New East Bay Park to Be Named for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the Port Chicago 50

A new regional park near Concord will be named after Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice, and the group of Black sailors he advocated for as a civil rights attorney.

The East Bay Regional Park District board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to name the site "Thurgood Marshall Regional Park - Home of the Port Chicago 50," commemorating Marshall’s defense of 50 Black sailors during World War II who were charged and convicted of mutiny for protesting unsafe labor conditions at the port.

"Truly, a historic moment," board president Dee Rosario said after the 7-0 vote.

The 2,540-acre park will take up a little more than half of the massive redevelopment effort on the site of the former Concord Naval Weapons Station, where 13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space are also planned.

The park's opening date has not yet been announced.

"In a lot of cases, when we first heard that there was a possibility of using Thurgood Marshall, not a lot of people understood why," said Concord Mayor Tim McGallian, pointing to the little-known connection between Marshall and the site. "It’s actually a lot more culturally significant than people think."

Nearby Port Chicago was where 320 mostly Black sailors were killed when two ammunition ships exploded on July 17, 1944, a blast strong enough to be felt 20 miles away in San Francisco. Another 390 sailors were wounded.

The dangerous task of loading weapons was done almost exclusively by Black sailors at the base, and supervised by white commanders. The disaster accounted for approximately a quarter of all African American deaths in World War II, according to a park district report.

While white sailors and officers were allowed to go on leave after the explosion, Black sailors were tasked with cleaning up the disaster. Fifty Black sailors among them were charged with mutiny after they refused to continue loading ships.

Decades before he joined the Supreme Court, Marshall  — then the lead counsel for the NAACP — attended the trial and was instrumental in publicizing the case. Although the sailors were ultimately convicted in a military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison, Marshall used the case as a springboard to help end segregation in the military, which became official policy in 1948.

Advocates are still pushing for the sailors to be exonerated.

"It's horrifying what happened, and its horrifying that it's not more broadly known," East Bay Regional Park District board member Elizabeth Echols said at Tuesday's meeting. "I think it's so important to have this name, and have this park, that we can celebrate the courage of these men to protest, really risk their lives, to protest an unjust and racist system."

The district began the naming process in 2015, gathering suggestions from public workshops and surveys, commemoration events, and local American Indian tribes, whose history and culture they are also pledging to highlight at the park.

"It’s really important to celebrate a prominent leader, a positive leader, who fought for civil rights for all,” said Brian Holt, the park district's chief of planning. “And his name, as we’ve seen, just provides an immediate educational opportunity."

It will also be the first park in Contra Costa County to be named after a Black person, district officials also noted.

Additionally, U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek, is requesting $10 million in federal funds to create a new visitor center at the park, run in partnership with the National Park Service, detailing the history of the Port Chicago disaster.

“I think it will be important for us in that visitor center to reexamine all the historical narratives that there are in this land through the filter of social justice,” said park district director Beverly Lane.

Correction: The original version of this story stated that Marshall represented the 50 sailors in court. He did not. Rather, he attended the trial and publicized it.

This post includes additional reporting from Bay City News' Tony Hicks.