Tracing the Site of the Port Chicago Mutiny Trial – A Detective Story

The mutiny trial of the Port Chicago 50, a turning point at the dawn of the 20th century civil rights movement, took place during World War II on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. But the exact location was never recorded, perhaps shrouded in wartime secrecy.

But four years of research following a faint trail of evidence that wound through faded issues of a Marxist newspaper, the files of a national archive shuttered by COVID, and one of only two known photographs of the trial itself, eventually lead to the rediscovery of the trial’s location.

The recent exoneration of these 50 Black sailors, and the coming unveiling on October 24 of the first publicly accessible monument to the Port Chicago saga, have focused new attention on this 80 year old tale of disaster, injustice and eventually the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces.

Walt Bilofsky, Vice President of the Treasure Island Museum, will take you down the winding trail of evidence to this spot where, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the long arc of the moral universe bent toward justice.