; Whereas the confined sailors were threatened with prosecution and potential execution, leading 208 to return to work; Whereas the 50 who refused to return to loading operations were subjected to the largest mass mutiny trial in naval history, which resulted, on October 24, 1944, in a conviction on the charge of mutiny and a sentence of up to 15 years imprisonment and dishonorable discharge from the Navy; Whereas, after appeals and widespread protests in January 1946, which included the participation of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the Port Chicago men were released from prison but their convictions remained on their records; Whereas, in a 1994 investigation, the United States Navy stated that there is no doubt that racial prejudice was responsible for the posting of only African-American enlisted personnel to loading divisions at Port Chicago ; Whereas the unfairness of the Port Chicago mutiny prosecution would ultimately serve as one of the catalysts for the 1948 Executive order requiring desegregation of the Armed Services; Whereas the Committee on Natural Resources of the House of Representatives conducted hearings on the Port Chicago case in 1993 and, in 1994, Congress, on a bipartisan basis, passed legislation creating the Port Chicago National Memorial as a feature of the National Park Service, including plaques commemorating those who lost their lives at the site in 1944; Whereas, in 1999, a pardon was granted to one of the few surviving members of the Port Chicago 50, Freddie Meeks, by President William Clinton following a thorough review of the case; Whereas, since 1999, substantial legal, academic, and journalistic inquiry has documented the inherent racial motivation behind the operations at Port Chicago and the prosecution of the Port Chicago 50