Diana McDaniel

Diana McDaniel speaks at the 2017 Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Commemoration Event

NPS Photo/Luther Bailey

Article Written by Ellie Kaplan

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The public memorialization of the Port Chicago Naval Magazine owes much to the work of Reverend Diana McDaniel, whose uncle was one of around 1,800 men who worked at Port Chicago during World War II.¹ These men witnessed the war’s largest loss of life on the US mainland when an explosion on July 17, 1944 killed 320 men, two thirds of whom were Black Americans, and injured hundreds more. After the tragedy, fifty Black servicemen refused to return to the unsafe working conditions; they were charged with mutiny. The publicity surrounding the deaths and the subsequent imprisonment of men who insisted on proper safety training contributed momentum toward the 1948 desegregation of the US military.² McDaniel’s leadership in the Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial has helped to publicize Port Chicago’s important role in civil rights history.

While earning a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies, McDaniel married her college sweetheart, George McDaniel, in the late 1960s and then raised two daughters.³ Doctors diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis as a young adult. In search of a spiritual home, McDaniel tried multiple churches before settling on the non-denominational Unity Church. McDaniel pursued her Master of Divinity at Unity Institute and Seminary in Missouri, graduating in 1995.⁴ In the late 1990s, McDaniel became a minister at Unity Church of San Leandro, California, where colleagues and congregants have characterized her style as inclusive and welcoming of all backgrounds to her services.⁵ She also began hosting weekly broadcasts to seven countries in Africa and serving on numerous Unity Church boards.⁶

The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial was established as an affiliate of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1992 and then became the 392nd unit of the NPS in 2009 thanks to the lobbying efforts of the all-volunteer Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial.⁷ McDaniel and The Port Chicago Mutiny author Dr. Robert Allen co-founded the Friends group in 2003 and McDaniel served as its first president.⁸ The group worked closely with the NPS to raise money for the site, plan the annual commemoration events, organize outreach, and advocate for the exoneration of the sailors convicted of mutiny for refusing to return to the same unsafe working conditions only three short weeks after the explosion.⁹ McDaniel and the Friends group continue working for exoneration to this day. Fellow board member David Salniker describes the importance of McDaniel to the Friends of Port Chicago as follows:

“Rev. Diana is the Friends group. She is our leader, our inspiration and our energy…She is our leading spokesperson and our creative heart.”¹⁰

Reverend Diana McDaniel’s impact on preserving and educating others about the Port Chicago National Memorial will be felt for generations to come.

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Acknowledgements

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This project was conducted in Partnership with the University of California Davis History Department through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, CA# P20AC00946

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¹ “Board of Directors,” Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial, accessed Dec. 5, 2020, https://portchicagomemorial.org/about/board/.

² Carsten Fries, “Port Chicago Naval Magazine Explosion, 17 July 1944,” Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Navy, June 2019, accessed Dec. 9, 2020, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/port-chicago.html; Erika Doss, “Commemorating the Port Chicago Naval Magazine Disaster of 1944: Remembering the Racial Injustices of the ‘Good War’ in Contemporary America,” American Studies Journal 59 (2015), accessed Dec 9, 2020, http://www.asjournal.org/59-2015/commemorating-port-chicago-naval-magazine-disaster-1944/

³ “Board of Directors”; Tasha Bartholomew, “Minister always had support of her family,” East Bay Times (Walnut Creek, CA), May 10, 2004, updated Aug. 14, 2016, https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2004/05/10/minister-always-had-support-of-her-family/.

⁴ Bartholomew, “Minister always had support of her family.”

⁵ “Diana McDaniel,” LinkedIn, accessed Dec. 5, 2020, https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-mcdaniel-6b345346/; “Minister’s Message,” Unity of San Leandro, accessed Dec. 5, 2020, https://www.unitysanleandro.org/ministers-message; Bartholomew, “Minister always had support of her family.”

⁶ “Board of Directors.”

⁷ National Park Service, Foundation Document: Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, California (February 2015), http://npshistory.com/publications/foundation-documents/poch-fd-draft-2015.pdf (PDF, 6.7 MB) pp.5; Tom Leatherman, email to Ellie Kaplan, Sept. 17, 2020.

⁸ David Salniker, email to Ellie Kaplan, Sept. 17, 2020.

⁹ Salniker email to Kaplan, Sept. 17, 2020; Leatherman email to Kaplan, Sept. 17, 2020; “Exoneration,” Friends of Port Chicago National Memorial, accessed Dec. 6, 2020, https://portchicagomemorial.org/exoneration/.

¹⁰ Salniker email to Kaplan, Sept. 17, 2020.