By Tony Hicks – The Concord City Council on Tuesday will discuss whether to support naming the East Bay Regional Park coming to the former Concord Naval Weapons Station after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who represented the 50 sailors who stood up against racism after the Port Chicago explosion in 1944.
Park district staff is recommending its board officially name the park “Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50” at its June 1 meeting. The Concord City Council will decide whether to send a letter in support of the name at Tuesday’s meeting.
The 2,540-acre park is part of the massive redevelopment effort in the 5,046-acre site, which would also include 13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space. The Navy abandoned the base in 1999.
Marshall challenged the Navy segregation policies while advocating for 50 African American sailors who refused to load ammunition onto ships in the weeks following the Port Chicago explosion. Unsafe conditions led to two ships exploding on July 17, 1944, killing 320 men (two-thirds of them African American) and wounding another 390. The blast was so powerful it reportedly blew out windows as far away as San Francisco.
The loading of weapons was done exclusively by African American sailors, and supervised by white commanders, who often pushed sailors to work harder while competing to see who could finish faster. The explosion accounted for approximately a quarter of all African American deaths in World War II, according to a park district report.
Not long after the tragedy, 50 sailors faced mutiny charges after refusing to go back to work loading ammunition at Mare Island in Vallejo, while white commanders were granted leave. The sailors contacted Marshall, then lead counsel for the NAACP. Marshall sat in on the court martial proceedings and published a series of articles and spoke in public about what he said wasn’t a case about 50 sailors, but the Navy “on trial for its whole vicious policy toward Negroes.”
Though all 50 were convicted and sentenced to prison, Marshall’s campaign was widely credited with President Harry Truman’s decision to end segregation in the armed forces in 1948.
Local U.S. Rep. 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. Lennar Five Point was selected as the initial developer in 2016, but pulled out last year, when its negotiating agreement expired after if couldn’t reach consensus with local labor unions.
The city went back to the drawing board and expedited the process and is trying to have the new developer in place by August.
lol it was not their idea
but its a good one and is representative of the land and wow actually the past
wait did the democrats just accept and provide history for the future to reflect upon
a bunch of rich white dem politicians trying again to claim something that is not theirs
when are the dem voters going to realize rich city council members only want more money they care not about you or your children or where and how you live …..they just wan tot rule you
stand up and say no to the liers
At the rate they are renaming monuments, mountains and destroying statues, it might be better not to name it after a person–
So much for the people of the East Bay naming the park. The politicians override the wishes of the general public again. I like the idea, but how about naming it for one of the leaders of the protest and not a judge/politician?
As much as I admire Thurgood Marshall I think the park should be named by its geographic location: Concord Hills Regional Park.
I agree.
Yes, don’t name things after people or events. We might learn something later about the people or the event and then want to remove the name.
Since we woke now… How about the naming it after the indigenous people that the land was originally stolen from?
Why not do something right for a change and name the park, “Kate Steinle Memorial Park.”
Posting to voice my support for Parky McParkface.
I second “Parky McParkface”!
@miguel, I second the name Parky McParkface.
No. I’m sure Baltimore has enough monuments to the liberal judge for the rest of us. Concord Regional Park or the like is more appropriate.
excellent news for posterity. Hopefully this along with the upcoming museum will help remind people of our history here.
I think the name should be longer like “The former Concord Naval Weapons Station after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who represented the 50 sailors who stood up against racism after the Port Chicago explosion in 1944 Park”.
No highways, parks, or other government artifacts should be named after governmental officials. They should be named after local citizens who contributed greatly to their community.
This is the last addlepate post, as I have moved out of California. Enjoy!
I propose naming either BLM or Antifa.
There were about 207 blacks killed at Port Chicago according to the above in WWII. There were 708 US blacks killed in combat in WWII. There were 291,557 US soldiers killed in combat in WWII. There were 8.7 million Russian military deaths in WWII, although estimates vary widely on that. What do these numbers tell us?
Cover all the bases. Name it BIPOCLBGTQ Children’s Park. Make all the “woke” folks happy. 😮
I’m another one who prefers having it named something like Concord Regional Park….. or how about after the line of hills separating it from Pittsburg? Los Madanos Regional Park?
Thomas Sowell is a Nobel Laureate African American Economics professor at Stanford University, yet the liberal slanted media won’t mention him because he is a republican. Thomas Sowell over Thurgood Marshall any day.
yeah the key word is “massive”. Currently residents are already stressed to the gills with the obscene over the top developments that have been implemented here. Our wells will run dry. Ridiculous and beyond belief the sheer ignorance humans that rant and rave over nilt. Don’t believe it ?? Just look over the hill to all the miserable housing tracts built in east county. Duh !!!
How about naming this new park Port Chicago Regional Park? That’s what locals, people who grew up in the area, have long called this land. That makes sense to me.
Also, this horrible explosion during World War 2 has long been called the Port Chicago Disaster. If you don’t keep the Port Chicago name on the park then you are minimizing the Port Chicago disaster, in my view.
Also, the whole town of Port Chicago was torn down in the 50’s at the behest of the defense department, that was as big a tragedy as the explosion that killed the 200 plus men during World War 2. It’s not clear, at all, the town of Port Chicago needed to be torn down, but the Pentagon did it anyway
By keeping the Port Chicago name you would be reminding future generations of park goers of this awful tragedy of the explosion, and the equally awful tragedy of an entire town being obliterated by the Pentagon.
I myself have met many people who grew up in Port Chicago, or had family members that grew up in the town. That tragedy of whole town being wiped out – torn down – really impacted these people, that sad incident really touched a lot of locals, just like the explosion did for those who lost family members in the disaster.
This idea to name it after Thurgood Marshal is ridiculous. Marshall lived and worked in Baltimore and Washington DC his whole life, he has no ties to Port Chicago – he never lived in Contra Costa – his only tie was suing the US Govt on behalf of the living sailors who were charged with staging a munity by refusing to report as ammunition loaders after the disaster.
Without even bothering to check I can tell you Thurgood Marshall has several buildings named after him already, probably a law school as well. Yes, he was a great man, a man to be remembered and honored, but he has no local ties whatsoever, so this idea is totally ridiculous, not well thought out all.
I like Congressman DeSaulniers proposal that a 10 million dollar visitor and history center be built. I hope he succeeds in getting this funded. We do need to honor those who died in the explosion, they were heroes who served our country, and we also need to keep alive the injustice of these sailors being court marshalled for refusing to load explosives when naval officials didn’t have proper safety protocols in place.
But we also, in my view, need to remember the town of Port Chicago. People grew up in that city, they have these memories, these stories to tell, which are very important. I hope the visitor and history center will also tell the story of this awful decision the Pentagon made to destroy an entire town.
Public institutions just need to switch to a corporate sponsorship for their naming. This whole thing is a bargaining chip used to win votes. It demeans the honor of great people like Marshall and these sailors. If we are going to tolerate soiling their name, might as well go whole hog- companies can pay to sponsor which gets them naming rights. Slide a detail in the contract that it also has to include a historical figures name and that name has to be approved by some board. Ronald Reagan Regional Park brought to you by The Captains Chest.
This guy wasnt from the area. bad name for the park in my opinion. this wasnt even where the explosion took place it was over at the water. dumb
Forget the couple hundred sailors who got blown up & honor the mutineers….
I guess that makes sense, to Liberals that is.
How about simply Community Park.
more shameless virtue signalling from fake woke left leaning politicians…their only contribution is propising inane policy in a laughable attempt to justify their jobs and position….find a way to name it for the sailors, or how about the original people of this area
I am very tired of the woke.
I suggest considering to name the park “Seeno View Regional Park” in recognition of all the damage that Seeno home developments have done to the hills of Contra Costa, including the ridge overlooking the Weapons Station. Over fitting that we honor them……don’t you think?
If they are going to take one moment in history of weapons station and use it for name, at the very minimum it should be about the sailors and not about their lawyer.
What did the lawyer suffer compared to sailors? There is no comparison.
Janus, my understanding is that Marshall was a key influence in preventing the Navy Command from court martialing the black enlisted men (and some white) because they …..knowing the day to be far too warm to be jarring containers of powder and other munitions…. refused to go out on the dock to continue the loading as commanded.
The Rosy the Riveter memorial in Richmond is an excellent resource for more information, though I don’t know whether they still have the large exhibit re the Port Chicago disaster.
Port Chicago Disaster Memorial Park
Weapons Station Park…simple
You would think they have more pressing matters to spend their time on…