Photos & Multimedia

For a comprehensive listing of National Park Service audio, videos, photos, and podcasts pertaining to civil rights history use our civil rights multimedia search. To see more specific listings click on:

Below are some examples of the civil rights history media that can be found in the NPS Multimedia Search.

We Will Rise: National Parks and Civil Rights (podcast series).
Join Park Rangers, researchers, authors, and activists as they discuss what liberty and justice for all means on our public lands.

Ballot Blocked (podcast series).
Explores the histories of voting rights in the United States from the Civil War to the present day.

The History of Stonewall (video series)
The 15-part history of Stonewall and its establishment as a National Monument. The video series was made for the 5th anniversary of Stonewall National Monument

The requested video is no longer available.

A Landmark Civil Rights Case

Caroline Williams was a free African American living in post-Civil War St. Louis in 1867 who was the center of a landmark civil rights case. When she was thrown from a streetcar with her small child after trying to sit inside, she sought justice through the courts. This re-enactment of a conversation that Caroline might have had with her husband Neptune on the night of the incident dramatizes the courage necessary to challenge the status quo in former slave states.

Duration:
4 minutes, 11 seconds

Mill City Minute - Sarah Bagley

Sarah Bagley became a weaver in Lowell in 1837. Within a few years, Bagley began protesting unfair labor practices and worked with other women to form the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Testifying before the state legislature in 1845, Bagley advocated for a shorter work day. As editor of the newspaper Voice of Industry, Bagley promoted women’s and workers’ rights. Bagley later became the nation’s first female telegraph operator. What is a cause that you care about?

Duration:
1 minute, 1 second

Eileen Szychowski: Knowing her Rights
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Eileen Szychowski describes an experience during a 1981 visit to Bright Angel Lodge in Grand Canyon National Park, when she informed the staff that their preventing her from riding a mule because of her physical disability was a violation of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

Credit / Author:

NPS Park History Program

Date created:

06/22/2022
Audio Transcript

SZYCHOWSKI: I decided, “I think I need to go back.” So I went back to the ranger lodge. I waited ‘til all the other people were gone from the lines, so it would be just me and that young woman. And I said, “I’m back.” I said, “Relax, I’m not going to ask to ride the mule.” I said, “But your policy is illegal, and I would like to speak with someone about this.” So, she called her boss, and that boss called her boss, and put me on the phone with a gentleman by the name of Jan Cutler. And I told him my story and just said, “You know, the Rehab Act of 1973 contains a clause in it that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.” And I said, “You know, as a concessioner, you’re doing business with the federal government, so that applies to you guys, too.” And I made it clear that I was not here to sue, but that something needed to happen here.

Podcast: The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History
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Credit: Long Haul Productions.
Audio Transcript

KCRW presents: The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History.

(music)

Our story is about the worst state-side disaster of World War Two. It’s also about loyalty - to one’s country and to one’s self. And it’s about the meaning of heroism.

It begins in the San Francisco Bay Area, at a place called Port Chicago. Now called the Concord Naval Weapons Station, Port Chicago was an American munitions depot during World War Two.

At the time, a lot of other things were happening. Allied forces were making major advances in Europe and the Pacific. So, the story got crowded out of the headlines. But what happened at Port Chicago is still being felt today. It would eventually lead to desegregation of the armed forces... and would forever change the lives of 50 men.

(music fades)

On July 17th, 1944, a massive explosion flattened the Port Chicago Depot and shook the entire San Francisco Bay area. Some people thought it was an earthquake. Others feared an enemy attack. It was neither. The source of the blast was two "Liberty" ships that were docked at Port Chicago. One of the ships was fully loaded with ammunition. The other was in the process of being loaded. They both exploded with the force of nuclear bombs that would be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a year later.

320 men were killed, 390 injured. A majority of the casualties were African-American sailors who had the job of loading ammunition onto the ships at Port Chicago.

The United States Navy was never able to determine the cause of the explosion but a Navy Court of Inquiry indirectly blamed the black sailors.

The court concluded, quote, "The colored enlisted personnel are neither temperamentally nor intellectually capable of handling high explosives." End quote.

Shortly after the explosion, the black munitions loaders who survived were transferred to a nearby base and ordered back to work. Shaken by the death of their workmates and afraid that another explosion might occur, 50 men refused. They were all court martialed, convicted of mutiny and sentenced to up to 15 years of hard labor.

When the war ended, their sentences were suspended as part of a general amnesty. The men returned to civilian life and most tried to put what happened at Port Chicago behind them.

There have been efforts to clear the names of the Port Chicago 50, all unsuccessful. The first attempt was made in the fall of 1944 by a young NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, who went on to serve as the first African-American on the United States Supreme Court, argued that racism played a large part in the mutiny convictions. All the officers at Port Chicago and all seven members of the Navy court martial were white.

The Navy has made it a policy not to discuss the Port Chicago case except to say that it stands by a three page statement released in January of 1994. That statement, which followed a review of the case ordered by Congress, said, quote, "racial discrimination did play a part in the assignment of African-American sailors to load ammunition (at Port Chicago), and that African-American sailors were subjected to segregated living and working conditions." End quote.

However, the Navy refused to exonerate the sailors concluding that, quote, "racial prejudice and discrimination played no part in the court martial convictions or sentences, and that there was nothing unfair or unjust in the final outcome of any of the Port Chicago court martials." End quote.

None of the commanding officers at Port Chicago are alive today. None of the members of the Navy court martial are alive today. The only living history of Port Chicago are the black sailors.

You are about to hear from five of them; Albert Williams, Freddie Meeks, Joseph Small, Percy Robinson and Robert Routh (rhymes with mouth). They are all in their early to mid 70's, and one of them, Percy Robinson, is a little hard to understand at times because of throat surgery, unrelated to Port Chicago.

This is their story ...of what happened July 17th, 1944... and what has happened since. It was produced by Dan Collison.

(football play-by-play/archive tape)

Announcer: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash. Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Stay tuned to WOR for further developments which will be broadcast immediately as received.

Robert Routh: Pearl Harbor took place and right after that the Navy opened up the apprenticeship branch to blacks for the first time. So we joined by the hundreds.

Music: (Big Bill Broonzy) "I believe, I believe, Uncle Sam can use me.”

Albert Williams: My name is Albert Williams, Junior. I enlisted in Navy, I was young, and back then there wasn't any jobs available for us young black men at that time. And when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor I guess we felt much patriotic to our country, cause this is our country too, and quite a few of us volunteered for the Navy.

Robert Routh: My name is Robert Routh, Junior. I was 17 years old and had just completed the 8th grade, and I thought my enlistment would help to make the country a better place for us negroes. We didn't use the term blacks in those days.

MUSIC: (Josh White) "Well, airplanes flyin' cross the land and sea. Everybody flyin' but a Negro like me. Uncle Sam says, 'Your place is on the ground. When I fly my airplanes, don't want no Negro around.' The same thing for the Navy when ships go to sea. All they got is a mess boys job for me. Uncle Sam says, 'Keep on your aprons on. You know I ain't gonna' let you shoot my big Navy gun.'"

Albert Williams: We was told that we would be stationed on ships. So we envisioned ourselves at sea. I did, because we was trained, we was trained as sailors. I was trained as a gunner's mate. But when they shipped us out of Great Lakes Navy Training our first stop was Port Chicago ammunition dump.

Freddie Meeks: When I first got to Port Chicago, oh, dumpy lookin' place way back out there in the boon docks. And you was kinda' disappointed to see such a little dumpy lookin' place at that time, because I really wanted to go out on the ship. But they had a lot of ammunition stored there though.

Navy Film (archive): As the war in the Pacific increased in tempo, the Port Chicago Naval magazine became the largest and busiest on the west coast. Each day trains of high explosives arrived in the classification yards. Here in the magazine area safety precautions were rigidly followed at all times.

**Freddie Meeks: I don't know, it made you kinda' nervous. You always was uneasy about handlin' all that ammunition. Bombs, torpedoes, whatever.

***Robert Routh: We sent everything out of there, from 30.30 rifle cartridges all the way up to 2,000 pound "blockbusters," we called them.

Percy Robinson: My job basically was to load ammunition with the crew which worked in hole of the ship.

Freddie Meeks: You be down in the hole. Here come those big bombs and things comin' down the rampway they had built. But sometimes they let it come down too fast and they hit together and they made a loud noise.

Percy Robinson: You hear this all night long. Boom, BOOM, boom, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.

Freddie Meeks: And that would almost give you a heart attack. Yeah, you would almost have a heart attack. And so we used to ask 'em sometimes, say, "Is it any danger this ammunition explode?" They say, "Oh no, don't worry about it. Say, "It's not live." Say, "Don't have no detonators in 'em."

**Albert Williams: We was not trained to load ammunition. We would take ammunition, we'd take a crow bar when we had to go so high, we'd take that crow bar and push that ammunition up there because they told us it would not explode cause it didn't have no detonator in it. We believed that.

MUSIC: (Josh White) "Got my long government letters, my time to go. When I got to the Army, found the same old Jim Crow. Uncle Sam says, 'Two camps for black and white.' But when trouble starts, we'll all be in that same big fight."

Percy Robinson: All the loading crews were black. There were no white loading crews.

Robert Routh: You didn't have a lot of white people that you saw. We only had basically one officer. And he would be the only person white.

Freddie Meeks: Well, you know the white officers, they didn't have much to do with us no more than to stand around and supervise and see that we load that ammunition.

Albert Williams: It was pressure. We was told that so much we had to be did that night. We have to do this so much. It was a rush, rush.

Joe Small: And the division commanders pushed the petty officers to push the men to load as much as they could, as fast as they could. But we knew they were betting, 100 dollars or so that my division will put on more ammunition than your division.

Percy Robinson: Each one would put up money that their division would outload the other one for those particular shifts, or that particular day. They had day lotteries, week and whole ship lottery.

Navy Film: Frequently, the urgent need for ammunition forced the depot to load two ships at the same time, at the same pier. So it was on the night of July 17th, 1944. The "Quinalt Victory" and the "E.A. Bryan" were moored at the naval magazine, Port Chicago. 16 cars of ammunition and bombs were spotted on the pier beside the "Quinalt Victory" as the shipped rigged to load. "Bryan" had been loading day and night for more than three days. Three and a half million pounds of explosives were aboard or waiting nearby on the pier. Everything was normal. Until 10:19.

Robert Routh: It was Monday, a hot July day, and for some reason the day was kind of a day that I felt a great foreboding and I don't know why.

Percy Robinson: The lights are out at 10 o'clock. So when the lights went out at 10 o'clock, we were all returned to our bunks.

Robert Routh: I had pimples, you know still bein' a teenager. So nightly I would

go in and tidy myself up and put on Nozema. And got back to my locker, put my gear away, said my prayers and leapt up, I had a top rack, leapt up in the rack. And here comes the voice over the intercom system again, "Lights out. Quiet about the deck."

Percy Robinson: I'm layin' there with my hands behind my head looking out at sky. And at that time, I guess a few minutes after the lights went out, the sky lit up and it's just like the sun rose. Everything was bright. You could see all the buildings for a second.

Robert Routh: Shortly after that, here come the second explosion filling the sky with all kinds of lights and colors like at a 4th of July celebration.

Percy Robinson: Then came the concussion. The concussion blew in the window all over my body. My reflection was I put my arms up in front of my eyes. My left arm got mutilated, face, head, neck, shoulders and body got mutilated. That was the first explosion. The second was just a few seconds afterwards. That lifted me out of the bunk. Threw me on the floor.

Robert Routh: All hell broke loose and it was just a lot of confusion because glass was everywhere and men were, your know, just in fear and some had ran all out in their barefeet and shorts and it was just bedlam.

Percy Robinson: And you could hear the people now, screaming and yelling, "Get out of the barracks! It's coming down!" So, I myself scuffle, crawl out and took off for the outside.

Robert Routh: And when there were no other explosions then I crawled out. But then I noticed that I didn't, I couldn't see clearly and that's when I first realized then that I was hurt. And I called to my buddy, "Hey Moss. Come and get me and take me to the sick bay!" And then somebody else holler, "Well, the sick bay has been blown up."

Percy Robinson: When I got outside, there were a few people outside yelling for volunteers to go down to the docks. I went up to a guy, say, "Yeah, I want to volunteer." He asked me, he said, "Did you see Percy get out of the barracks?" He didn't recognize me. He was my squad leader, cause my face was so mutilated from the blood and guts.

Robert Routh: The left eye was lacerated so badly that was removed that night. And then the right eye was lacerated and so consequently the right eye eventually lost the sight in that, too. So that was the beginning of the end and caused me to be a blind person.

News report (archive): In the Pacific war, American battleships, cruisers and destroyers shelled Guam Island on Sunday for the second straight day. Here at home, officials say that 337 persons are known dead or missing and presumed dead, more than 300 others injured as the result of last night's explosion of two ammunition ships at Port Chicago in upper San Francisco Bay. And now General Electric takes you to Washington....

Albert Williams: First thing I thought, same thing Pearl Harbor again, you know. But that's what it way like. Just like somebody dropped bombs over the whole thing. Didn't look like it was a explosion from one of the ships, ya' know. It look like a plane come down and just bombard the place.

Navy Film: In the waterfront barracks and administration area, buildings crumpled like cardboard, roofs blown off, walls gone. In the vicinity of the loading piers -- total destruction. Both ships, broken, twisted hulks.

Freddie Meeks: That was a shockin' thing to see those ships tore up. And see and I was standin' watch over all those dead bodies. I had to stand watch over that. That was my duty. And you couldn't tell one from the others.

Navy Film: Meantime, the court of inquiry was collecting testimony and exhibits. Experts in all fields were called in to study the area. The cause of the explosion could not be fixed with certainty, but it was suspected that a depth charge was accidently detonated.

Joe Small: I knew what it was because we were expecting it all the time. We worked with that in mind, that one day that stuff would blow up.

Freddie Meeks: We felt like we was gettin' a raw deal, because we was the one that was doin' the dirty work. We was the one that foolin' with the ammunition. So why shouldn't we have a leave of absence to get away, to get your nerves settled. But that didn't happen.

Percy Robinson: I think I was in the hospital maybe, oh, a week. And I think the day after I returned to my outfit, we were ordered to go to work. And I still was bandaged up. Face, arms, my stitches were still in and everything. So we were lined up outside the barracks to go to work. They hadn't told us what we were going to do yet. But then they said, "Forward march."

Joe Small: I was marching on the outside. I called cadence. Something like this, "Oh, left, oh left, left, right, left. Left, two, three, four, left, right, left." And I believe it was Lt. Delucca said, "Column left!" And when he said "column left" everybody stopped. Because column left meant we were going to the docks and the docks meant loading ammunition.

Albert Williams: And they give us a ultimatum, "Would you load ammunition?" That's the ultimatum we had. And I told 'em myself, I say, "I am absolutely afraid, which I were. I'm afraid to load ammunition". "You step over there then." Then they call another one of 'em I think he asked him the same thing. "You step over there." And when the end of the day was over I think just about all of us had stepped over there, you know.

Percy Robinson: Then the admiral came down and explained to us what our responsibilities were.

Freddie Meeks: He told us, he said, "One thing I wanna' tell ya,' that you could be charged with mutiny if you don't go back to work."

Joe Small: And he explained at that time, if we refused to go back to work, he could have us shot.

Freddie Meeks: That was the cue. When he said, "You could be shot," then the fellows went to mumblin.' You know, a lot of people they afraid to die.

Percy Robinson: And from my upbringing, my mother taught me that if a white man threatened to hang you he would do it at his first legal chance. And she told me about the Klan, and she was brought up in Mississippi. So I believed that they had a legal chance to shoot us. So I was afraid. So I said, "Well, I'm not gonna' give 'em a chance to shoot me. I'll go back to work.

Freddie Meeks: But then 50 of us decided we wasn't gonna' go back to work. If

we were goin' get shot, he just had to shoot us, because we wasn't goin' go back and load no more ammunition.

Albert Williams: That's when we was arrested. I would say arrested because we was all shipped to, I think it was Treasure Island. We was at the stockade. Then we was found out that we was charged with mutiny.

Freddie Meeks: We didn't commit no mutiny. We didn't take over no ship. We didn't take over a base. We had no weapons. We didn't even have a pen. We only refused to go back to work. Now how could that be mutiny?

Joe Small: I didn't know anything about mutiny. I just knew that I didn't want to work under the same conditions that I did work under and advance the chance of the same thing happening again.

Freddie Meeks: Well, the mutiny trial, it's just like a thing that is, it's cut and dry. We all sittin' over here, all the white officers over here. We wasn't allowed to say anything but what they would ask us.

Albert Williams: They would call us one by one up there to testify. And everybody had almost the same story, maybe that's why they thought we was...but that's the story we told em'. I told 'em the same thing I told 'em then that I told 'em when I was on the docks. That I was afraid of it. And I was afraid.

Freddie Meeks: You didn't know what was goin' to happen. You was wonderin' what would happen. Was they gonna' have us shot or what.

Albert Williams: Put it this way: If my mother woulda' took all six of our kids in the room together, mom and dad, and we all had did something. We know we's gonna' get punished. That's what the atmosphere was there. No matter what you say, you gonna' get this whippin.' Whether your right or wrong, somebody did it, you gonna' get whupped by it.

Joe Small: The verdict was, was guilty. The verdict was guilty as charged. I expected it, from the way that the trial went. Of course, the length of sentence was a surprise.

Freddie Meeks: The lowest sentence in there I think was eight years. I had 12

years. And some had 16.

Albert Williams: Well, I don't know whether I just, I don't even remember cryin' about it. I know I did after I got into prison for awhile. But I just seemed like it was something that was gonna' happen then, after the trial, you know, after you sit in the trial for a few days and you see what's goin' down.

Newscast (archive): Seven PM Eastern War Time, Bob Trout reporting. The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the Second World War. The United Nations, on land, on the sea, in the air and to the four corners of the earth, are united and are victorious.

Albert Williams: Well, when the war ended, after they had suspended our sentence, they had to release us. We get our discharge.

Joe Small: My discharge from the Navy prevented me from receiving jobs that I would have received as a civilian. It branded me as a person incapable of following orders.

Freddie Meeks: I used to couldn't talk about it because it would hurt. It would hurt inside. You didn't want your friends to know that you was in the service and you had been charged with mutiny. You didn't want people to think that you didn't like your country or something that you'd do something like that. This the onliest country we knew about.

Albert Williams: Not even with the fellows I worked with, I didn't talk with it with my wife or childrens. Every time I would bring it up or even think about it look like I got a hateful feelin' in me, you know, and it would just about tear me apart. I just hated the other race. And the hate was building up, it stayed with me. You know the hate stayed with me. You know hate can really destroy a person. I coulda' been better father I believe if I hadn't a had that hate. I wasn't abusive or nothin' but I just, things that I didn't talk about, things that I held in, things I think I coulda' did better.

Music: (Josh White instrumental)

Freddie Meeks: We can figure we was a hero because we stood up for our right. We stood up because we knew that we did not commit mutiny.

Albert Williams: I think it was right. I don't know how heroic it is but it was right.

Joe Small: I was fighting for something. And if you would ask me to put a name on it, I don't know. But things were not right and it was my desire to make things right. I have never felt ashamed of the decisions that I made. I did what I thought was best and I did it in the best way I knew how.

Freddie Meeks: Yep. Long ways back. Don't seem like it's been 50 years. And it still hangs over us at 50 years.

Music: Josh White: "If you ask me I think democracy is fine. I mean democracy without the color line. Uncle Sam says, "We'll live the American way. Let's get together and kill Jim Crow today."

HOST BACK ANNOUNCE: The Port Chicago 50: An Oral History was produced by Dan Collison. Gary Covino was the editor. Special thanks to Albert Williams, Freddie Meeks, Joseph Small, Percy Robinson and Robert Routh .

Suffrage - Right vs. Ability
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Suffrage may be a right but that doesn't mean you would have been given the ability to exercise it.

Credit / Author:

White Sands/NPS

Date created:

08/15/2020
Audio Transcript

Hi, my name is Robin and I am a park ranger at White Sands National Park. Welcome to part two of our three part audio series on the 19th amendment. Let’s take a look at two different scenarios and see if we would have been able to vote.
It’s 1872 and the fourteenth amendment was passed. That gave all those born or naturalized citizenship. That means that women can vote right? Not so much. In the Supreme Court case Minor vs. Happersett (1875) it was ruled unanimously that the constitution did not guarantee a citizen’s right to vote and that states could restrict voting rights to men. Many women would try to vote and face the same verdict years after. The supreme court would continue to rule that the constitution did not give all citizen the right to vote.
Let’s take a leap forward in time and see if we progressed at all 48 years later.
Now it’s 1920 and the presidential election is upon us. The 19th amendment has been signed into law and now the right to vote is ours. Not really. Depending on your state you could be required to pay as much as $3 (around $40 today) to cast your vote. Literacy tests, those were also required by certain states, as well as residency and property restrictions would be the next hurdle you would jump though. But we’ve made it through all those qualifications and requirements. We can vote now right? Well maybe but they are going to put us at the back of the line and make us wait hours and hours hoping we’d give up. This is an example of having a right but not being given the ability to fully exercise it.
For those suffragists who were determined to vote they were willing to be fined and even sometimes jailed to get answers as to why they weren’t allowed to vote. With those answers they would then find the words and process needed for them to gain suffrage. For these women the right was suffrage, what right are you unable to exercise?