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Thread: The Untold Story of the Black Marines Charged With Mutiny at Sea

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    Post The Untold Story of the Black Marines Charged With Mutiny at Sea

    The Untold Story of the Black Marines Charged With Mutiny at Sea. — Racial strife aboard a Navy ship left three men facing the threat of the death penalty. They became little more than statistics in the military’s dismal record of race relations in the Vietnam era.

    This is their story. I hadn’t read about this before, from what I recall.

    After Jenkins was told he couldn’t play the Last Poets, 64 of the 65 Black Marines on the ship submitted an informal complaint to the highest-ranking Marine officer on board, Capt. John B. Krueger, according to an account written a few months afterward by the defense team that Jenkins, Barnwell and Blackwell soon needed. In their note, the Black Marines told Krueger that they were being denied the right to play their own music. “Being that races are different in certain aspects, and music being one,” it read, “then the proper officials must make way as to the satisfaction of each and every race regardless of minority.” The Marines then submitted a request for a formal meeting with their battalion commander, who was located on another ship nearby. It was denied, further inflaming interactions between the men on board.

    Tense conditions and simmering violence are detailed in the 1973 account written by the legal team. White noncommissioned officers prowled the berthing areas, harassing Black Marines. And when they talked back, they were formally punished. One white lieutenant is said to have had a Black Marine thrown into the ship’s brig — a jail with barred cells — and fed only bread and water for three days for nothing more than not having his uniform completely in order. The same officer returned to the brig to further harass and physically beat the man, according to the legal team’s account. In three separate incidents, one Black Marine had a wrench thrown at him, another was cut with a sharp object and a third was attacked with a knife, though those incidents were never investigated by Marine leadership.


    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/m...es-mutiny.html


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    Granted, I've not been a member of any military branch, but I tend to think it's important for every member to follow the same guidelines. If blacks were being "written up" because their hair was too long or they weren't wearing their uniforms correctly, whites who violated the same rules should also have been written up.

    I scanned most of the article, and what becomes apparent is that both blacks and whites were misbehaving.

    As far as not allowing them to play the music of the Last Poets--I get that. Last Poets played black nationalism music that supported revolution. Is that really suitable for Marines? I would also oppose any music with white nationalism lyrics.

    It does seem as though racial discrimination was going on and that's never acceptable. It's too bad it ballooned into such trouble, but there were no innocent parties in that mess.

    Jenkins seems to be an honestly good person these days, and as the story tells, he lives now in Detroit and has spent 40 years trying to distance himself from the problems that occured. He still identifies with being a Marine and I'm sorry he feels badly about the mutiny label that's followed him. But, he's raised a daughter that's a systems engineer and he's a good citizen today.
    ""A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul" ~George Bernard Shaw

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    Piss on it.

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    My squadron was deployed to Rota, Spain in the early '80s, and one night I woke up to what sounded like a very loud, weird chant. I stumbled up to the First Class Mess (that was the lounge in the barracks set up with a bar for use by the E-6 personnel) and asked what was going on. Turns out that the "ground pounders", the non-flying maintenance guys, who hadn't had a day off in a couple of months, were having an impromptu protest of sorts, and they were chanting "Bullsh*t! Bullsh*t!" Apparently the Duty Officer had gone to quiet them down and get them to disperse, but they ignored him and kept on. Finally, from what we heard later, the XO (Executive Officer, the second in command of the squadron) showed up and told them to go get some sleep and take a couple of days off - he was cancelling all flight operations and the Wing would just have to deal with it. I guess that's about as close to an actual mutiny as I ever got.
    Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard

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