located north of Chicago, IL, is the largest U.S. Navy training base and the only boot camp for naval enlistees. On May 20, 1972, the Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) and the Chicago Area Military Project organized an Armed Forces Day demonstration with 400 GIs joining a crowd of over 2,000. Soon a petition was being circulated on the base opposing the increased speed-up in training that gathered more than 600 signatures. USS Nitro Crew members aboard the USS Nitro, a munitions ship loaded with armament at the Naval Weapons Station in Earle, New Jersey, staged one of the most dramatic protests. Worried about the war and the unsafe conditions on board they contacted civilian antiwar organizations who helped them draw up a list of specific shipboard hazards, which they circulated, gathering signatures from 48 members of the crew. The petition resulted in little change, but on April 24, 1972, as the ship was pulling out of port, it was greeted by an antiwar blockade of seventeen canoes and small boats. As the Coast Guard attempted to disperse the demonstrators, they were first confronted by dissent from within their ranks, and then, one of the Nitro's crew on the “ship’s deck suddenly stood up on the rail, raised the clenched-fist salute, and literally jumped overboard!” He was quickly followed by six more crew members, including one non-swimmer who had donned a life jacket. William Monks, one of the seven who jumped explained his actions later: Racial conflicts and resistance Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr. stated in a 1971 study in the Armed Forces Journal called “The Collapse of the Armed Forces”, that “Internally speaking, racial conflicts and drugs…are tearing the services apart today.” Historians of the war have documented that non-white GIs were often given the dirtiest jobs and frequently sent to the front lines in combat situations. And a task force reporting to the Secretary of Defense at the time, Melvin R. Laird, found that racial discrimination in the military was not confined to the military but was “also a problem of a racist society”. Historian Gerald Gill contended that by 1970 most black soldiers thought the war was a mistake, “hypocritical in intent and racist and imperialist by design.” One black soldier was quoted as saying that black soldiers were sent on risky assignments by white officers so that ‘there would be one less nigger to worry