Whereas, on July 17, 1944, the deadliest home-front disaster of World War II occurred at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Concord, California, when an explosion at the naval facility killed or wounded 710 people, 435 of whom were African-American; Whereas this single stunning disaster accounted for more than 15 percent of all African-American naval casualties during World War II; Whereas, after the disaster, 258 African-American survivors of the explosion refused to resume the loading and unloading of ammunition at the naval facility, citing inadequate training and the use of unsafe practices; Whereas, according to a United States Navy report, the actual work of loading ammunition and explosives aboard the ships was performed exclusively by Afro-Americans under the supervision of white officers and Afro-American petty officers ; Whereas, according to a United States Navy report, the routine assignment of Afro-American enlisted personnel to manual labor was clearly motivated by race and premised upon the mistaken notion that they were intellectually inferior and thus incapable of meeting the same standards as their white counterparts ; Whereas one of the ships was loaded with some 4,600 tons of ammunition and high explosives, some weighing 650 pounds with activating mechanisms or fuses installed; Whereas at that time there was no formal training in safe methods of ammunition handling given to enlisted men; Whereas the Navy failed to adequately provide these enlisted men with the tools necessary to operate under safe working conditions, even after the explosion occurred; Whereas, weeks before the explosion, the longshoremen’s union warned the Navy that there would be a disaster if the Navy continued to use untrained seamen to load ammunition, and offered to send experienced longshoremen to train Navy recruits in safe handling of ammunition, but this offer was ignored by the Navy