once arrests were made for the fighting, all of the 25 arrested were black. “The arrest pattern caused as grave concern in some areas of the Pentagon as the outbreak itself. ‘Anytime you have a so-called race riot and you lock up 28 blacks,’ one black Navy official noted caustically during a recent interview, ‘that has to raise some questions.’” Mutiny on the Constellation As word spread in the fleet about the incidents on board the Kitty Hawk, many of the black sailors on the Constellation were “swearing an affinity with their beleaguered brothers on the Kitty Hawk.” By late October 1972, with the ship undergoing training exercises of the coast of Southern California, black crewmembers formed an organization called the “Black Fraction,” “with the aim of protecting minority interests in promotion policies and in the administration of military justice.” They elected a “chairman and three spokesmen to deal with the officers and petty officers of the ship.” As commanders became aware of the Black Faction, they agreed to a meeting between them and the executive officer with the objective of easing tensions. Prior to the meeting, however, the command “singled out fifteen members of Black Faction as agitators and ordered that six of them be given immediate less-than-honorable discharges.” At the same time, notice was given ship wide that 250 men would be administratively discharged. Feeling they were being singled out for retaliation for their activism and fearing that most of the additional discharges would be directed at them, over one hundred sailors, including several whites, staged a sit in and refused to work on the morning of November 3. During the day, members of the ship's Human Relations Council attempted to meet with the mutineers in a private dining room with little success as they demanded to see the captain. Around midnight, with the sit-in continuing the captain announced to the ship that any complaints had to go through the chain of command. “’O.K., that’s it,’ shouted a black sailor in the dining room. ‘They want another Kitty Hawk.’ There were shouts of ‘Let’s get the captain,’ and ‘Let’s take the ship.” The captain then called general quarters and ordered senior officers and petty officers to pick out white sailors and move to the mess deck to surround the mutineers where they had now moved. A tense standoff ensued that slowly dissipated overnight. In the morning the captain