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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