it had to have been pretty miserable, I would say.
You know, so it would have been really challenging, I think,
for them
and it is to their credit that so many of them
were so dedicated to their country
that they accepted these conditions
and they worked and their main focus
was on what they could do to aid the war effort,
despite all of these indignities
that they had to endure on a daily basis.
-What happened the night of the explosion?
Were there any survivors?
-Well, there are many things that we do know about
the night of the explosion, but there are some things
that we don't know and will never know.
What we do know is that at approximately 10:18
on the night of the explosion, which was July 17, 1944,
there were two explosions that happened.
The first one happened, one explosion happened,
and then a larger one about seven seconds later.
We don't know exactly what caused the explosions.
We do know that the end results was that the pier area
here at Port Chicago was more or less obliterated.
There were two ships at the time --
the S.S. E.A. Bryant and the S.S. Quinault Victory
and they were side-by-side, being loaded.
One was almost fully loaded and the other one had just arrived
and was in the process of being loaded.
So when the explosion occurred, it was huge.
The entire area shook.
Windows were shattered as far away as San Francisco.
People were shaken out of bed.
The town of Port Chicago, which was nearby,
was heavily damaged and it produced this massive cloud
that extended about 12,000 feet up into the air.
This was a massive, explosive event
that shook and ruptured the entire area.
And no one knew what was happening at first.
I think everyone thought that we might have been under attack,
but, in fact, we were not under the attack.
It was just that something had happened at the base
with the munitions and both of those ships
and thousands and thousands of tons of explosives
and 320 men had been blasted away.
-Only weeks after the explosion, the witnesses and survivors
were all sent back to work,
back to the same dangerous job of loading ammunition
with no regard for safety or military protocols.
As the men were in formation to head down to the pier,
some hesitated and stopped when they received the order.
-So, what happened to those who refused to load explosives?
-Everyone who survived was severely traumatized
because they were involved in the clean-up of this area
and so there were remains of some of the deceased
they had to clean up
and it was very traumatic for those who survived.
They had what we like to call "survivors' guilt",
you know, because many of them lost so many friends
and the white sailors were given sick leave
and allowed to take time off
to try to recover mentally from this event,
but the black sailors after a very brief period
during which they were involved in clean-up
were ordered back to work much more quickly.
And so, on August 9th, barely three weeks or so
after the explosion,
some of the black sailors who survived
had been reassigned to Mare Island
and they were given the order to return to loading munitions.
That same dangerous job that had gotten so many of their friends
and mates killed just a few weeks earlier.
And they stopped and they refused to go back
to work loading those munitions.
And they were threatened with being charged with mutiny
if they continued to refuse to go back to work,
so this is kind of a work-stoppage, essentially.
And, at that time, when threatened with mutiny,
208 of them reconsidered and went back to work
and 50 more still refused to proceed with loading munitions
and so those 50 were arrested
and they were then, two months later,
charged and tried with mutiny
in the largest group-mutiny trial ever
in U.S. naval history.
And they were convicted.
-What is mutiny and what was the verdict of the trial?
-So mutiny is generally considered to be an act
of rebellion against authority.
If you are in the military
and you are refusing to follow orders
and you are rebelling against authority,
that is what is considered mutiny.
Now, mutiny can also be very narrowly defined
as something as simple as refusing to follow an order.
-We're here at a special event.
What makes this event so important?
Every year here at the park we hold an event
commemorating the anniversary of the explosion
and honoring the lives
and sacrifices and the legacy of Port Chicago
to commemorate the explosion
and to make sure that those men who did lose their lives
will not be forgotten
and that the result of the mutiny trial
and the history that was made
in terms of desegregating the armed forces,
that that history will not be forgotten
and we can continue to learn from that history
and from those stories,
and so it's a very special time for us to just reflect
on what happened here
and on the meaning of it and to reflect
on our own personal connection with the memorial
and keeping the memory of those lost souls alive by doing so.
-The military and National Park Service
commemorate this tragic day
in memory of those lost with a somber ceremony,
including a bell ringing, flag folding,
and placing a wreath into the water of the bay.
We take time to remind ourselves of racial struggles,
both back then and today,
and our critical pursuit of social justice
in our modern world.
Well, thanks to Maceo and Major Kelli for their insight
into the Port Chicago tragedy.
It's a story from World War II
that deserves national attention.
Now let's take a look at the answer
to the third poll question.
The answer is B, Pearl Harbor.
The story of Dorie Miller is a pretty famous one.
Let's bring in Rob Citino to talk about a lesser
known story of African-Americans in the military
on one of the most important days of the war.
-Thanks, Damon.
So, D-Day -- let's go up to there.
June 6, 1944, our big landing on the west European coastline,
big strike against Hitler's Fortress Europe.
You know, there's numerous famous iconic photos of that era
and I'm showing you this, Damon.
What do you notice? What's going on here?
-This is an easy one.
You can see all the barrage balloons.
-So we have an image here of barrage balloons.
Now this is an interesting piece of military technology.
We're worried about German air attacks on the troops
who have just landed.
We have it pretty well-covered from the Air Force,
but you don't want any of those German aircraft slipping through
and doing damage,
loosening their bombs or strafing troops on the beach,
so you have something called a barrage balloon.
It floats above the beach and dangles
down these heavy metal cables,
thus rendering it impossible for any kind of low-flying
enemy aircraft to attack.
I would say it's absolutely essential to the overall success
of the D-Day landing.
Now, what I think has been generally unknown up until now
is the unit that took care of that on those D-Day beaches,
Omaha and Utah Beach for the Americans.
The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion,
an African-American unit,
and the only African-American unit
to land on those beaches on that historic day.
You know, they got the job done.
Our troops were able to land, we were able to land
over 100,000 troops in that one day,
by and large they were immune from German air attack.
I mean, we had our own Air Force covering it,
but you also need this second layer of protection
because you're talking about life or death here.
I think in a general way that 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion
is a good story.
We tend to tell the story of World War II through the eyes
and with the photos of white military personnel,
whether they be sailors or soldiers, airmen.
But there's other stories to be told.
Every American in some way was playing a role in that invasion
and I think, when you look at the 320th,
you have a unit who got the job done
and did what had to be done,
even within the confines of a segregated military.
-Yep.
You know, I think a lot of the youngsters out there today
probably find it interesting that you referred to a balloon
with metal poles dangling from them as technology.
-Yes, right? -It's high-tech.
-Right, right.
I would say this is medium high-tech.
You know, there's high-tech aircraft
and those run the gamut and, of course,
the Navy has always indulged in high technology.
This is kind of a -- you have an active defense,
that's your Air Force.
You also have passive defenses...
-That's right. -...which are things
just hanging in the air,
making it impossible for enemy aircraft
to fly over that sector.
-That's great stuff. Thanks, Rob.
Hopefully, we're uncovering some of those
untold stories today, too.
Now let's answer some student questions.
-Bring it on. -Let's see.
Spencer J.
Did African-American soldiers get recognition
and medals for their service?
-Good question, Spencer.
Certainly they did, up and down the various kinds
of military decorations you can find except for the top levels.
So, no African-American military personnel
was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during the war.
So that's the highest honor that our country can bestow for valor
in combat.
And -- -But how many were awarded?
-So, there were several thousand, I think,
awarded in the course --
maybe many hundreds -- in the course of the war,
I'd have to look at the exact number.
But no African-Americans
received that until decades later,
when President Clinton ordered a review
of all the distinguished classes
right under the Congressional Medal of Honor
that had been awarded during the war
and, in that case, many injustices were rectified.
We can just put it that way. -Right.
You know, we were talking earlier
about the awarding of medals during World War I.
And it was interesting that the French
awarded a lot of African-Americans
with some pretty high -- -There's no doubt.
There's the French Croix de Guerre, which is the War Cross,
which many African-Americans
received from the French government at a time
we can say their service was being undervalued
and under-rewarded by their own government at home.
-So, we have another question.
And this is from Riverheads High School.
-That's a great question from Riverheads.
I think there's a couple of ways to answer it,
and the answer, at first, is probably,
"Yes, there were white pilots who objected to that",
whether they were from the South
or whether from their own racist motivations.
After they'd seen the Red Tails in action,
there's nothing a bomber pilot
loves more than a friendly fighter aircraft
flying immediately overhead or below or on your flank,
so I think this is an example of where African-Americans
really were able to shatter stereotypes.
Whatever kind of racist misconceptions
you might have had about that at the beginning,
you were glad the Red Tails were there by the end.
-Yeah.
And, you know, in the movie "Red Tails", it was kind of --
initially, a lot of them had problems,
but they were big fans...
-By the end, I think the only color you saw
in a fighter aircraft was red, white, and blue.
-Right. Man, oh man.
So, Rob, we've got, let's see, one more question.
-Sure.
-From Isiah E.
-Good question, Isiah.
Yes, on the question of pay, absolutely.
The military has a very good record --
you're paid on a scale, how long you're in, what your rank is,
and it's very difficult to play around with that.
In terms of the second part of that question, about supplies,
I think it's safe to say that the segregated military
gave sort of second-rate supplies,
whatever was left over, maybe surplus in some ways,
that rarely did African-American units
get the sort of state-of-the-art weaponry and supplies
that maybe some of their white counterparts did.
-Wow.
So, it's time to open our last poll question.
In our final segment, Mizani and Shelbie
interview a very special guest
who is a Tuskegee Airman during the war.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black aviators
and air crewmen in the U.S. military.
They were an impressive and highly respected team
soaring over Europe,
earning over 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses.
Let's take a look.
We're back in the Museum's U.S. Freedom Pavilion
in the Boeing Center
to learn a bit more about the contribution
and the recognition of service of African-Americans
in the military.
-We're sitting here with special guest
Lieutenant Colonel George Hardy who was a Tuskegee Airman.
Lieutenant Colonel Hardy,
can you tell us who the Tuskegee Airmen were?
-Well, the Tuskegee Airmen were the first
military Afro-American pilots
in the United States Army and in March of 1941
at Chanute Army Airfield in Illinois,
the 99th Pursuit Squadron
was formed with a white commander
and 240-some African-American young men.
-When did you start the military?
Like, when did you join the military?
-Well, I joined the military in 1943 and in March of 1943,
the Army and the Navy decided
if you're 17 and a high school graduate,
you can take the aviation cadet exam.
I took it and passed it for the Army in March of '43
and I was sworn in as a private in the Reserve.
-How did that segregation affect you as an airman?
-Well, the thing is that, you know,
we went into this thing,
some people asked, "Why did you fight?"
"Well, it's our country, too, see."
And what it did, though, because of that,
I think we turned inward to each other
and I think it made us a little stronger as a group,
the fact that we have an enemy out there,
not only overseas, but in this country.
So, we worked together, supported each other,
and I think it made us stronger individually and as a unit.
When we went into combat,
it showed that we did produce very well.
-Now let's pause for a second
and take a look right up above us here.
We actually have a very important artifact.
This is a P-51 Mustang.
It's a high-performing, high-altitude fighter plane.
Mizani, what do you notice about this plane?
-What I've noticed is that, like, aside
from the rest of the planes, this one has, like, a red tail
and it has different accents of red and yellow on it,
but it also has the same stars as the rest of them.
-Yes, very good observation.
Now that red paint job on the tail,
that got the Tuskegee Airmen the nickname
the "Red-Tailed Angels".
The bomber pilots, they would escort actually were so happy
and thankful for the job that they died they referred to them
as the Red-Tailed Angels
and, on this plane, you'll actually notice
that there's a name painted on the side.
The name is "Bunnie".
This plane is painted in the likeness
of Dr. Roscoe Brown's plane, which had the name Bunnie.
And there's one other thing on this plane.
You'll notice a Nazi flag on the side.
That indicates that Bunnie shot down a Nazi jet
that flew over a hundred miles per hour
faster than this plane flew.
-Did you fly a plane like this one?
-Yes, I did.
And I ended up flying 21 combat missions overseas
in March and April of 1945.
I was 19 years old at the time. -Wow.
-But the war ended in March and May of 1945.
And it was a beautiful airplane.
Like I said, I had my Rolls-Royce engine
at the age of 19. [ Chuckles ]
-Can you just describe what it was like for you to,
like, fly in a plane like this during that time?
-Well, it was out of the world -- second lieutenant
flying a P-51 Mustang.
Most people consider that the best airplane in World War II.
And it was fast, responsive, and what-not.
And flying formation --
I usually flew as a wingman over there.
And I was a second lieutenant, but also,
we did a lot of strafing.
If we weren't escorting bombers, we'd go down over Germany
in flanks of four,
looking for targets of opportunity,
to destroy trucks, trains,
what-not that the Germans may use to move supplies around,
but the plane was so responsive,
much more so than, say, the P-47.
And it was just as delightful.
-Mr. Hardy, can you tell us if the Tuskegee Airmen
ever received any recognition while going to war?
-Why, yes.
During the war, the Tuskegee Airmen received
hundreds of air medals
awarded for flying over Europe and they also received
close to a hundred Distinguished Flying Crosses
for their service over there.
-George, how was your experience after the war
when you came back home?
-When we came back to the States,
nothing in the States had changed.
When I came back in August of 1945,
the war had ended in the Pacific also
and we landed in Virginia
and went to a replacement center in North Carolina.
I wanted to stay around airplanes,
even if I couldn't fly any longer,
so I asked about electronics maintenance on airplanes
and I was able to apply for a school and went to that school.
I selected September 5th, ten months to Keesler Field,
but in July, President Truman signed an executive order
directing the Army, Navy,
and Air Force to submit plans for racial integration.
Within a month and a half,
the Air Force had deactivated 332nd at Lockbourne
and, in a period of weeks,
the hundreds of people at Lockbourne
received orders to Air Force units all over the world.
The Air Force, in essence, integrated
and in a short period of time,
the first of the service to integrate.
And I finished school in 1949
and was assigned to the 19th Bomb Group on Guam.
I was the only African-American in the group at that time,
assigned as a maintenance officer,
but as a pilot, I also got to fly the airplane
and I spent a time with the 19th Bomb Group
during the Korean War.
A Tuskegee Airman. Thank you, Mizani, Shelbie,
and Lieutenant Colonel Hardy for such an inspiring story.
Now let's uncover the answer to the final poll question.
The answer is C, 19 years after World War II ended.
-Thanks, Damon. So as we heard from
Colonel George and Ranger Kelly, the armed forces began
to integrate in 1948,
but, you know, it was still a long, long road
to full integration for African-Americans
either in the military or in American society at large.
You know, you have a situation --
and I've verified this personally from testimony --
where you can be a German prisoner of war
in the United States and you had full use
of all the facilities available to white American
where an African-American warrior,
someone who fought against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan,
someone who had brought victory to our country,
still had to use those second -rate,
and segregated facilities, and it's an amazing story
and if I hadn't heard it from people's own lips,
I'd have to admit, I would not even believe it.
-Wow.
That's kind of hard to hear.
Jim Crow laws were still in full force down here in the South.
-Yes, and as we've said earlier and I'll reiterate it,
I'm from the North and I try not to give the North a pass either.
Jim Crow was bad and so was the kind of de facto segregation
we found in the North,
but, you know, we can take a look at a few heroes --
I'll call them, because I think the word is entirely apt --
who fought the civil rights struggle after the war
and were influenced by World War II,
so, first, let's think about the story of a young lawyer
who took part in the Port Chicago trial --
Thurgood Marshall.
The chief counsel of the NAACP,
he appealed the verdict of the Port Chicago 50 trial
and nine years after World War II,
he secured a major victory in the famous
Brown v. Board of Education trial,
which, finally, declared school segregation
to be unconstitutional, that you could claim separate but equal,
but it was a myth and it always had been a myth.
Separate was inherently unequal.
Marshall went on in 1967
to become the first African-American
Supreme Court Justice, served till 1991.
He was a meticulous -- he compiled a case meticulously,
he could also argue a case,
and, for most of my adult life growing up
and becoming aware of politics,
I was seeing Thurgood Marshall,
major player on the American scene.
Or think about another kind of story,
a man named Medgar Evers.
As a young man, 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army
and participated in the Normandy Invasion.
He served in France and Germany
and was honorably discharged in 1946.
Now, after the war, he returned home to Mississippi,
his home state, earned his college degree from --
I believe it was A&M at the time --
Alcorn State University today.
Became the first field officer in Mississippi for the NAACP,
not an easy job,
where he helped double membership in a few short years.
He helped James Meredith
integrate the University of Mississippi,
that landmark moment in American history,
when we said you can no longer have a public facility
that is reserved for one race or the other.
Riots broke out on Mississippi campus
and across the South and other parts of the country, as well.
There were multiple attempts on Medgar Evers' life
and, eventually, he was shot outside his home in 1963
by an assailant lying in wait for him
in the bushes of his driveway.
He became a hero -- I think a martyr is a good term --
for the civil rights struggle and his efforts were integral
in making civil rights a reality in this country.
It's -- I'm a little bit older than you are, Damon,
and I remember a song by Bob Dylan,
"The Ballad of Medgar Evers".
In fact, if we had time, I would sing every word of it right now,
but I think we'll just say to folks
that you can find it online
because it's a good evocation of that event.
You know, finally, I think we have moments
when individuals of different marginalized
or discriminated groups
band together in the pursuit of equality.
And I'm thinking here of Ina Sugihara,
a Japanese-American activist whose work focused
on building multi-racial civil rights alliances.
She migrated from California, where she was born, to New York
before the forced internment of the West Coast Japanese
after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Founding member of the Non-Violent Congress of Racial
Equality or CORE, who've done good work
and continue to do good work for the longest, longest time.
She helped lobby for the establishment
of World War II-era protections in housing,
in job discrimination,
in hiring practices, in education,
and had done good work for the rest of her life,
so these are a few examples.
We're not perfect.
The country still has a long road to go in this subject,
in this area, but we're better off than we were in World War II
and, partially, because of really hard-working
and very brave people like the ones we just talked about.
-That's some great stories. -Thanks.
-So, obviously, the story doesn't end with World War II
or the Civil Rights Movement.
All Americans have the important privilege and commitment
to remember our country's history
and work towards the goal of equal rights
and protections guaranteed in our Constitution.
The individuals and groups we profiled here today,
along with many others, are models of courage,
strength, and perseverance.
Teachers, if you want to continue to explore this topic
in further develop,
be sure to check out the high school
or middle school curriculum guides
for this electronic field trip located on this webpage below.
The Museum's "Fighting for the Right to Fight"
special exhibit is traveling all across the country.
It's currently at the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.
Check the museum's website for more information
and see if the exhibit is coming to a location near you soon.
Thank you all for joining us today
for this electronic field trip.
A special thank you to our National Park Service partners
out in California for welcoming us into your amazing parks
and sharing these powerful stories with us
and students across the country.
A special recognition also goes to Betty Reid Soskin
and Lieutenant Colonel George Hardy
for their inspirational messages and testimony.
Also many thanks to our sponsors
for making this electronic field trip possible.
From the National World War II Museum in New Orleans,
this is Commander Damon Singleton
and Dr. Rob Citino.
Thanks for welcoming us into your classroom
on Digital Learning Day.
-Thanks, Damon.
♪♪