Mare Island Original 21ers - let's give em a round of applause!!

[The Straight Story]

SPEECH OF
HON. GEORGE MILLER
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 2007

* Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I rise today to invite my colleagues to join me in honoring the Mare Island Original 21ers for their efforts to end racial discrimination at Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

* On Nov. 17, 1962, twenty-one African American workers at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, CA, took a historic step by filing a racial discrimination complaint with President Kennedy's newly created Committee on Equal Job Opportunities. The complaint quickly helped lead to sweeping changes locally at the shipyard and nationally at military installations, including early Affirmative Action-type programs. All the men wanted was a wage comparable to their white co-workers and to be treated equally. What they started was a chain reaction that reverberated around the country. The group would become known as the Mare Island Original 21ers, and would forever change the base's social landscape.

* Despite these pioneering steps, their early civil rights efforts remain in obscurity. The group's surviving members still talk about the movement, but the full story was buried in the 1960s and only recently came to light as a result of a series of newspaper articles by Vallejo Times Herald reporter Matthias Gafni.

* Their story is typical of the time. Vallejo was a Navy town, and a separated one. With its naval shipyard, Vallejo has always had a population reflecting a wide range of ethnic backgrounds; but it was not always harmonious. In the late 1950s minorities were mostly working in unskilled positions at Mare Island as sandblasters, laborers and cleaners, with efforts to keep them out of certain positions. The discrimination was not restricted to withholding promotions and unfair hiring practices, according to one of the workers. At every phase of each work day they faced discrimination.

* By 1960 the Civil Rights Movement was in its infancy and the African American workers were losing patience. In March 1961, President Kennedy issued an executive order establishing a sweeping, government-wide Equal Employment Opportunity Policy. Twenty-one workers began organizing under the leadership of Willie Long, meeting in complete secrecy to protect their safety and their jobs. A complaint was drafted and twenty-five workers ultimately signed it. The complaint covered deplorable conditions for black workers, involving promotions, the apprenticeship program, and general unfair treatment. The shipyard commander found no pattern of discrimination, but President Kennedy's committee was inundated with similar complaints from around the country and changes were finally made after several years. Almost everyone who signed the original complaint was promoted to supervisor and fortunately escaped any of the serious reprisals they feared.

* Their quiet but risky fight for equal treatment helped change our Nation. These heroic men included Willie Long, Boston Banks, Jr., Matthew Barnes, Louis Greer, Jake Sloan, Charles Fluker, Clarence Williams, James Davis, Thomas King, Robert E. Borden, James O. Hall, Matthew Luke, Herman Moore, Jimmie James, John L. McGhee, James J. Colbert, Virgil N. Herndon, Eddie Brady, Brodie Taylor, W.J. Price, Levi Jones, Herbert H. Lane, Kermit Day, and Charles Scales.

* Madam Speaker, in tribute to these men and their fight for equal rights, it is proper for us, and it is indeed my honor, to formally recognize the Mare Island Original 21ers, and thank them for their heroic actions.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r110:2:./temp/~r110ZId6M7::