During World War II, the Navy's policies of racial segregation created working conditions that often disregarded the humanity and devalued the lives of Black service members. After a devastating explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine claimed the lives of hundred of enlisted men, 258 Black American Sailors protested the Navy's unsafe and discriminatory practices.

Facing the threat of execution if they refused to return to work, fifty Black Sailors, known as the Port Chicago 50, stood their ground. They were charged with mutiny and imprisoned.

A young Black NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall traveled to the Bay Area to expose the mutiny trial as an example of the Navy's disregard for Black lives. The resulting public support for the Sailors led to their release from prison and the desegregation of the Navy - the first government institution to integrate.